Alaskan Bulgarian

No Rain

Thunderstorms over the weekend knocked out the cable internet all over the city. It’s been damn near African around here lately, stifling hot days leading to a three or four hour storm in the afternoon. And as I may have mentioned before, the rain around here does nothing…NOTHING…to cool things down. Rain in Bulgaria (At least the parts of Bulgaria I’ve called home) just makes things humid, heavy, and muddy. The streets were caked in mud today, and as the temperature hit 100 around noon, that mud turned into the finest dust you would ever not want to breathe.

Like clockwork today, it’s getting darker at 3. The clouds are looming in and an absolute deluge seems to be coming. Hopefully it won’t. I don’t want to lose the internet again.

Whatever the weather turns into in the afternoons, it makes for pretty rough teaching in the morning. Everybody fans themselves most of the time, and I’m certainly one of them.

Anyway, it’s hot. Enough of all that. Today’s photo is again courtesy Sharad. It’s the Rozhen Monastery near Melnik that I talked about. Enjoy.

Everything and the Little Bits In-Between

So, um, where were we. I forget. Oh yeah, about a week ago now I set off for a small tourist trap in southern Bulgaria called Melnik. Tourist trap is a bit harsh. Really harsh, actually, since Melnik is easily in my top 5 places in Bulgaria and probably in the top 3, but that doesn’t change the fact that its name is probably one those that George Lucas had a hard time rejecting for a planet name in the Star Wars movies (We’ll get to Episode III later). Or maybe that just makes it cooler.

The trip began, as these things usually do, with a 7 hour bus ride to Sofia. Since Silistra and Melnik are in opposite corners of the country and about as far physically as places get in this country, I took a midnight bus on Saturday morning. Since the midnight bus is always full, I sat next to somebody and to punish them for sitting next to a tall person and making me lose all feeling below my knees for a few hours, I probably snored loudly in their ear and drooled on them in my sleep. I can only hope they’ve learned their lesson.

I woke up in Sofia, where the weather was freezing cold for the hour I was in the bus station and never again for the rest of the weekend. After quickly breaking the ol’ fast and spending 50 stotinki for the pleasure of using the best bus station toilet in Bulgaria, I escaped the living concrete hell that is Sofia as quickly as a bus to Sandanski (a town near Melnik which also has a cool name) would allow and relaxed as the weather got warmer and warmer with every kilometer we headed south. Three hours and a pit stop later, I’d gotten to where I needed to be.

A B-14 was also on the bus. B-14’s are volunteers that came to Bulgaria later in the same year my group arrived. They tend to be an isolated, secret-handshake-using bunch, and an intense rivalry has formed between we two groups of grizzled veterans that has resulted in more than a few stubbed toes and Indian burns. After the B-14, named Anna, for convenience, and I had gotten over glaring at each other, as tradition and honor demanded, we began to figure out why we were on the same bus together.

It turns out that, in addition to the group of 15 people I was attached to (One of whom, to my never-ending shame, was a B-14 going out with a B-13. O! Shame upon never-ending shame!), there was a group of B-14s celebrating the birthday of one of their own. The village would be packed with Americans. There was also an American woman on the bus who spent the entire trip speaking very loudly to her Bulgarian friend. Three Americans on the Bulgarian bus and the only voice a person could hear was English. We truly are the great upper middle class immigrants.

When we got to Sandanski, I gave Michael, the volunteer living in Sandanski, a call. Because Anna had nothing really better to do until we all went to Melnik, she followed me and Andrew, another B-13 living near Sandanski, to a restaurant where we ran right into a Bulgarian ambush. It turns out Michael had led us into a graduation party trap. A student of his was graduating, and even thought Michael had told him he would be busy over the weekend the family refused to take his “no” for an answer.

We walked into a dark basement restaurant where a banquet table was set up and a small band of two was playing Bulgarian music in the corner. It was around noon, so we had to adjust a bit to the light, but after a moment, Mike led us to a table near the banquet table and after apologizing far too many times asked us to sit down, make ourselves comfortable, and have some fun until he could get us all out. Never being one to refuse food, I ate all the salad and bread put in front of me and nearly chocked on the lamb when it set down near our plates. I also did my share of cheering (nothing like a few glasses of rakia before 1 pm) and congratulating the family and the graduate.

