Observations

June 4th
We went to Etura/Etara/Etar depending on where you read about it. It's a little historical type of museum village where people do stuff the way they did a long time ago.
With water power! There's this lathe that's powered by water flowing through a log placed vertically above some type of watermill which is connected to a spinny-type device. The artisan sits on a wooden guide with a sharp tool at the end and carves stuff (plates/bowls) out of wood.
We accidentally got in for free, too. We just kept looking for the ticket booth and realized we were inside.

We also went to a town called Gabrovo, not really to go see the town, but to get to Etura. We did walk around a bit though. There was a museum of humor and satire I wanted to go to that I saw on the news. Yay news!

The humor museum was...funny! harhar. I liked the third floor best, if you ever happen to go. There were a bunch of one frame cartoons and funny photographs. There was some sort of theme throughout the museum about eggs with faucets in them that I didn't understand, though.
The first floor was full of little funny sayings that people from Gabrovo apparently use or say about themselves. They're apparently thrifty and their town logo so to speak is a cat with scissors about to cut off its tail - in a stylistic way. It's on all the town maps and brochures. So there's this saying that if you cut off the tail of your cat, you'll be able to close the door faster thus saving heat and cool on winter and summer respectively, and that's where the image comes from.

Tanning salons are called Solar Studios. wouldn't that be a great name for a tanning salon?

We saw the lights at Tsaravets. At night sometimes there's a sound and light show up on this hill where kings used to live (isn't that amazing?) There were these giant lasers that seemed to go on forever in the sky and colored lights flash along the walls. It was pretty.

There's a vehicle I see a lot that I really like. It's the Mercedes A-series. It's kinda like a Smart fortwo, but accomodates four, maybe five small, people. So obviously it's longer than the fortwo.

I had a dream last night. John Redcorn was in it. I was talking about american indians and he came in the room and used that line from Waynes world that Alice Cooper says about Milwaukee. Then I dreamt there was a person who looked like me that lived in a basement in downtown austin, controling my body through a periscope-like device as it moves about the planet.
She drank coffee all day and was really cranky.

When i woke up i had a hard time convincing myself none of it happened.

There's this ad campaign for chevrolet around and the tag is "one big plus!"
Because the chevy symbol looks like a plus sign!
Pretty cute.

I tried to order a white russian at a cocktail bar. They didn't know what it was.
I was sad. :(
There's a sign outside some bar that says 20 shots = 6 lv. which is less than four bucks!! wooooow!

I just realized today that the calendars have sunday and saturday together on the right end, so this whole time I've had the days mixed up.

Since I'm a bit oblivious about a lot of stuff, I keep accidentally getting free things. I went to the post office to buy stamps and I was pretty sure I heard the cashier say 4lv. I gave her a five and she gave me one back. Then as I was putting stamps on everything later, I noticed there were ten .4lv stamps and ten 1lv stamps. So it was supposed to be 14lv but I only heard 4 and somehow the cashier didn't notice either. It was weird, but hey, I got free stamps. It costs about a dollar to mail something anywhere in the world.

I'm an oddity here with my habit of drinking milk. It seems when you say milk, people assume you mean yogurt, since yogurt is a bulgarian thing. So you have to say fresh milk if you mean liquid milk. There aren't any containers of milk larger than half a liter, which is good because I won't ever have the milk go bad, but its bad because I have to keep getting more milk! I used to think grocery shopping twice a week was a lot...

June 7th
Went out alone to window shop. Pretended to be german.
The good singer from music idol, Nevena, won! yay!
We went out with some people to a fancy expensive hotel restaurant, so I just got some beer, and then later went to a different cafe to have pizza and guess what was in the drink menu!!!
Byal Rusnak!
Translation: White Russian.
I was happy.
It cost about 3lv or about $1.75
so i drank it and felt fine until i tried to stand up.
then we went(stumbled) and bought a giant bottle of coffee liqueur for 4lv.

