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Well I am back in the States after my two years of service. It's strange being back. There's allot to get used to. So far I think I have adjusted pretty well but allot of the small things that are different here are throwing me off. For instance yesterday I couldn't remember how to place a long distance phone call, did I have to just dial the number? put a 1 in front of it? I haven't spoken Bulgarian at all which I am surprised about but every time I talk to someone I don't know or order food in a restaurant I want to speak Bulgarian. But so far I am definitely enjoying being back.

Here is a picture taken of one of my classes on our last day.

Felt like posting some more pictures from my town and school. I have taken allot of pictures and could never post them all, but I'll probably put some more up at some point.

Well my time in the PC has just about come to an end. Right now I am busy getting rid of the grand pile of paperwork and other stuff which I never paid attention to, packing, and getting ready to go back to the States. Hard to believe that the time has gone by so fast. I have experienced many good things, many bad things, but regardless they are all interesting and have helped me to grow. I would not trade any of those experiences for anything in the world. If you want to know more, you'll have to ask. ;-)

Last week I was sick all week, I'm still coughing up stuff actually. One day I came home from teaching and was positively exhausted. I didn't have to teach the next day so I decided to take a nap. It was about 11 am when I laid down and about 3 pm when I woke up. After that nap I was wondering if it was still a nap or that really sleep. What separates the two?

Anyway this past moth has gone by incredibly fast. I had my close of service conference (COS) and after that I went to Vienna and Budapest where I met my sister. The conference was probably the last time that I will see allot of the people I have come to know over the past two years. It was strange thinking about that. One of the things I have thought about recently is that when I go back to the states I will be with a bunch of people who won't have had similar experiences that I have had over the past two years. In some ways that will be a welcome change and in others it will be a loss of a unifying experience that I have really come to enjoy.

Vienna and Budapest were both beautiful cities. It was great to see my sister again. We had a great time, although I think I annoyed her with my lack of preparation and laid back attitude. Thankfully however she was a great sport about it and is used to putting up with me.

Well I have entered an interesting time in my service. I only have a few months left and have started doing things for the last time. Last weekend I went to Blagovgrad with my friend Brian and went shopping for books in English. It was probably the last time that I will go to the city in my time here. It's weird thinking about this stuff because I can clearly remember when I went there for the first time. Hard to believe because the time has gone by so fast.

Don't really have much to say. I took these pictures this weekend.

Yesterday I went to Bansko and my favorite restaurant in Bulgaria, the English bar the Lion's pub. It was great to have a real hamburger, fries and onion rings; I always eat way to much when I go there. On the way back to Gotse Delchev the bus was showing a movie, always an unexpected treat. The movie: Weekend at Burnie's. I really hope the next time I ride in a bus Weekend at Burnie's 2 is showing.

One of the things that happens when it rains for me is that the internet cuts out, it did this weekend. And when it does come back it is very slow, so slow it is maddening. I'm not sure why this happens but it might have something to do with the hamster that powers the internet drowning in its Cisco wheel or something. I can't believe that I'm in the Peace Corps and I have to put up with a slow internet connection. This is not what I signed up for! I mean do PCVs in Africa have to put up with this? I think not! Now if you'll excuse me I am going to go watch football on my cable tv, microwave some popcorn, and then get into my rocket car. ZOOM!!! (I might need to get out more I think)

Well last weekend the weather was very nice, this weekend it rained. I thought it was supposed to snow in January? Oh well.

The past two days have been positively beautiful here. They have been more like two days in mid March then January. In order to take advantage of these days I went on two short hikes. It was very nice to spend so much time outside in the sun and get some exercise.

My students are giving presentations on their favorite song/music. Today among their choices were Bon Jovi, Britney Spears, Right Said Fred, Ricky Martin, and David Hasselhoff. These weren't jokes they were playing, they really like these people. I couldn't laugh out loud at them obviously and now I think I have a hernia from keeping the laughing to myself.

This New Years I was in the town of Razlog. On New years day they have a parade and celebration called Kookery. In this parade people dress up in hairy costumes with bells and dance around, I believe the origin of this is that the costumes and bells would scare away the evil and winter spirits and bring the arrival spring. In addition to the dancers, neighborhoods within the town create a float that they bring to the center of town. It was allot of fun to see all of the people dancing and also the interesting floats they made. All except for one.