When Mike was able to leave, the three guests gave a quick goodbye to everyone, grabbed our baggage from the corner and bolted for the door (we were supposed to be in Melnik after all. Na gosti are all well and good, but could really be done anytime). We all hopped in a cab to take us the 20 kilometers or so to Melnik and I got into a nice conversation with the driver while the three in the back acted like children. Absolute children.

We finally arrived in Melnik. It was hot, but not too hot, and the village was beautiful but also packed with tourists, mostly Bulgarian and many American as noted before. It was Kiril and Metodi weekend and that meant a four day weekend for most and five days off for some. Saints Cyril and Methodius are the two brothers who created the Cyrillic alphabet, which, I think, in its past forms was a far more useful alphabet than either the current Latin or Cyrillic alphabets. Middle Bulgarian seems to have had a “th” sound in addition to its current complement of letters representing “ch,” “sh,” and “sht.” I think any alphabet that has a “th” sound and all of those other sounds deserves a lot of credit. But for some reason Bulgarian lost “th” and so I have to frustratingly teach students to say “the” instead of “duh.” Life is hard.

Anyway, Cyril and Methodius also gave Bulgaria its equivalent of Memorial Day weekend, and everywhere from Sofia’s bus station to Melnik was flooded with families taking a weekend trip. It made walking around Melnik a bit of a chore, since cars were trying to get up the narrow cobblestone streets right along with the teeming masses, but it didn’t seem to take much away from the weekend.

We checked into a great hotel, called the Despot Slav and relaxed for a few hours in whatever way best suited us. I went to a café with other members of the group I hadn’t seen yet and caught up with them over some overly-soggy baklava. After the relaxing, we all filed into a great little restaurant where Mike had set up a reservation. 15 people squeezed in around a big square table. We spent the next 4 hours or so eating, drinking the restaurant’s wine, and oddly enough, playing a few rounds of telephone. I also played rummy with Jill, the B-13 sitting ext to me at the table. A few hours in, the restaurant began to comp us on wine when they realized they were going to get an easy triple digit bill out of us. Melnik is famous for its wine and although I wouldn’t say it flowed like water, it was sure a lot easier to find and buy bottled wine in Melnik than it was to buy bottled water.

As it turned out, the bill was actually incredibly reasonable. The fifteen of us paid about 230 leva as I recall, and threw on a good tip. 230 leva works out to about 150 dollars. The next time you or someone you know in America can hold a four hour dinner, featuring about 20 or so liters of good wine total and three or four courses for everyone at the table, and see this meal run for about 10 dollars a head, let me know and I’ll give you a cookie. I love Bulgaria, I really do.

Then came sleep.

The next day we woke up at around 9 without anyone so much as complaining of a headache. Like I said, it was good wine, ten dollars a head. Boggles the mind. The hotel gave us a great breakfast, then we set off up the trail to the monastery at the top of the hill. The trail was absolutely beautiful. There were sandstone cliffs all along the way, spectacular drop-offs that would send you down a few hundred feet, and a non-functioning camera in my pocket (Batteries, fresh ones that lasted about 4 photos. Kodak batteries too, in a Kodak camera. I can’t explain this.). All the photos you see here are courtesy of Sharad, helping me out again. He’s a good man.

Near the end of the trail there were a few switchbacks that ran right along the side of the cliffs. The places where a foot could go were about the size of a shoe. And the surface was sandstone. I don’t think I’ve gone through a more hair-raising bit of a trail in my life. Even in Alaska in late winter. That’s saying something.

We all survived and got to see the monastery. A monk spent most of his time telling people not to take photos anywhere on the monastery’s grounds. Sharad wasn’t listening obviously:

But a monastery’s a monastery, so we finished up quickly, saw the grave of Yane Sandanski, had a quick lunch, then began the trip down the hill. We took the road this time. It was still a beautiful walk, but it involved less sweat and fewer brushes with death. Always a plus.

Back in Melnik, we relaxed a little more, then headed back to Sandanski and a few of us carried on to Dupnitsa, for easier access to Sofia the next day. Dupnitsa featured a quiet dinner and a quiet evening of rummy and chess. It also featured Sharad repeatedly (repeatedly, mind you) insulting my kitchen in comparison with Jill’s. Most of it revolved around the fact that I don’t keep tea or coffee around for the rare guest that passes through this corner of Bulgaria.

