This is how we do...

SaturdayI got on an 8:30 a.m. bus to Omurtag, a city in the Balkan Mountains a two-hour bus ride directly north of Straldja. I was off to visit Tia, whom I had texted the day before to tell her I'd arrive around 10:50 -- information given to me by the lady I bought the tickets from.

I arrived at 10:15, much to my suprise, and decided to tell her I was early. I tried to call her. It said that "the subscriber could not be reached." I tried again and got the same message. I tried again and again until I figured something was wrong.

There was an internet club across the street, so I decided to go try and email her. But as it was Saturday morning, the club was closed and I was left to ponder my next move in the snow. I decided to text my friend Brian whom I was sure had Tia's real number.

He must have been asleep, cause he didn't reply until 11:15. Sure enough, I had a bum number. Which means she never got my message the day before...Hrm. So I called her and she came to get me.

We went back to her apartment, dropped off my stuff and then went over to her landlady's apartment to tell her Tia's boiler was broken, again. In true Bulgarian form, we were invited in, given a waffle candy bar and coffee, plus a jar of boiled turkey and a pair of knitted booties to keep our footsies warm that had been made by the family's baba (grandmother).

We stayed an hour and a half, then decided it was time to get lunch. We wandered from shop to shop gathering supplies for brownies, Christmas cookies and a spaghetti dinner.

When we returned to her apartment, the true staple of Peace Corps visiting began -- making something good to eat. I have had several inter-Peace Corps vists by now, and they all have involved lots of cooking and baking. I think this is because there is not much else to do, so we are all becoming Betty Crockers. Each volunteer has a speciality to pass on to guests or hosts, and we swap recipes like old women at Bingo halls.

Anyway, Tia and I had obtained some cookie cutters and sprinkles from an older volunteer in her town, so we found a vanilla cookie recipe online and went to it. We cooked enough for her landlady as a thank-you for the booties and her neighbor, who lent us a cooking pan. Once we were finished her landlady came by, took one puzzled look at the cookies, and asked us what they were. The sprinkles had thrown her off...What were they? She, apparently, had never seen a sprinkle before in her life. We chuckled because they must look inedible if you have never seen one, and she probably thought we were trying to poison her!

After that bit of amusement we watched a movie and fell asleep in her heated room. The next day we went to a cafe for some coffee and then I caught my bus home. I got here by 1 p.m. and FROZE in my apartment (a cold wind had set in, and I had not been home to run my heater through the night.) I turned it on to warm up the bricks even though I am not supposed to run it during the day...What could I do? My kitten was literally shivering! By the evening some heat was beginning to pump out, but it did not really warm up until today.

Hope all's well. And I hope my motivation to write comes back sometime soon...I am feeling a bit blocked or something.