One float contained the most disturbing thing I have seen since I have been here. The title of this float was something along the lines of "Killing pigs the EU way" (Bulgaria entered the EU on January 1st). On this float there were men in butchers aprons, several tables and a stove. As the float moved into the center of town I saw that there was also a live pig on the float. When the float arrived in the center of town the men placed the pig on the table and slit its throat. They did this in front of everyone. Many people crowded around the float to watch the pig thrash about as it died and take pictures. While the pig was moving some men on the float held it down while others waved their bloody knives in the air and danced around.

I have been living in this country for eighteen months now and I would have thought by this point that I would be more or less used to seeing just about everything that goes on in this country. Seeing something like this and being shocked by it makes me feel good however, because I know that this place hasn't changed me for the worse and turned me into someone I don't want to be.

One of the cool things about my town is that there is a movie theater in the center. Not many towns have movie theaters in Bulgaria and certainly not many towns that only have twenty five thousand people.

Over the past nine months or so I met the owner of the theater and talked to him quite a bit. He remembers me because I am the American in town and also because many times I am the only person who shows up to watch the movies. The owner is a cool guy who also owns the cinema cafe right below the movie theater. He operates the theater at a loss because he loves movies, a very expensive hobby. Several weeks ago I was talking to him about movies which had come out recently and the new James Bond film Casino Royale came up. I told him that I was a huge Bond fan and he told me he was too and that he was going to get the movie about a month after it came out in Sofia.

Well last week I went to see V is for Ventetta (a very predictable and cliched film) and he told me that next week he would be getting Bond, I could barely contain my excitement. Well this Friday Bond came and I went to see it both Friday and Saturday (today). There are lots of other blogs and web sites which talk about movies and almost all of them have better writers then me so I won't go into an in depth review. I will say this however: Casino Royale is the best Bond film I have ever seen and Daniel Craig was perfect as Bond. Everyone should go see this film.

As in many countries people celebrate the new year here in Bulgaria with fireworks. For the past several weeks children have been setting off fireworks during the day all over town. Now what I mean by a firework is a small explosion. Well sometimes it's not that small. Children set these explosions off by cars, doors, plants, people, and animals. Most of the time the bang is far away and just startles you a bit, but sometimes they are quite close. One time I was using the atm when a firework went off very close, I didn't see exactly where, and but my ear was ringing for several minutes. It is a miracle that more children don't get their hands and fingers blown off by these things. These kids are managing to cheat Darwinism, for now at least.The truly amazing thing is that there were lots of people around and no one did anything, they just kept wandering around doing whatever it was that they were doing. I couldn't help but think that if this happened back in the States people would have gotten pissed off and hunted down the children and called the police. But here people don't seem to care. I've often wondered what you would have to do to get people to react and do something.

Well I don't really have much to write about right now. This is the last week of school before our Christmas break and I can't wait for the time off. Everyone is really tired and needs a break. But one thing I think that is interesting about Bulgarians is how they absolutely hate drafts. Any type of air circulation actually. They believe that drafts cause you to become sick and that baba Marta will come and burn you (at least I think that's it, I have a hard time paying attention to stuff like that, no matter what the reason is Bulgarians hate fresh air, hence all of the smoking, pollution, etc.). The interesting think though is that many people leave doors open all the time when they come into and out of a building. It does not matter what temperature the weather is outside, they leave the door open. One thing I do when I am at a cafe or restaurant is try to get a seat facing the door. I do this for several reasons: 1) In case any assassins enter who want to kill me they won't have the element of surprise (laugh if you want but Wild Bill didn't do that once and look what happened to him), 2) I watch people come into and leave the place and leave the door open. Followed by someone getting up and closing the door. I know what you are thinking: wow your life is insanely boring. Well I'd love to argue with you but you are right and someone with shifty eyes just came into this cafe and I have to keep my eyes on him.

Well this weekend I celebrated my second Thanksgiving in Bulgaria, I had a great time. I spent it with both old and new friends at the same place I did last year, Maegen's. Once again the food was fantastic. At the end of the day my pants were to tight and I didn't want to move. Everyone had a great time eating, laughing, and talking.One thing that I noticed, for me however, was a somewhat sad feeling. This was the last Thanksgiving that I will ever spend here in Bulgaria with these friends and it was a bit depressing. It made me realise how fast time has gone by and how little time is left.