June 8th
Looked for guys shorts, which is practically impossible. They're all long! debated on whether or not to get some flashy fake versace pants (didn't)

Memory recall is weird. I sometimes search for a word and the only thing that comes to mind is german or spanish. It's hella annoying and all day i kept asking for "kurz pantalones"

Some interesting fashion is around here. halter overalls, suspenders, boots that are partially unzipped to show the contrasting lining, pointy toed stiletto denim boots with jeans tucked in so it looks like a one piece shoe-pants thing, shirts that are open in the back, lots and lots of applique all over the place.

Mullets seem quite popular. I've seen many on guys and girls.
Severe mullets. Deliberate mullets.

This one style of guy's haircut looks like the guy got his hair frosted and then got a mohawk, but doesn't spike it up. Another style is short with a rattail that's bleached. Mind you, these aren't super popular, but I've seen a good handful of people with them.

And there's a car (maybe multiple cars) that have novelty horns that play la cucarracha!

June 10 -
Massive summer storm. All day it was super hot, then there were dark clouds in the distance just like in the movies. The wind blew cold and big fat drops came out of the sky. It was surreal. The sky got all dark and it rained like I've rarely seen. Then it got really cold.
We set up an old bed in the grape vines at the village to tan on. There's a little shadey spot for milena to play.

June 11 -
George Bush was here for about twenty hours. Well not "here" but in Sofia. I was really worried he'd say something stupid but thankfully it was dubbed so I didn't have to go through the pain of listening to him speak.


Things I don't miss:
-Mexican soap operas....because they have them here! Isn't that great?
-Expensive cocktails/alcohol

Things I miss:
-Limes
-The song "coffee and TV" by blur
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Now it is July. Almost a week into July, too.

Sometimes I flip through channels and happen upon a movie. I watch it for a bit and then decide to wait for commercials to flip channels and to figure out what I'm watching. However, there aren't any commercials!
So I've seen the last half of many movies that I have no idea what they are. So I'll list them and see if you can figure it out.

Movie 1:
it's half in russia, half in chicago. The main character is a russian dude, about 5'1"
He goes to chicago looking for a russian prostitute, apparently to rescue. She has a shaved head and is called "snowflake"
He seems to stay in an abandoned building and builds a one-time use gun out of wood, a metal pipe, some nails, and gunpowder.

Movie 2:
A woman (famous actress who was in 80s calvin klein ads when she was 15 but i forgot her name) i think is a lawyer or prosecuter or something. The antagonist is a woman who kidnaps 80s calvin model's little girl and is pretty much psycho.

Movie 3:
A woman with a sing-song voice. Scenes of her talking about her life with a therapist as if it's a dream. Her name was Betsy. She is living with a married couple, the wife is a parapalegic and deaf. The man is deaf. But it turns out that neither of them are actually deaf but pretending, and neither of them know the other is pretending.
The husband whose name is Lloyd says he left his old wife and crippled children, taking all their money, 40,000USD, going to school, changing his name so they can't find him. The protagonist says "well we can just win back that money from a game show" so they go on this show called "your mother or your wife" and win 100,000 cash.
It's christmas. A man shows up at the door where he finds a bottle of champagne labeled "from santa"
The man turns out to be Betsy's husband, who she was completely shocked to see. There is confusion, he pours champagne. The parapalegic wife, betsys husband, an betsy all get a glass of champagne, the other man doesn't drink. Betsy clings glasses so hard, her glass breaks, but the others drink. Then they start feeling sick, the woman vomits blood, the man collapses in a seizure.

Betsy and Lloyd get scared and run off, then I have to go do something so I don't get to see the rest.

