It's warm out. And not warm in the "Yay! My fingers aren't freezing!" sense, but in the "Leave the coat at home and let's grab a cool drink at one of the tables outside" sense. Very strange two days after Christmas, which was pretty warm itself. Jody and I even played a little basketball on an 8 foot rim outside before the ball rolled in a bit of dogdoo and we couldn't play anymore.
That game came in the middle of a relaxed (okay, slightly boring) Christmas Day that came right after a great, fun Christmas Eve. Jody (A volunteer who arrived here a year before I did, isn't really doing anything anymore, but got married to a Bulgarian about a month ago), his wife Radost, and I took a bus down to her family's lodge near a town about a half hour south of Silistra. There we attempted to get into the Christmas spirit as quickly as possible. Most of two sides of Radost's family were there. It made for a total of about fifteen people, most of them kids. While the kids watched TV and played with presents, the elderly folk played games. Jody and I played ping pong (where he beat me), chess (where I beat him...badly), and dominos. We also played with other family members. Radost's dad is quite the chess player. I was only able to get him once, and that felt a bit like a consolation game.
Among all the fun, we ate and drank to our hearts' content. Tradition in Bulgaria holds that people shouldn't eat meat for forty days up to and including Christmas Eve. This has mutated a bit into just no meat on Christmas Eve, and Jody was even peeved when he learned that there wouldn't be meat like there had been last year. As soon as the news got to him, he fumed and kept saying how he couldn't wait for midnight, when Radost's dad was going to fire up some sausage on the grill.
Used to the whole vegetarian holiday thing, I ate until I was stuffed and then some. It was really good food. A couple kinds of salad, great bread, and my favorite regional food, sermi, which are these little balls of rice and other little bits rolled into grape leaves. I can pop those things into my mouth forever. Also served was the warmed and spiced rakia which I've been hearing so much about. You start to feel that stuff as soon as its near you and you take a breath. And, of course, there was enough Christmas toasting to make sure my lungs didn't get all of it.
After the dinner and games, most everybody headed off to their rooms, and Jody, Radost, Radost's dad, and I stayed in the living room, pluckign at little bits of food and talking about Bulgaria and politics and life. I'd hit my Bulgarian stride by then, I'd had some trouble communicating with the bus driver earlier in the day and was a bit afraid of a night of Bulgarian, but around midnight I was in Bulgarian zen. I understood all and could communicate all. Radost's dad even stood up and shook my hand when I'd rolled off a bit of 1 AM philosophy that his 1 AM philosophy agreed with.
Finally, and far too late, the living room was abandoned to me and the couch which had been apologetically assigned to the outsider (There was an unexpected side of the family and they really didn't have an extra room available just for me). I got a reasonable night's sleep and was a good, respectable part of the zombie herd the next morning. One interrupted game of basketball and a meat-filled lunch later, we piled into Jody's brother-in-law's car and he drove us back to Silistra.
I had to walk a short way back to the apartment, and on the way I dodged a few bombichki the adorable little rodent children are throwing around lately. They make this short little flare on the ground and then boom with a concussion big enough to set off any car alarms in a twenty foot radius. They're still going off. In my apartment I hear, during morning and sunset, an average of about 5 bombichki every fifteen minutes. Some are close, some are far away. Late at night, though, it's usually pretty quiet, thankfully. I'm told, and I expect, that it will get much worse nearer to New Year's Eve.
But it's warm, and I've gotten used to the blasts so that I don't even flinch if one is about ten feet away or more. I'd be great in a gunfight, I suppose. Another of the millions of benefits of being a Peace Corps volunteer in Bulgaria! Who can complain?
Posted by Rob at December 27, 2004 07:08 PM