After the fun of Melnik and the relaxation in Dupnitsa came the prospect of a return to Sofia. I had to have a medical checkup. TB test, physical, the works. So I went into Sofia by bus Monday morning with three other B-13s and we split a cab fare to headquarters. There I was able to check my e-mail and post the lovely bit you saw on Monday before I ran upstairs to get the basics of the physical finished. The TB test went under my skin, because I hadn’t had time for breakfast at that point they did a blood test, and they checked my height, vision, hearing, blood pressure, weight, the works. Turns out I’m fit at or above the level of a fiddle, if you don’t count the 100 mg of Atenolol I take every night. And I don’t. After that I talked to the staff I wanted to talk to and left quickly for the theater. I had gotten a call from Aaron, and old friend from training, who had invited me up to Lovech, just two hours away from Sofia for the next day since I really didn’t have to be in Sofia. To catch a decent bus up there, though, I needed to hurry.

Fortunately, the Sofia tram system was with me and everything ran like clockwork. I got to the theater 15 minutes before an early showing of Episode III (And by early I mean early afternoon. There’s a showing every half hour at the theaters in Sofia), had a quick brunch, then sat down to watch the film.

Now, I don’t care how bad you think Episodes I and II are, the first sight of that “Star Wars,” John Williams’ sting, and the resulting crawl still send half a million chills up every hair on my body. In this Episode that chill continued through the first half hour of the flick. [Spoilers] I was giggling throughout the opening space sequence, and the excitement kept going all the way until Anakin kills Count Dooku. Then I chilled for about the next hour, let’s say. I would have been more excited by General Grievous and his fight with Obi Wan if a series of five minute cartoons on Cartoon Network hadn’t established General Grievous as a character about 287,985 times cooler and deadlier than he is in the movie. [/Spoilers]

Then the last 45 minutes came closer to making me cry than the last five minutes of Braveheart. And if you’ve ever sat there and watched me during the last five minutes of Braveheart, you know I get pretty close. George Lucas may not be able to write himself out of a paper bag when it comes to dialogue, but the man had a vision and he completes it and at least makes you feel the emotion involved. The last scene of the movie was exactly (EXACTLY) how I had imagined it, but it still hit me full in the stomach. Two suns, two people and a baby, that’s all I needed to walk out of a theater hopping happy. The tragedy had been resolved and the New Hope was born.

It was all written, of course. Lucas had talked about a fight on a lava planet between Obi Wan and Vader as early as his conceptual meetings for the very first movie. There are even conceptual drawings for Vader’s return to the planet sometime during the original trilogy. Incidentally, if you’ve ever looked at the conceptual art for the original trilogy, you know that Lucas used just about every image that he couldn’t use in the old trilogy in this newer one. Especially on Tatooine. In Episode II, there’s a shot of Anakin talking to Jawas in front of open sandcrawlers that’s identical to a painting originally designed for Episode IV. This latest episode uses a few shots of the social life on Coruscant that were thought up about 20 years ago. It’s amazing patience, yes, but it also made me want to see a little more.

Anyway, it’s a brilliant movie. At this point it’s still well below Empire Strikes Back, but possibly on level with the original Star Wars as far as rewatchability goes. For example, if those three movies are on at the same time, Empire gets full viewing privileges, but if Empire weren’t on, I would jump to Star Wars during the middle hour of Episode III. If Episodes I or II were on, Episode II would get commercial privileges, but Episode I would only get a little viewing if either the pod race or the fight with Darth Maul were on at a good time. Unfortunately for Return of the Jedi, its first half hour (the best bit of the movie) is superseded by the first half hour of Episodes II, III, and V. It might not even get commercial privileges. At any rate, I will at some point in my life sit through and thoroughly enjoy the entire 14-15 hour marathon.

Yes, I’m a nerd.

A tram and a bus later, I was in Lovech. We ate a little Chinese. We played Risk, I played for the first time (Really. I’d played half a game once. I’m not sure if that counts) and won. I’m not sure if that says more about the game of Risk or me, but I was happy. I recommend North America as a starting point, it works in real life and the board game, and in the board game you don’t even have to depend on Star Wars and Coca Cola to do your cultural dirty work!

The next day saw all the hallmarks of an American holiday on Bulgaria’s Kiril and Metodi Day. We played Frisbee, then American football, then we napped and had a good dinner. Not sure what else you could want there.

On Wednesday I went back to Sofia early and had the TB test checked along with a few remaining bits of the physical. After all that I hopped on a 1:30 bus back to Silistra, racing the sun to get back for the senior’s prom.