Movie 4:
A therapist who works at a mental hospital. He has a patient who claims to be the devil. The therapist is very full of himself and believes himself to be the smartest, best doctor there ever was, that he can cure anyone. You find out his daughter Briana killed herself when she was 7 by jumping off a high place. She was apparently schizo and he had tried to cure her without medication. The wife subsequently died. Both of them occasionally pop up in ghost form and the doctor talks to them. There is a movie crew filming the doctor as part of a documentary and they think it's great when the shrink starts acting like one of the patients.
There is a recurring conversation between the patient who thinks he's satan and the doctor about how the doctor does not believe in god.
At the end of the movie, the doctor apparently goes to hell where he continues to repeat "But I'm a good man! But i'm a good man!"
This movie seemed to have the following messages:
Meds are good
Believe in god

--------------------
And now for a real update.
I can't remember when, but we went to Sofia for a bit. I seriously thought we were going to be there a few days just to get some paperwork done and it ended up taking forever, hiking along the twisted trail of beauacracy. Now Mila is a bulgarian citizen! She can work and live anywhere in the EU. Excellent.

We met some Bulgarians that we knew from austin, and met some parents of a new brother in law.

Went to Mt. Vitosha (a real mountain!), where i got both feet stuck in the mud and kept sinking the more i tried to pull them out. I'm soooo graceful. Hid out at a ski lodge and watched the rain.
Oooo went in a ski lift for the first time in my life, that was fun.

So we were staying with Tomi's aunt uncle, and three kids for quite a while. It was actually pretty fun unless the other kids were crying or trying to pull mila's nose off :)

A lot of the girls here have animal backpacks, so I was looking for one and finally found one I liked (a tiger!)

In Sofia we went to a jewler and got my grandmothers engagement ring resized to fit on my pinky. If I had to only wear one diamond, I'd wear it on my pinky. It's pretty tacky in an awesome way. Not that the sentimental-ity (if that's a word) is lost. It turns out the diamond is worth quite a bit.

Every day we walk around for five hours or more. I got funny tan lines from my shoes.

-----------------
So now we're back in Turnovo with Tomi's grandparents. They have an apartment in the town and a house in a village ten minutes outside of the town. Today Tomi and his grandparents stayed at the village while Mila and I went around Turnovo. I had a hundred american dollars that I needed to exchange so I went looking for an exchange place.
Went into it and the woman spent several minutes checking the bill, holding it up to a light, etc. etc. and then said she didn't like it and didn't want to take it!
So I left, and went to the exchange across the street, where they barely looked before handing me my bulgarian cash.
So I go along walking, feeling loaded. There's a stand of shades, prada and ray ban and gucci and chanel for ten lv. so I decide to go picking around for the best fakes. Chanel...

Seems to be summer sale week or something. I got some excellent deals on clothes I had previously wanted. Don't you love that?

In two days we are going to Primorsko on the seaside. We got a whole apartment rented out which should be great.


And that is the well past due news.
today is the 7th of july.

Icecream from the little stands on the street and pizza are really good here. 
I also like the way the buildings are cool when you go inside even though the AC isn't on because they're made out of cement/brick/solid stuff.
And when it's hot outside, wind actually cools you down instead of feeling like there's a blowdryer in your face.

My grandpa asked if I was keeping a log of my trip and I decided not to give him this link.

Toma knows a dude who's a cop and he said there are some cops that can't pull over vehicles and they just patrol.

I do not miss:
texas summer heat
mosquitos
wooden apartment complexes 

The other day at a cafe they played "eye of the tiger" and at another cafe they played that song gob on arrested development plays for his magic shows.
It was pretty great.

I hate writing a few days after stuff happens because i can't recall in what order they occured. I started to keep it in a notebook, but decided to stop when I tried to check back for comments. Then I realized I write in lower case even though there's no shift key. So I really stopped. Postcards should be coming soon. We'll test out this international postal system of ours, yes?

May 31 we went to Tsaravets, which is an old old bajillion year old castle up on a hill. It was Thursday so all the museums were free. Is that some kind of global deal? It's like that in Austin, too. Mostly, anyway. It was packed. When you get to the top there's this chapel thingie painted on the walls top to bottom - restored of course. It's still pretty old. It reminded me of Frida Kalo's husbands painting. Isn't it great I can't remember his name?
I don't want to guess and sound like an idiot.

