Alive & Well

Happy October 8th! I'd give you some chocolates if you were here!

Did we scare ya? It seems like everyone thought we were dead since we haven't been on internet in almost a week. No worries, we're okay. We made it to Bratsigovo on Sunday after staying a night in the city of Plovdiv. We got to Plovdiv on Saturday and had a great time! Nickolai picked us up at the avtogara and took us to our hotel that he had booked for us. He decided it would be easier for us to get to church that way. Later that day, he picked us up and showed us the sights of Plovdiv. What a unique, wonderful place! We saw statues of Russian soldiers that helped win the Turkish war and liberated Bulgaria from the Turkish rule, we saw ancient Roman ampitheaters and staidums that were just found under the ground one day, we saw a concert, a wedding, the malls on main street, and even some Mafia members! There is so much history and culture there and I would love to back several times again before we leave.

After all of the sightseeing, Nickolai took us back to his place where his awesome wife (I love this lady, she's so funny) had made chicken soup--which was better than any chicken soup I've ever had in America--and chicken with rice. YUM! It was so good. They reminded me a lot of my Grandma Grey/Wilmoth though, because if you cleared your plate that meant you wanted a another heapin' helpin', even if you pleaded with them not to give you more food in fear that you would literally explode. They had Coke Light to drink (shout out to the mommas) and they also served us some coffee cake-ish stuff for dessert. It was really nice of them to cook such good food for us. They seemed SO rich to me because we had been living with people who complained about how expensive everything was. They are pretty well off people, but I was just in awe of how much food they were sharing with us...they even had a 2 liter of COKE!

We didn't end up going to Church on Sunday because Tony was really sick. He had a really bad headcold and we decided that it would be better to stay in our nice, warm hotel room (it was pouring rain) . They watched the Saturday session of conference because we are so ahead here Sunday hadn't come yet. Nickolai said it was really awesome and we're sad we missed it, but we're planning on watching it online soon. After church Nickolai took us to his place for lunch where they served some yummy salad made from peppers, onions, and some other veggies, and eggs. A whole lotta eggs just for Tony. They also served us these things that looked like crab pinchers but Nickolai's wife said it was just fish processed and colored to look like a crab pincher, gross. I didn't eat that one, haha.

After lunch Nickolai drove us to Bratsigovo (about a 40 min drive). He drove us around the town and then dropped us off at the home. When they told us we would be staying in the orphanage, I was picturing a little side house where we would have all of the privacy in the world, our own kitchen, a big bed, etc. PSSHH! We walked in to what looked like a DT dorm room. Two, small, again seperate beds and two wardrobe closets for us. We've been placed in the lovely hallway where the boys live. I don't mind sharing a bathroom, but sharing a bathroom with boys is a different story. The day after we got here, I was taking a shower and several boys just happened to stumble into the room where the shower was. Couldn't they hear the water running? There was a lock on the door, but it didn't work. After walking in on me, they proceeded to stand in front of the door giggling. How disrespectful. We talked to the director about it and now I have my own secret little bathroom where no one can find me (and I can lock it). We did, however, find an American working with the Peace Corps (Eric) who rents out an apartment here for 100 levs a month. That's like 80 American dollars. We're trying really hard to get that apartment and we think it will work out. No one is offended that we want to leave, so that is nice.

They let us eat the food here at the orphanage, too. It's actually not that bad. They serve a lot of soupy kind of things because they have to feed so many people but they are always really good soups. They served Musaka for dinner the other night and I finally got to try real Bulgarian Musaka. It doesn't really taste like how I make it, oh well.

As far as the kids go, they are awesome. When we first got here three of them showed us around the town and the orphanage and then treated us to some soda (how grown-up of them). We showed them some pictures of us on our laptop and they loved it. One girl, Monica, noticed a hair style that I had in one of my pictures and asked me if I could do her hair that way. I agreed to, and now she loves me! I've done her hair twice now, and she always asks me to straighten it or borrow my straightener. They always come into our room and hang out with us and we really like them. We even taught them how to play Uno yesterday. Shhh--don't tell, but I got Monica some makeup for her birthday which happens to be TODAY just like mine! She was telling me last night how much she likes makeup and how someone stole hers. She told me she really likes brown and black so I bought her some gold and brown eyeshadow and some black mascara. I'm really excited to give it to her. Last night she gave me some chocolates to hand out today (they do that on their birthdays here. The birthday boy/girl treats everyone to celebrate) and she made me a little bracelet. They call it Scooby Doo (?) and it's some kind of braid/weave thing with the plastic tube kind of string stuff. It was even yellow, my favorite color! She is so sweet.

Not all of the kids here are super-dee-duper cool. One kid at dinner after telling his friend "watch I'm going to be best friends with these guys" came and sat with us. He seemed like a genuinely nice kid, and Tony let him put some songs from our computer onto his phone. He stayed and talked with us for a while, but the longer he was there the more uncomfortable I got. He kept asking us how much we paid for things, how much money we had, etc. After a while Tony told them we were going to bed so they left, and not even 5 minutes later this kid and his buddy come to our door and ask Tony if he can talk for a moment. Tony goes out into the hall for a little bit while I did some homework, and when he came back in he told me that these two boys told him that they were so hungry that they couldn't sleep and that they wanted 4 levs from us. Tony was a good husband and told them he needed to talk to me, but one of the kids was like, "we can just keep it between the three of us, she doesn't need to know." UGH! Luckily, we had some apples so I told Tony to tell them we could offer them apples but we couldn't spare any money right now. Funny, because when Tony told them they could each have five apples, they didn't want them. So hungry you can't sleep, eh? They probably wanted to go buy beer or cigarettes or something. It was really frustrating and it made me want to move into our own place even more.

I'm writing too much! Hope you enjoyed this post. There will be more because we found internet in the actual orphanage that we can use whenever we want. It's nice, fast internet, too!

Ciao for now!