Just wanted to put up some pictures of my 11B class. They acted out the Friends episode, The one with all the rugby.

The past two weeks in my 11 and 12th grade classes we have been reading and analyzing Shakespeare. As you can imagine this can be an incredibly boring subject for a bunch of high school kids, I can't even imagine how confusing Shakespeare is to a non native speaker of English, I can barely understand it and I know Emglish real goob.

Anyway we have been acting out Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet and one of my classes asked if the could act out something that they chose. I asked what they would act out and they said Winnie the Pooh. Great idea I thought. So today my 11а acted out part of a Winnie the Pooh show, Pooh's birthday. It was allot of fun for me and the students had a blast too. My 11в class chose to do a Friends episode (The one with all the rugby), fun was had by all.

Ok well my blogging stinks. There's really not much going on right now so I don't have much to blog about. This isn't a bad thing though because time is going by pretty quick which is good, but it's also bad, so it's normal. For the past month my life has been, more or less, wake up, teach, work on the grant I am writing for my school, figure out what I am going to teach tomorrow, and go to bed. Then wake up and do it again.

The good news is that the grant is submitted so I don't have to think about it for a little while. The bad news is that I said I would start a course teaching the teachers at my school English on Monday. I have a sinking feeling allot of teachers are going to show up tomorrow. I am hoping for a small group that I can have informal relaxed lessons with, but if the group is large then the lessons will have to be more formal and therefore less fun and more of a pain in the ass. Of course as the course goes on fewer and fewer people will show up as the teachers loose interest so ultimately it will be ok I think.

Well I haven't posted anything in a while. The main reason for this is that not much has really happened. I have settled into a bit of a routine with teaching, which is good because it makes the time go by faster. My projects are coming along slowly but they are going to pick up a bit. The SPA deadline looms, so my headaches stomach cramps will get much much more severe. I will start teaching English to the other teachers of my school soon which should be fun I think.

Other then that not much has happened. I have become hooked on the tv show Lost and read scripts and watched episodes to get caught up to the most recent episode. Really the only thing that I have been doing is counting. Counting the number of weeks left of teaching (30), counting the number of weeks left with my 12th graders (25), counting the number of weeks until I get to go home (35) yea!, counting the number of weeks until I am unemployed (35) eep!, counting the number of weeks until I get to eat a Kopps hamburger (35), counting the number of weeks until Christmas break (8), and counting the number of weeks until my Close of Service conference and say good bye to so many new friends I have made (23).

Google blogger has been acting all funky lately so I'm not going to try to post any pictures.

I remember in high school going to school and sitting in my first class at 7:48 in the morning and listening to whatever teacher I had, the only one I remember specifically was Mr. Heis my senior year, drone on and on about whatever it was they were teaching. I stared up at him and try to keep my head from nodding too much or falling off my hands that I was using to prop it up. At some point a question entered my head, why don't we have a nap time in high school? At first I thought this was just me being my lazy self but now I realise it wasn't laziness, it was brilliance.

Now that the shoe is on the other foot and I am the teacher droning on about whatever it is I am suppose to be teaching I still wonder, why don't we have a nap time in high school. Every morning I wake up get ready for school and start teaching. The first hour I am usually more incoherent then normal, which is really saying something. Usually my thoughts are centered around not tripping over the bumps in the floor or the steps that are randomly dispersed around the room and making sure my fly is closed (I usually fail at at least one of these things a week). The students usually are half asleep and the ones that are awake aren't happy.

If sometime during the school day thirty minutes were set aside for everyone to take a nap I believe that everyone would be more productive and much more pleasant, well not everyone but enough people anyway to make a difference. Why don't we do this? I have no idea. Thankfully however I never have to teach beyond 2pm so if I ever need a nap I just tell myself to make it to then and then I go home and take a nap.

Almost finished with my first week of classes and am pretty tired so no real comments. Only sleep...

These are just some more pictures from inside the Guiness storehouse.

Just a quick note that yesterday was the first day of school over here. I had a very quick discussion with a student about how depressed she was about school starting. I told her that I was also depressed, she didn't believe me. I don't understand why but for some reason students believe that teachers are happy to teach and work all the time. This is undoubtedly true in some teachers cases but I have yet to meet one. To me the beginning of school is the end of sleeping in, staying up late, being a lazy bum, and traveling. And while it will be nice to get back to doing what I came over here to do in the first place, I will still miss the laziness.