Then we went to another museum of old stuff. I mean really old stuff. Clay pots and flint knives kind of old stuff. Like older than 4000 years. And it was awesome. Did you know they had buttons back then? I mean, it seems so silly, but I found it really fastinating to see buttons from back in the day!
Then there were "more recent" items like solid gold seal rings from kings of olden days.
What I find so neat (and different from US) about the museums here is that when you go to the museum, you ring a bell on the door. They let you in and turn on the lights in the first room. When you're done, they shut the door and turn the lights on in the next room. I mean, this massive gigantic building full of old stuff and you're the only one in it!!! It was free even, and no one was there. But whatever.
It's not like it's "cool" to go to museums. After that I was just completely exhausted from all the looking.

It has rained almost every day for two weeks. That's pretty crazy. What the hell happened to "April" showers??? And may flowers? Helloooooooooo.
Whatever.

Two days ago I went to this village called Shemshevo where tomis' great grandma lived. We went fishing/wading in the river and I wore my only pair of shoes. I think i hate fishing. So the next day we wanted to go out of course, but my shoes were still wet. So I wore some house slippers and we went shoe shopping. I had only brought one pair because I figured i'd go shop as soon as I arrived in the country.
Anyway, so we went looking for hours and we finally found what I was looking for. Shoes made in bulgaria, good leather, good design, not trying to be anything else but themselves.
I was really starting to get worried. There are a few design houses here too, so I'll get all my clothes from them. What's really sweet about the shoes is that they're almost exactly like Bearfeet. Natural rubber sole, pigskin lining, natural dyed leather, organic design.

Oh! So you know what's really cool. Since I won a grant at Stitch last year, I get a free booth this year!!! I'm still going to apply for the runway portion - bitches better give it to me.

Silver jewelry is insanely cheap here. I got some earrings for 4lev and this wicked cool frog ring for 12lev. My hands are so teensy the ring doesn't fit, but i bought it anyway. I might get fat later, you know. The food here is pretty good. But I walk a lot so whatever.

I've decided that America is the land of overwhelming choice. I say that because you go to a store and there are miles and miles of the same product over and over again. Here there are like fifty gazillion types of soap, but only two types of cheese. Sirene (SEE-ren-ay) and kashkaval. Sirene is like feta in that it's white and crumbly and comes in a cube. You can actually buy it in austin from phonecia bakery or whole foods though you might as well go to phonecia because i think whole foods gets it from there. Kashkaval is similar to mozzerella in texture and properties, but it's a bit sharper. They use kashkaval on the pizza.
There also seems to be only one type of diaper - pampers. And the word for diaper is actually "pamper" Not officially, it's just like the way most americans seem to call facial tissue 'kleenex'

Both toma's grandparents and toma's uncle/aunt have the shittiest toaster I've ever seen. There aren't any controls and it only toasts one side at a time. Apparently they're from communist times. It takes up a massive amount of space and to turn it off you have to unplug it.
Both places have dial-up, which to me is like riding a donkey when ferarris are available for extra cheap. I'm using the 'puter at the apartment because it finally started working so maybe i'll update more often.

I like to watch american idol during the very beginning of the show because it's kinda funny. You might not have noticed, but sometimes when someone sings spectacularly shitty, Simon says "You couldn't even be the bulgarian idol"
First of all, simon's a dick, but besides that, there actually is a copy of american idol called "Music Idol" and they could totally kick america's ass. The top girl, anyway. Her name is Nevena.
What's funny is that they call it "mew-zeek eye-doll" instead of the bulgarian translation.

June 1st
Went to this place called Praktiker, which is a german chain like lowes. It was really weird and shitty, like i expected it to be. On the outside it looked like an Ikea.

