Paris

Well, we are back from our first real excursion from Bulgaria.  Paris was amazing!!  We had such a nice time!  We enjoyed "civilization" for a couple days and were able to see some sights and most importantly, eat some GOOD food!!  We also enjoyed seeing some real diversity which we don't get to see too much in these parts. It was hard to come back. 

We booked our flight on a cheap airline and had to fly into an airport about an hour outside of Paris.  We then hopped onto a bus to make our way into the city.  But, before we left Bulgaria our flight was delayed for about an hour. It felt like an eternity.  The terminal was freeeezing cold and something out of the 1960's.  There was NOTHING there and time ticked by.  We were finally boarded onto a shuttle bus that took us to our plane.  Boarding was mass chaos.  What we didn't realize is that there are no assigned seats on these flights and you board both from the front and back of the plane.  People were literally running up the stairs to the airplane to get the "best" seats.  People who boarded from the front of the plane made their way to the back and vice versa.  As I said, chaos.  We made our way to the middle of the plane where there were plenty of empty rows of seats.    We learned both on our way there and on the way back that the entire plane erupts into applause when landing.  Not sure why, but it sure makes me wonder....We didn't check any bags and on the way back, in France, they made me put my carry on suitcase into the little bin to be sure it fit.  I have NEVER EVER had to do this before? Have you?  What bag actually fits into that little bin?  Anyway, there were very serious about all of these rules and Matt had to wear a blazer and 2 coats through security so that we would only have one carry on each (that fit into the little bucket.)  If you have a purse, that's considered your one carry on.  Crazy. 

Anyway, so once we actually got to Paris everything was amazing.  This is the view from our hotel room:

We saw most of the top sites and visited the Louvre in record breaking time.  We were in and out in about an hour.  Ha.  Apparently we aren't cultured enough to truly appreciate art.  We saw everything we wanted to see, and didn't rush but it just did not take us long to see things.  At the Mona Lisa, we even walked around the room to see if her eyes were following us.  I'm sure people thought we were crazy! 

 

 We went to see Notre Dame but we didn't make it up to the top for the city views and a closer look at the gargoyles.  We were both bummed about this but the line was too long and we were hungry.  The cathedral has gargoyles jolting out from all of the church...I thought this was really cool.  Of course, I dot zero pictures!!

 We visited the Eiffel Tower and even went in/on it.  For some reason the very top was closed (which was totally fine with me!)  Except, I so badly wanted a glass of champagne and a photo from the top.  We weren't able to find champagne on the second level.  Such a bummer!!

We had amazing food as well.  We went totally french our first day and started our morning with Cafe Au Laits and Crossaints, we had baquettes for lunch, a fresh eclair in the afternoon and a real french meal for dinner.  My dinner included chilled herring.  Very interesting.  By the next day we went totally American.  We went to Hard Rock Cafe and we were like kids in a candy store!!  I must say that I used to think it was silly for people to go on vacation and eat at a place like Hard Rock, but when you live in Bulgaria and don't have access to such delicious food it's totally on!  We enjoyed every bit of our entirely over priced real fountain sodas, Coors Lights, nachos, sandwiches, etc.  Then that evening, we had Thai food!  It was all so yummy!!

Some of the highlights/interesting parts of our trip were:

• Seeing a high speed chase between a guy on a little scooter and the cops
• Seeing two young men run after another younger men (I'm thinking because he tried to steal something?)
• Seeing a true lovers quarrel outside of our restaurant on the first night that lasted for probably close to an hour

 Funny Story...while we were there I was obsessed with going to Hermes just to see the beautiful scarves in person.  I secretly thought it would be a great little souvenier to bring home with me-right? On our last day I went into the store to look, the sales clerk was surprisingly nice and pulled out at least 20 scarves for me to see.  Matt was waiting outside with our luggage.  I tried on scarves, held them, looked at them, I was in love!  I then told the gentelman helping me that I need to go get my husband to get his opinion.  I went outside to get Matt and he thought that I would have purchased one, but I just didn't have it in me.  They are certainly pricey.  But I didn't know what to do, how to go back in to tell the man that I appreciated his help but that today just wasn't that day that I was going to purchase one of his beautiful and exquiste scarves just before I hopped onto my tour bus to make it to the airport for my budget airline flight.  So, what is the reasonable thing to do?  Just walk away and never go back.  I felt like such a poser and talked about it for the rest of the afternoon.  That lovely man at the beautiful store is probably thinking "cheap American who wasted my time!!"  Maybe one day I'll have one of the beautiful scarves, and when/if I do, I shall wear it always!!  I still feel stupid about just leaving....

Oh well, now it's back to reality and time to get back into the swing of things.  Although, I'm secretly wasting my afternoon away daydreaming of our next European weekend away!!

Busy Busy Times

As we round the corner to February, 2011 has proven to be a busy busy year so far!  All of our Christmas gifts finally arrived last week so we are finally caught up on the mailing back log from December!  It seems we haven't had much time to relax and life has been full, which is wonderful.

