Winter Break

Malko Turnovo has finally gotten its first big snow! It came down non-stop for over 36 hours and now there is a good foot of snow covering everything in sight. It is very pretty, and this morning I went for a walk around the town to see it all: The trees filled with leaves of snow, the villagers shoveling the sidewalks and freeing their cars, the soft silence of snow covered fields punctuated by an occasion bird chirp, and the cold crisp smell of winter air interspersed with the smell of smoke from the dumpster fire outside my apartment. actually, that last one is not so much a smell of winter, but a normal smell that happens every so often when the dumpster fills up before trash pick-up day and needs to be cleared out.

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Overall though its very nice out here. I have plenty of firewood and have been keeping my fireplace going to keep my apartment nice and warm. Today is the first day back at work since New Years, and the office still has the lethargic feeling left over from the holidays. This morning started off with good German chocolates and Scottish whiskey, the perfect thing to uh, well, not motivate one to work hard but relax and stay warm I guess. Integrating back into the American work environment might take a bit of adjusting after two years of this.

I had a great time over the holidays though. On Dec 23rd I took an overnight sleeper train across the country to my host families house back in Simitli. Those sleeper trains are awesome. You get a regular bunk bed to sleep the whole way in, and before you know it you are at your destination! Not bad. Anyway, spent Christmas Eve with the host family and had the big traditional dinner like last year. It was fun and really nice to see the family again. On Christmas morning I made my way out to the town of Razlog, nestled up in the mountains to spend the big day with some friends of mine. It snowed most of the day and I got my first white Christmas in a while.

The day after Christmas I headed up in the mountains to a local ski area that I been to the previous winter, but this time I had reservations at the mountain lodge above the ski runs. I met up with a bunch of other friends and for the next four days we all hung out and went snowboarding all day, then hung out in the lodge all night. I was really happy to get out snowboarding again and for the first two days we had constant snow and fresh powder that made the runs real nice. The last two days it warmed up and the slopes became pretty rocky, but it wasn't too bad. Unlike America, Bulgaria so far has been pretty dry and the mountains here don't have near as much snow as they did last year. Because of this the ski runs didn't have a nice deep snow base so once the powder melted off rocks were all over the place just barley under the surface, and a couple of times i was gliding down the mountain and caught an edge on a submerged rock.

After the mountain adventure we all took a train out to plovdiv for a repeat of last years New Years party in the center of town. The weather ended up being pretty cold (somewhere around 20 degrees Fahrenheit I would guess) but that didn't stop us from going out to see the concert and fireworks in the center of town at midnight. We stayed out there for about 2 hours, dancing and celebrating the New Year Bulgarian style. It was good fun, and we had a decent size group so up for it. New Years day we left town and went to Stara Zagora where a few of us relaxed at a friends apartment and hung out. Getting food that day was a bit of a hassle though, practically everything in Bulgaria is closed on New years day, including the supermarkets, and it took a lot of searching before we found a place that we could buy stuff to make dinner. I imagine if I had been in a smaller town like Malko Turnovo and didn't already have something in the pantry, I would have starved to death. Ok, probably not, but you get my point.

Now I have to stay put here in MT for the next couple weeks and try to save up money again. I did the holidays pretty cheap (a day of snowboarding cost me less than 30 dollars, including lift ticket, board rental, and lodging on the slopes!) but a week of travel still adds up and I need to start preparing for activities once winter is over. I figure if I lay low for January and February, once March comes I should be able to get back out of town at least for a weekend trip or something. In the meantime, I need to find ways to keep myself occupied here because this town gets super boring. Hopefully I have enough books and movies to last me through the winter....