Almost daily, even after almost 3 years in Bulgaria, I still come across different experiences and thoughts as we 'do life.'  A few random examples:

*  we have a water cooler at the school and about every 3 weeks I need to order new water bottles.  Big deal?  Shouldn't be.  But when you're talking Bulgarian over the phone, well, it's not the easiest thing to do.  The last time I ordered, I needed to tell the water company that we had a new address.  And the conversation went off without a hitch!!  I hung up patting myself on the back that I can actually do such a simple thing in Bulgarian.  I'm always happy when I have little language victories like this.

*  speaking of language (get the pun?  "Speaking" of language.  You 'speak' a language.  This is a story about speaking?  Too funny, at least to me.  Ya know, I'm the funniest guy I know!), a few weeks ago I was sitting at Dunkin' Donuts (yes,I still go there) with Pat and a friend having a nice conversation over a cup of coffee.  A Bulgarian walked up to us and said, "You are talking too loudly.  Please lower your voices."  Now, for the most part, I think Americans are too loud so we try to be very aware of our surroundings and I don't believe we were too loud.  Well, this Bulgarian gentleman thought otherwise.  Wanting to be good Dunkin' Donut customers, we turned the volume down a bit.

*  Jason had a small science project a few weeks ago.  He needed to make a battery out of vegetables -- it was pretty cool and pretty easy.  That is, it was easy if you had a Radio Shack close by.  In addition to the veggies, we needed a few nails, some copper wire, a few alligator clips, a volt mete, and a resistor.  Accept for the veggies and nails, one stop at Radio Shack would have completed our shopping.  Well, for us, it took 4 different hardware stores and the better part of an afternoon.  At least he got an A on his project!

I'm not complaining and I hope it doesn't sound like I'm mad, frustrated, or bitter.  Yeah, during our first year here, these things would have frustrated me.  But I've come to realize that this is life in Bulgaria.  I can either get upset or roll with it.  I choose to roll -- most of the time.

Darko

The boys and I take our lunch to school every day.  We used to each use our own lunch box but we kept forgetting them at school.  So now we just use large grocery bags and through all of our lunches into 1 bag.  Since we're always going to the store for groceries (it's IMPOSSIBLE) keep 3 boys fed!), we always have new bags so if we forget one at school, no big deal.

Sometimes, when we run out of trash bags, we need to use one of these grocery bags for some trash.   

Well, one day not too long ago, we made our lunch as always and headed out the door.  And, yes, we had a little bit of trash as well.  And, yes again, the grocery bags are the same (I'll bet you can guess where I'm going with this).

We empty our trash into big dumpsters along our street so, while driving by one of them on our way to school, I reach back, grab the "trash" bag, and in it goes.  We then happily drive off to school.

The morning goes off without a hitch until lunch time.  And when one of the boys looked into the "lunch" bag for some tasty morsel, all he found was banana peels, coffee grounds, used paper towels, and assorted other breakfast trash.

Needless to say, we all had the munchies and the moochies throughout the day.

Do skoro  (see you soon).

Darko