Have you ever thought how a blind person might drive? Everyone drives like that. Whatever the hell lane, whatever the hell speek, and the cops just poke along looking smug with their lights flashing, not doing much. Seriously, they just cruise down the streets with lights flashing, people flying by, and nothing happens ever! There was even a wreck in an intersection and a cop drove by and just honked at them.
whaaat?

I miss dr. pepper, fast internet, and music that's not chalga rap trashy pop or buzzy techno. And the level of comfort is a bit lower but thats just 'cause i'm at someone elses house and dont really know how to work the appliances. Sometimes they turn the hot water off? Oh yea plus we don't speak the same language.

shit.

man we took the stankiest bus ride today. we went to a village called Shemshevo where tomi's great grandparents lived. Now his grandparents take care of it and garden the place. Lots of veggies and fruit right in yo face!
It rained a-gain!!!

The other night we were walking with milena and this pack of german tourists( who were a little drunk) stopped to gawk at milena. She was asleepand one of the men started babbling first in german and then in russian and then said "english? english boy or girl?" and then poked her and said "Ghets ups lacey bones!" it was pretty much the funniest thing that happened all that day. Of course it was 11pm and she was asleep.

Oh so the only razors here are Gillette. and they're all the disposable kind. There's only like five kinds of cereal and they're all nestle. I didn't even know they made cereal, just nesquick.

I'm basically addicted to this dry meat called pasterma or something like that. I'll smuggle some back.

So an interesting thing I noticed, at least in sofia and turnovo....people like name brands a lot. Diesel, Pepe, Armani, D&G, Versace.
Like in sofia, we were getting icecream and this dude was wearing armani jeans and a versace shirt and I thought "god damn, I wonder how long he had to work to afford that outfit"

That was probably the 2nd day I got here. Then I started to notice practically everyone wearing armani jeans...
Haha. Then I saw some john galliano clothes with john spelled "JHON"
And I passed by a window with a store front full of chloe, anna sui, and coach knock-offs. The coach one was the funniest.

You know the patch sewn inside that says "this coach product was made in blah blah out of blah blah finest quality blah blah blah?"
Well this purse had it sewn on the outside and had the words basically scrambled up.

Practically every store in turnovo carries designer fakes. I was pretty astonished, frankly. If you don't know the difference, everyone looks well off.

Yea so i need to take a picture of the store fronts full of denim and the one purse with the funny embossed label.  

...and pants...
or even a dress. man i need some new clothes bad. I kinda ran out and I don't know how to work the washing machine. I'm also not sure how the hot water thing works. Like sometimes the hot water is off??? and i have no idea what to do.

Oh yea we went fishing. Wading in this river out by the village....there were cows in the water with us. I was a bit scared of them. Heh. We caught maybe six tiny-ass fish and I got pissed and hot. Then my only shoes were wet and yicky so I came out to this internet club with flimsy-ass houseshoes.

I'm kinda in a bitchy mood. I think that's because it's late and I want some icecream.

Oh yea I remembered something else.
In turnovo, there's this school. and underneath the school? A cake factory! Holy crap! That's right! They make cakes udnder the school! 
Little-debbie style cakes. And guess what they do with the broken/slightly deformed/crushed cakes!?
They sell them really super cheap!
And I stuffed my face with cake.
Then toma's grandma bought a kilo of chocolate wafers from another cake factory surplus/broken cookie place.
It was awesome.

There are "aptekas" on nearly every block. Mini-markets on every other block, and cigarette stands like every ten feet.
it was really weird on saturday night when we went out and little tiny middle school kids were smoking and highschool kids were at the park with liters of beer.

What I really like a lot is that when you walk down the street in turnovo, there are no mcdonalds's, starbucks, walmarts, wendy's, or any other chains like that.
The only kinda crap american thing that evenly penetrated seems to be coke. Yep. Lots and lots of coke everywhere.