The senior prom here in Bulgaria is a little different than those in America. For one thing, it’s in the middle of the bleedin’ week. For another, the teacher’s are all invited and most of them go. The night starts with a dinner, then turns into dancing, drinking, cigar smoking, and all the things 18 year-olds do in Bulgaria. And all in front of and with the school’s staff. It’s absolutely fascinating stuff. I won the dance contest with a girl from 12B that I’d never met before and we got a bottle of champagne and a box of chocolate. I also danced with most of the class who were on the floor. Absolutely great times.

I went home at around 3:30 in the morning and slept for 2 hours before getting up to teach the first two hours of a pretty easy-going day. The first half hour of the first period of the day was spent listening to various groups of drunk, graduated seniors coming into the classroom and singing the school song. They hadn’t gone to bed and were all still wearing their fancy clothes.

After those two hours (Thankfully my only two hours of the day) I went home and slept.

Normal day today, classes, cafes, and the internet, and that catches us up to where we are today. Although thunderstorms, hail, and a crappy internet service mean that I haven't been able to get this out until far too late tonight.

Placemarker

Well, I'm here in Sofia and Melnik was fascinating but will have to be explained later...I'll give a nice long description of the whole thing when I get back to Silistra and can think for a while in front of my latptop. I left it in Silistra virus-free and with a fully-functioning internet. I've been travelling with my figers crossed that everything will still be fine when I get back.

So that's where we are now, and I'll be enjoying these next few days by going up to Lovech when I don't have to be in Sofia (a place I'm, for various reasons, not all that fond of) and seeing the latest Star Wars flick as soon as I finish with the medical check-ups I have to take care of here. There will be a massive update on Thursday. Cheers until then.

Off I Go Again

This weekend I'll finally be going to Bulgaria's wine country, Melnik. I've been meaning to go for a while, but it's in the opposite corner of the country. Because of a couple of mountain ranges, that doesn't make it the hardest place to get to in the country, but the psychological factor is still there, and an 11 hour trip is nothing to sneeze at. Even here in the land of buses and trains.

The week behind me was an emotional rollercoaster. The computer came back to life, although I'm still thinking there are some evil forces at work deep in the depths of the hard drive. So, with a working computer and no unlimited internet account, I went off to buy myself a gigabyte of transfer space from the ever-friendly internet people so I could use the internet at home again. I payed my bill, said "have a nice day," received something similar from the person in charge of the office and left. This is important because not once while I was in the office did anyone mention that their server is infected by a monster virus that attacks computers as soon as they're hooked up to the network.

It's awfully nice to have friends in town who have internet, the same problems, and the capability to solve them. The virus is off my computer, but I'm off the network until I get a few necessary Microsoft hotfixes from a buddy tonight. So I'm back at the internet club. Life goes on.

Fascinating event at school today. It's standard for a school to have a representative guy or girl from the graduating class. But the way things are done here is different than anything I've heard of in America.

I've already explained the concept of paralelki, but in case you missed it, a paralelka is a group of about 25 students who stay with each other through pretty much every hour of every day for the five years they go to the language school. They're brought together only in their common deisre to study a given language and six of them make up this year's graduating class. Two study English, two study German, and the other two study French and Spanish.

So today, after having sometime in the last month nominated someone in their paralelka, two students from each group stood and tried to sell their nominee to the entire faculty arranged in the teachers' room. Six five-minute sales pitches and here at the language school, where the city's best come to study, the competition was fierce. Two of the groups used PowerPoint presentations, one had made a shrine to overachievement that filled half a wall, and every group spent most of their five minutes reading off the awards, test scores, and extra-curricular activities their horses had piled up in five years.

One of the candidates had an SAT score of 780 Math/560 Vebal (I nearly threw up in mouth on that one. Just taking the SAT is rare enough in Bulgaria, but to have a score that comes close to the total I had, that's amazing). Another was 10 points off perfect on the TOEFL, and her first foreign language is German. A few had published things in various local and regional newspapers. It was very impressive.

But the strangest thing about it all, and the thing I love most about the whole process, is that it's invariably the second banana that does most of the presenting. While the nominees all wait out in the hall and wring their hands over who will win, the other person from the paralelka who had straight sixes ("A"s) does the work to push them over the top. They read the list of achievements and then give a prepared statement about the great person/friend their nominee is and has been.

