Sounds of Spring

Spring has (hopefully) sprung here in Sofia. I'm sure we'll get some more snowstorms, but the grass is greening up, flowers are starting to appear, birds are chirping, and martenitzi are getting taken off of wrists and hung on flowering tree branches (I myself am holding out a few more days). As I soaked in some sun this fine morning over breakfast on the patio, I couldn't help but enjoy the sound of the birds. I think the birds here sing much more than in other places I've lived. Woodpeckers (several kinds), owls, jays, hawks, various songbirds -- so many kinds withing 300 meters of my house! I don't know if it's because of the deciduous forest here that there is more bird diversity than in the Western US, or because the park-like school campus provides a refuge from the concrete jungle of Sofia, or because my ears are just tuned into hearing things that don't sound like snow. :) I'm also happy to report that, as much as we miss Montana, winter is probably 2-3 months shorter here, something I'm totally OK with. Sofia had a lovely fall, and I think spring will be nice too -- two seasons that don't really exist in Bozeman. Spring break is coming in less than a week (Dad will be here on Wednesday!), and we're ready! I walked around the woodlot behind my house with my still camera, trying to catch the sounds of spring. I put the video on lowest quality, just because I was really trying to catch the sounds more than the visuals. My apologies for the sometimes jerky Blair Witch-like footage. Maybe I'll try this again soon with our camcorder, which I suppose might do better with audio & video. In the meantime, enjoy, and you'll probably have to turn up the volume on your computer to hear much. You also can appreciate Saturday-morning construction, traffic noise, bees, barking dogs -- I think it's a nice mix. The first video is a close up of some bees in the newly bloomed wildflowers in-between the faculty housing and the classrooms, and the second & third are taken along the path in the woodlot.

Fun with words

So today in our Bulgarian language lesson we learned that there is no word for "fun" in Bulgarian.  Here was the conversation:

Laura (our instructor): Study your verbs because next time we will learn the different forms of past tense.

Jeff (in a very sarcastic voice): Fun!  That will be fun!

Shannon: So how do you say "fun" in Bulgarian?

Laura: There is no such word in Bulgarian.

Shannon, Jeff, and Carolyn erupt in laughter.

Shannon: Seriously?

Laura: No, there is no word for "fun".  It doesn't really translate.  We would say "it will make a party".

More incredulous laughter from us students. And the end of our lesson for the day.


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We looked up "fun" in our Lonely Planet phrasebook and on Google Translate and found the same word there: забавно (za-bav-no).  So now we have to ask Laura to explain the connotation of зававно.

We would love to hear comments about this from any Bulgarian readers out there!

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Speaking of connotation.  Jeff had a discussion with some other teachers about trying to teach the connotation of words to students whose first language is not English -  more specifically, how some synonyms are not interchangeable.  During this conversation, the words facetious, sarcastic, and snarky were discussed and the conclusion, thanks to John the English teacher, was that they differ in their level of "dickishness."  Perfect.

Looking forward to Saint Patrick's Day tomorrow!

Heather & Bajji come to visit!

We love to get visitors, and recently we had the chance to host our friends Heather and Bajji from Colorado. They were on the tail end of a 3 week (or longer?) trip to India, Switzerland, and Bulgaria (I bet not many travel agents handle requests for that combination!). They were jet-lagged and travel weary, and we were exhausted from semester exam (and grades/comments) madness that had lasted for weeks. The weather was a rainy/snowy wintry mess. Still, we had a lovely time.

Their first night here we went up to a brewpub on the lower slopes of Vitosha to celebrate a friend's birthday. The taxi ride was epic. The unplowed streets were too steep for the little front-wheel drive with no snow tires. At several points the car was sliding backwards down the snowy hill, though our fearless driver Kiril kept the accelerator floored (all the while calmly chatting with his girlfriend on his cell). We kept trying to say "This is good enough, please let us out here!" and walk the rest of the way (probably 30 minutes up a snowy mountain road, but still) but Kiril would have none of it. I think he enjoyed the challenge, and when he got us to the nearly deserted (but open) restaurant, he gave me his personal number so I could call him for the return ride (which I did).

Heather and Bajji did a little exploring of Sofia on their own while we were teaching, and after school one day I gave them a tour of the more interesting parts of campus, including the old creaky water tower that you can surprisingly still climb (which of course we did).

Bajji climbing the tower, and grinning at the top.

On Saturday we rented a car for a short trip to Rila Monastery before they had to return home to the US. It was nice for them to see the countryside, Rila is quite pretty in the snow, and it was my first time driving in Europe. On the one hand, Shannon and I loved the freedom of being able to drive again. So many more travel opportunities suddenly seemed reasonable. On the other hand, Sofia traffic was sucky, the ice-slicked highway was often terrifying, and the potholes were relentless (more on that later).

My beautiful wife at Rila.

Heather & Bajji getting tourist-y.

Shannon & Heather taking in a brief moment of sun.

Rila Monastery in mid-winter.

On the way home, I nailed a pothole at highway speeds in our little tiny Euro rental car. Bent the rim and got a flat. Suck. Luckily there was a spare (we had neglected to confirm this when we picked up the car in the middle of the pouring rain). Luckily Bajji is craftier than I at figuring out leverage and how to make the most of a mini-tire iron (standing/jumping on it seemed to do the trick). Not so luckily for us the repair cost over $150, and of course it was not covered by the "premium" rental insurance we sprung for. Oh well...it was still a fun outing.

Thanks for visiting Heather and Bajji! Hope to see you this summer in Colorado!

Oreos

We just saw Oreos for the first time at "Hit," our local Austrian supermarket chain. I'm not really an Oreo fiend back home -- might only buy a package or two a year, although I do enjoy a good Oreo blizzard at Dairy Queen. They don't the have regular cookie packages (50+ cookies) here, but instead come in either 6-cookie "snack packs" or boxes with four 4-cookie packs. We were going to buy a box for novelty sake, but realized that we might never see them at the store again, so bought two.

They taste like America.

The package describes them as "Cocoa Flavoured Sandwich Biscuits," which I suppose is true, but seems wholly inadequate to describe the Oreo experience. They are delicious with a side of disgusting and a helping of addiction. They are not really food, but a food product. It is not something you could conceivably imagine ever being able to make in your kitchen.
Fantastic.

An Ode to Onda

Onda Coffee Break is an Irish-Bulgarian coffee shop chain in Sofia.  Luckily for me (or maybe not so luckily since caffeine is something I strive to avoid), there is an Onda shop conveniently located on campus in the building next to mine - not a 20-second walk away from my office.  They bake fresh  muffins every day.  I'm so glad I don't have an office in the same building as Onda, otherwise I would probably become a walking muffin - muffin for breakfast, muffin for a snack after lunch, oh and I'll have a croissant right before school is out, and I might as well get a muffin for an after-dinner snack.  OK, OK, I exaggerate, but I must admit that I have become very addicted to these muffins.  I'm eating one right now, thus the idea for an ode to Onda.  And really, I guess this isn't an ode, since I have no idea what makes up a proper ode, but instead I will write a haiku since that is what I traditionally like to write when being "poetic".  (I thank my pals in Jellystone for getting me into writing haikus)

So, without further ado:

Onda Coffee Break
A muffin makes me happy
Thanks for being here!