spring is here!

hey guys. sorry its been a while since my last post, but i have found that while its fairly easy for me to write about sweet travel stories, it is rather difficult for me to update you on my day to day life when not much really goes on. the longer that i am here the less strange things seem to me and the less likely i am to write about them, even if they are about events that would seem rather odd to people that have not been to bulgaria before.
that being said, life here is still going good. i threw a rockin st patties day party right after my return from turkey, complete with an all you can eat mexican buffet (not very irish, i know, but if we are going to cook a huge feast, i would rather have tacos than Sheppard's pie, because mexican food is a rarity here). after the party, i was fairly busy at work helping my counterpart with a winter bat monitoring project he got funded. it was pretty cool, and consisted of going out to caves in the park and doing bat counts. none of the caves here are too big, but to get into many of them required a bit of subterranean climbing and squeezing through some tight spaces. good thing im still skinny.
since the caving project though, things here at work have slowed down a bit. i go bird monitoring everyday at this local marsh to collect data on the migration, which is fun, but doesnt occupy too much time. my park office is gearing up for a big spring festival in may though, and that should be interesting. starting next month though i think i will be getting busy again. with the nice weather coming tourism should increase to the area, so i will be helping with tour and research groups, in addition to park projects and such.
today also officially marks my first 6 months of service here in malko turnovo. the good news is that i have a feeling that the summer will pass by much faster than the winter did. its finally warm enough outside to go hiking again, and in a month or two all the beaches will open up and i can go hangout on the coast on the weekends.
on another note though, i have been getting much better at cooking things for myself with limited ingredients. i can make a bit of mexican food (i even got out some enchiladas once) and other interesting italian and american dishes. the tough part is that some of the key thing i need to make these dishes are rather hard to come by. like brown sugar. i have been trying to make chocolate chip cookies (ordinary easy thing to cook one would think) only to be thwarted by having no market in my town sell brown sugar. apparently chocolate chip cookies are not that popular here. my solution? sugar cookies with chocolate chips. hey, im doing the best i can here.
well, thats enough culinary rambling for now. take care and i will catch you all later. peace