Now, I know these paralelki are big families, but there has to be some teeth-grinding going on. The presenter I talked to earlier this week in class was diplomatic but dogmatic, too. In fact, she was looking at the whole thing as her competition, her contest. She was looking to me to give her an edge in the whole thing (I'd seen and voted in last year's competition). Of course, it was all for her nominee, but she knew that her nominee had done the work, it was her job, her game to make that that work look perfect.

Now, maybe I'm just not a good second banana, but I don't think I could ever shove away the idea that it would be better if the candidate was up there promoting my record. Sure, I'd look at the speech bit as my time to shine, and I'd use those five minutes for all they'd be worth, but after they were over, I'm not sure I could go without sulking whenever I was around the nominee for about the next week or so.

Oh well, I'm selfish. Sue me. Expect an upadate on Monday when I'll have little to do in Sofia except visit headquarters and see Episode III before I go into anticipatory spasms over seeing the last part of my favorite collection of movies/mythos/crazy Lucas dream. I'm actually more glad than most die-hard fans that these latest movies took so long in coming and then turned out to be pedestrian. For me, it adds a bit of Hollywood reality to three movies I had always grouped together with Greek mythology and the best of Shakespeare.

If Phantom Menace and Jar Jar had never come, I might well have someday gone to Star Wars conventions and joined a jedi cult while I was living in LA. Well, I was probably never that nutty, but you get the drift. It's sometimes nice to have a bit of the shine taken off of something. It can give you an entirely new perspective on things. While I'm still in a constant drool, knowing that Episode III is playing out there in the rest of the world and I won't have a chance to see it until Monday, I know that going to Melnik and hanging out with great friends would be much better than staking out a place in line somewhere in Sofia, most likely alone. It's all about perspective.

And Down it Goes Again.

Back at the internet club. The ol' laptop's really on the mat this time, but hopefully it'll come around soon. It's not the internet anymore, it's something much much worse.

Don't really feel like talking about it...or anything else really. I'll probably be in a better mood tomorrow. Expect an entry then. Sorry for now.

AAACHOOO!

Well, you see Plovdiv's ethnographic museum here. It holds a collection of old cultural stuff. And it's also an example of what I think looks like pirate ship architecture. The back of a pirate ship, basically. How it juts out and looks gaudy and stuff.

ANYWAY, the computer died yesterday, the very day I was supposed to e-mail in the project proposal for the project. Fortunately, the cure was just a "chkdsk /r" away. Worked a miracle and the radio project proposal is out of my hands. Phew.

The pressure's off at just about the right time, too. The snow trees have started doing their thing. I call them snow trees because they dump masses of white fluff all over the city so everything takes on a strange blizzardy look. I also call them snow trees because I have idea what any given tree is called. I only know that the trees outside of my apartment are sycamores because my mom told me.

I'd never really had allergies before I came to Bulgaria. But May's here are a killer. Constant sneezing and coughing. I was still able to play a solid game of basketball today, hopefully that'll last.

And there are mosquitos now too. Everything's coming together. Spring was pleasant for a while, but now the bill has to be paid. Oh well.

Late Spring Weather

Staying with Plovdiv one more time for the photo of the day. We'll probably be going back later in the week, too. Sunday was absolutely outstanding weather-wise. Hardly a cloud in the sky and cool breezes. Couldn't ask for much better.

What you see here is the Plovdiv Amphitheater, which overlooks the city center. It's apparently pretty well-preserved and they still use it for summer shows and plays. Terrific venue.

It was back to school today though, where in literature, we slogged through the first couple pages of Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" which is one of my favorite essays (even though I break Orwell's rules every day on this page. Mostly out of laziness).

I don't think they completely got it. I have a tendency to overestimate this class. They're good. Very good. But they're not quite ready for a long discussion on the use of dead metaphors in English. Oh well.

More promising was the fact that they hadn't heard of Orwell at all before I mentioned him today and no one had any idea about why I had written 1984 under his name on the board. I think the next two weeks will be 1984 weeks in class. I've already warmed them up by telling them that Victory cigarettes, Bulgaria's more popular brand, has the same name as the cigarettes in the novel.

Fun times with literature. Makes the rest of the day peppy.

Finally, I've been a little slow on the local pages here. Rob Jackson has started a great photo page which is certainly worth regular visits. And Michael Marble has arrived in Bulgaria and started telling stories, just what I like to see. Give them a shot.

Kingdom of Plovdiv

I feel a little bad for pushing Kingdom of Heaven, a movie I thought was a sure thing, on a bunch of tired friends late Saturday night. I was going on the fact that it was Ridley Scott directing the thing and that alone would mean it wouldn't be bad.