I have been busy doing some part time work for a company in washington.  I think that may be coming to an end, but my fingers are crossed that I'll be able to do some more work for them.  It's such a great set up for both parties, I think.  Plus, it feels nice to contribute some money to the family pot :) 

I have also FINALLY started Bulgarian language classes.  It's an 8 week course that meets 3 times a week for 2 hours at a time.  There are 5 of us in the class and I am actually really enjoying the class, the teacher and the students.  It's a great way to meet some folks that I may not have known too well before.  The bad part is, since it's a course at the embassy a lot of the things that we practice have to do with world affairs, geography, etc.  I have had some pretty amazing moments in class for example, we were sounding out words (in Bulgarian of course) and then we had to say what country or continent they were on.  My word was Tokoyo...after I sounded out the word I  confidently say "oh, it's in China!!"  The whole room just looked at my blankly.  I was relaying this story to a friend of mine and her 9 year old said "no Mandy, Tokoyo is in Japan and Bejing is in China!"  Thanks for that...sounds like a need a little refresh in geography and need to start reading the news more often as well. ha.

I've also been busy knitting away.  One of the women in our knit group had a fabulous idea to knit Chemo Caps for the kids at the hospital.  She has been in touch with the doctros and psychiatrist for the child cancer patients and they are SO very happy that we are doing this.  The kids have no hats at all right now so they are very excited.  There are about 25 kids who are either in the hospital or receiving cancer treatments at the hospital and our goal is to make one for each of them in time for Valentine's Day. Of course I'm like the worst knitter ever and our knitting "teacher" has to constantly do surgery on my hat.  I THINK I am finally finished with my first hat...most of the people in the group are on their 3rd hat.  sweet. 

I've continued to do fundraising for the children of a local soup kitchen as well.  Fundraising sure can be exhausting!!  A couple weeks ago we had a "Chili cook-off lunch" to raise money for the kids and this past friday we had a bake sale too.  Would you know that at the bake sale (which was MUCH MUCH easier than organizing the chili cook off) we made 1.5 times what we made at chili lunch.  I'm new to this whole bake sale thing, but evidently that's where the fundraising money is at!!  The best part is, we now have all the money we need to provide food to about 20 kids that frequent this soup kitchen for the months of February and March.  We'll start our grocery shopping this week and I am so so happy that we are going to be able to help in providing these less than fortunate kids with some warm meals this winter. 

We've been a little cultural the past couple weekends and we took a trip to Plovdiv which is a nearby city with Roman ruins.  It's a great town (some might even say, much nicer than Sofia) and we enjoyed our over night stay there.  Yesterday we headed in the opposite direction to another near by town for a Mummers/Kukeri Festival and we found that a bit interesting.  There is currently a flu epidemic in Sofia...like, so bad that the bulgarian schools have closed for a week and a half because so many people are sick.  I am hyper sensitive to this because we have a BIG trip planned for next weekend and I would be devestated if I was too sick to go.  The group of people at this festival just kinda freaked me out since I'm apparently a germ-o-phobe lately. But it was still cool to see. 

Ok, onto some photos...

First some photos of the kids from the local soup kitchen.  These precious children are really in dire staits.  Most of them come from single, unemployed, disabled mothers.  By the looks of things we aren't even sure if they have running water in their homes. 

Some photos from our trip to Plovidiv.  There are some ancient roman ruins as well as some really neat Revival Period architecture.  Definitely NOT your typical Bulgaria :)

The cute hotel cat, basking in the sun.  Oddly enough we did not see many stray dogs at all and instead saw a bunch of stray kittys.

Our cute little hotel

Pretty sure these are ancient roman columns, with spray paint all over them...

Since it looks like we will be in this region for several more years, we have decided that it may be an OK idea to buy a car for me (I have been practicing my stick shift skills lately too!)  and this is the kind of car Matt wants me to get SO badly.  It's a russian SUV type thingy and this one happend to be for sale.  ha! Can you imagine?  I cannot!!

This little old lady convinced us to buy a painting from her..one that we weren't even that interested in.  But we both have a hard time saying no and I got suckered in.  She hugged and kissed us after we bought it.  Of course we walked about 100 feet in the opposite direction and found better paintings that were cheaper....

She gave us friendship bracelets too.  Matt's was literally an old shoe string and mine was so tight that it was cutting off my circulation.  Matt had to saw it off with his keys. 

And lastly, the Kukeri in Pernik yesterday.  This is a traditional Bulgarian festival held each year to ward off evil spirits as well as to provide a good harvest, health, and happiness to the village during the year.  The costumes are quite crazy and most of them have really loud bells wrapped around their waste.  It was freeeezing!  I think it was about 25 degrees!!  My toes hurt they were so cold by the end!

You can seriously but undies EVERYWHERE in Bulgaria...at festivals, farmers markets, bazaars, anywhere...

And don't forget your 1982 ski suit!!  I hear that you see a lot of this at ski resorts here as well.  Love it!

As always, sorry for the mega post.  Next weekend we are headed here:

I am so beyond excited and I just hope that the weather holds up and we don't come down with any illnesses until we are able to go and get back.  Expect LOTS and LOTS of pictures to come!!