Holy crap pizza is dirt cheap. It's like four american dollars for a humongo pizza. Not only is the pizza cheap, it's weird as hell.
We got this one pizza called "Rafaelo" and it had...olives,ok that's normal....pickles....whatwhat?...and corn!!!! I thought it was hilarious. It was good though. And cheap!!!
and they serve the pizza with three gigantic bottles. Ketchup, Mustard, and Mayo. But the ketchup and mustard taste really ick. I don't like mayo anyway and certainly wouldn't put it on pizza so i didn't bother to try it. My mom realy wanted me to take pictures of the food (???)
She's weird like that. I haven't. It's not pretty or anything. It just tastes good. Most of it. Some of it freaks me out. like the whole cow hearts at the meat market.

I miss ice.

The end.

OK So now i'm in veliko tarnovo and it's pretty neat. It's been raining since we got here and the internet at tomi's grandma's place stopped working so i've been without for afew days.
Um where was i? In a cafe with areally shitty keyboard. But that's OK. it's sunny today!
I need some pants really bad :(
OK you know how people say that all the little things are different abroad? Well it's true. Like diet coke is called coka cola light. I forget that not everything is called "coke"
and the mushrooms are really white and fresh. there's lots of stuff that's different. The toilets are different. Toma's looking over my head. 
What else. 
When I was in Sofia at tomi's uncles place last week, I was typing up ahuge gigantic list. Then his cousin who's five walked in and started babbling about something and banging on the keyboard, hit escape, which deleted my whole list and ihad nothing to do but say "Ahhh! Zashto pravish taka" which is pretty much the only thing I know. ithink it means why did you do that.
not so sure.
so the kids don't understand that idon't speak their language which is pretty funny. 
Now I'm staying with the grandparents who don't speak english.
Oh! Earlier today we ran into this guy who flew from frankfurt to sofia with us! it was pretty crazy. in a store looking for pants!
it was crazy, i tell you what!
What else.
Oh yea the other day in tarnovo there was this giant helicopter looking thingy that dropped packs of leaflets all over the place that said "support bulgarian agriculture" though of course in bulgarian. 
I picked up acouple. 
  what's up with this spacebar only working part of the time?
oh well.
Hrm. I feel like i have to type really fast!
I'm really interested in going to the sea.
I haven't gotten around to figuring out how to mail stuff.
Let's see if I can list some other stuff that's different.
Oh right, I can buy beer and drink it on the street. Beer is cheaper than water and coke!
Lettuce is really great.
I tried boza but didn't like it too much.
Oh I saw sushi rice and nori at this ABC super market underground and it was super expensive of course. Milena likes the cobble-y streets. yep. in US, we had the only stroller like ours but have already seen many almost exactly the same.

I still have not bought pants or washed the ones I have.
There are many many many tiny shops that are so small I'm not sure how they manage to stay in business. I suppose rent is really cheap. And the property taxes are like fifty bucks for the whole year. 
I wish I could write more and in a more organized fashion but I need more time. 
Until later!

Plane Ride
We didn't sleep for two days, went to the airport at 5am, flew to chicago at 6am, where we stayed for five/six hours, napping on aiport seats, etc. I didn't nap. The plane from chicago to frankfurt was 11 seats wide with two corridors. Huge. the weather was so bad and we were smack in the middle, so I didn't get to look out, which is just as well because I think seeing nothing but ocean would have scared the pants off me. Milena was a super baby. she slept.
the whole way.
not a peep!!!
it was a 7.5 hour flight. There was this cool thing on the airplane TV where you could see the flight path and hear the plane communicate with air control. Everything was translated into german, as well. When we got to germany, the airport basically looked like crap. It was pretty weird. I was hella thirsty but there weren't any water fountains! In chicago there was a fountain every ten feet practically.
We went to Mcdonalds of all places, because it was five AM in frankfurt and nothing else was open except duty free liquor stores.

So you know how the stupid icecream machines are perpetually broken in US Mcdonalds? Well it's the same everywhere. No ice cream in frankfurt. 