Well, it wasn't bad. But it certainly wasn't great either, and the the more I think about it, the more I hedge away from "good." It's entertaining, I suppose. And there's a lot of action and sand and blood. But unless you're Hemingway at a bullfight, that alone doesn't usually make for a good 2 1/2 hour experience.

Oh well, at least I got to see a preview for Episode III, which is looking to revive my faith in the series once again. I love Star Wars, mostly for its mythology, but it took the sterility of the first two prequels to show how much character meant to the three originals. You really have to have a wildcard like Han Solo to make a big space opera work.

But enough about movies. It was a great weekend, with a big Friday night of nostalgia and Bulgarian discoes. More to come later in the month, I'm sure. For now, I'm in Sofia looking to take care of some business related to my staying here another year. All for now, I'll be back in Silistra with another update tomorrow.

Peti Na Mai

Pretty easy day at the office today. I needed to bring the laptop in to school to work on the project, and both of the day's classes were in a kind of stasis as far as real work is concerned, so we did a photos and music day. The fun thing about being an English language teacher is that, even though it may not be a well-built lesson plan, talking about old photos in English is still productive. I get to show them Alaska, Seattle, places they'd probably never get to see, and they get a lot of English out of it. Everybody wins.

Sometimes I wonder if showing the photos makes me miss home a little more than I'd like, but at the same time I get an excuse to look over it all and remember the good times. It's bittersweet really. A common question today was "how long has it been since you've been back to Alaska?" and when I answered two years, it seemed to echo around for a while. I couldn't really understand how that much time has passed. But it has, and it really hits me when I look at the dates. And of course, each photo is dated.

Anyway, I'm headed out of town for the weekend to celebrate cinqo de Mayo with friends. We'll take any pseudo-American holiday, really. By September, I'll be the only member of my group that came here left in Bulgaria. Everyone else will have gone home, or to the rest of Europe, or to Asia. A kind of family is breaking up, and we're taking every opportunity to say goodbye.

21 Leva?!

I just learned the full, dirty truth about stipends for students today. Every month, some student always comes back from the "restroom" and declares to the entire class "stipends are down at the office!" Right after that, about half the class, and all good students, decide that they also need to go to the "restroom." Today, kind of bored, I finally asked about the details.

It turns out that if a student has enough "6"s (The Bulgarian equivalent of an "A") they get 21 leva a month from the government. Shocked, I did the math on this. About 11 students per class, I'm told, usually get a stipend. Let's call that about half a class. Moving that to about half the school, that turns into about 380 students getting 21 leva a month. That totals about 8000 leva a month. Over ten paying months, that's 80,000 leva (About 53,000 dollars) a year the government gives students at one school just for getting "A"s.

I got my name in the newspaper, I remember.

But when I pushed this further, I realized that few of my objections to it made sense. There's no way the government could pull that money away to give it to school programs. The students would riot, and besides, this is Bulgaria, not America. It's a different system, I suppose. But still. That 80,000 leva could easily buy a new gym floor. It could buy more than one computer for every classroom. Endless possibilities.

And the biggest question here is how on Earth students aren't getting "6"s. I mean honestly, you show up to class, do your classwork, do your homework, and do a decent job on tests, you're going to get a six most of the time. I understand how personal achievement may not be a goal enough to get good grades, but isn't 20 leva a month more than enough incentive for a Bulgarian high schooler? It won't make you rich, but it's a dinner on Saturday night at any restaurant in town. Not too shabby.

I don't know. I just teach 'em. Still, 21 leva a month?!

Hristos Voskrese

On this Eastern Orthodox Easter I've decided to make a command decision about my life and we'll see how long it holds. In order to be a slightly less than a really nice guy and have a little more fun in life, I've decided to change the answers to "How tall are you?" and "How big are your shoes?" whenever somebody asks. Sometimes I'll be 5'3 with size 24s, sometimes Ill be 7'6 with size 10s. At any rate, it'll provide a big challenge to my Bulgarian and my knowledge of the metric and European shoe size systems.

Last night, I had a long and angry conversation about the questions everybody always asks me. You can probably blame most of it on the guy who, last night, asked "Isn't it too cold to drive cars in Alaska?" It's not that I hate attention. It's just that I don't feel the constant need for it that would be required to enjoy getting all the same questions I get every day of my life.

I suppose I'll have to be creative in order to be funny and not rude, but maybe that'll be good for me.