There was a hermes store in the airport. There were smoking booths in the airport. I was so thirsty, we went around asking for "wasser" but the only answer was "nein" there were also no places to sit.
terminals were only for passengers flying so it was hella frustrating to see all these empty seats and no where to put my bum.

Finally we decided to get some beer. the beer cost 3 euro. it was warm! the sales person said he just put it in the fridge. So we went to a hagen daazs stand where they had cold beer but it cost more!
Blah.

flying to sofia was pretty fun because all the flight attendants were german. It was pretty cool to understand some of what they were saying, though. like "was moechten Sie gern?" which means what would you like.
apfelsaft oder kaffe?

OK so finally we land in sofia. the airport is pretty small and again no places to sit. we got our bags but guess what!! our stroller was left in frankfurt.

So that sucked. We were told we could pick it up later that day when the next flight from frankfurt came in.

Tomi's uncle picked us up and while we were outside, I noticed a few dogs that looked pretty much like the ugliest dogs you could imagine. There are lots of stray dogs in sofia, apparently. I also saw a gang of cats.
So we drive all over the place to get to Tomi's uncle's apartment.

I am losing track of details fast. Ummmmm let's see. there are big windows here.
The elevator has no internal door. you can touch the wall as the elevator goes up and it won't stop or anything.
the milk tastes different.
the cups are hella small! dude they're like 6oz. speaking of ounces, everything is in the metric system.
Of course, I already knew that, but still.

OK I know you're all interested in fashion. Well I'll say this. I really wish I packed more clothes.
Fashion between the sexes differs quite a lot though.
The men look pretty stylish. I suppose stereotypical euro-fashion.

I have never seen so much head to toe denim in my life. Maybe at a rodeo...
But seriously. Isn't there a thing against wearing head to toe denim?
And also, bermuda shorts and boots.
Tons of leather jackets.

Actually to be honest it all quite reminds me of 80s Madonna, including style of makeup. 
I suppose 80s madonna plus christina aguilara

some girls wear black eyeliner and that's it.

OH there's this one store that's like a mall, but it's like a grocery store mall.
there's a shop for sweets, a shop for fish, a shop for bread, a shop for knives, for plates, for watches, etc. 

OK the internet is hella slow and yea i'll write tons more later.

Pictures!

I just started learning about Eurovision, which is over now, but I just find it interesting that it's been around over fifty years and I've never heard anything about it. It would be like if every state submit a song for a national competition.

So I was reading reading reading, and watched several of the top songs. I can most definitely surely say the Bulgarian song "Voda" was the best even though it placed fifth.
The number one Serbian song wasn't bad. I mean, the girl had a really awesome voice, but oh my god the others were terrible. Terrible! What the heck was with the Russian song? I think the title was Song #1.
OMG and the Ukrainian song. What what what?!

Oh well. I can see how this competition would spark far more controversy than America's peddly little American Idol. We win every time no matter what. Like the World Series :)

Tomi's fixing a computer for his grandma. It's all in cyrillic. Cute.

I like the song but the video is a little eh what's the word. Not very exciting?

I have all my stuff scattered around waiting to be packed. We're trying to eat everything in the fridge while planning to have a party two days before we leave.
Got my phone unlock codes, passports, apostilles (certificates of authentication for Mili's birth certificate from the secretary of state so we can try and get her citizenship), and a whole bunch of completely random presents including a waterpik (???) I didn't buy that one it.

So I'm planning on packing myself two pairs of jeans and five shirts so I can hit up some shops in Sofia the first few days. Any suggestions on where to go?
I've been holding off on shopping for many months now and I feel all itchy.

Luci calls Mimi "Mili" which I think I like better than Mimi. Mostly because i think of that ghastly make-uped woman on The Drew Carey Show when I hear the name Mimi.
So Mili she will be.

I have to remember my mini dictionary.

Only FOUR days now. Provided that stupid plane leaves on time.