Part 15: Thanksgiving, aaaahhhh!!

There is a lovely tradition at my school where the international faculty cooks Thanksgiving Dinner for the Bulgarian faculty.  They repay the favor for St. Andrew’s Day (I think, I might have the wrong name).  Anyway, I signed up to help anyone that needed it (I didn’t want the responsibility of an entire dish resting on my shoulders), and boy did people need it.

Last week, quarter grades were due at 7pm Friday night.  Let’s just say the system for grade submission here is not user friendly and it takes forever.  While I managed to get finished Friday afternoon, many of my colleagues did not finish until, you know, 6:51pm.  Cooking for Thanksgiving also started at 7pm. 

Now, for some numbers:  About 16 of us international types were set to do the cooking… for over 150 people.   Before I sound negative about the tradition, let me point out that the actual party and eating of the food was great fun.  The cooking, well, not so much.

I arrived at 7pm to start in helping H. with the desserts.  We were making cheese cake.  So. Much. Cheesecake.  18 to be exact.  So, I began opening Oreos for the crust.  You can buy boxes of Oreos here, however, inside all cookies are wrapped in packages of 4.  20 Oreos per crust X 18 crusts = 360 Oreos /4=90 individually wrapped packages.  That’s a lot of opening.  Well, we finished off our crust and I was about to start in on the batter, but when we opened our cream cheese, spirits fell.  It was covered in colonies of bacteria and was clearly unusable.  Enter K and R.  They went on an emergency run to the HIT (our local hypermarket), where they found what translated into English as “milk paste.”  Unsure of this substance’s actual make-up, they opened a package (in the store) and ate some.  The employees were not amused until they literally bought 80 packages. 

Meanwhile, I switched over to help the other R finish making meatballs.  He was worried that they were too sticky to roll into balls and needed more bread, but I took a page from the Paula Deen handbook and recommended rubbing out hands in butter (or as Paula calls it, “butta”) so they wouldn’t stick.  It was a success.  All the meatballs were rolled and they had more butta, so they were probably going to taste better as well.

The cream cheese arrived and I started mixing, and mixing, and mixing.  H was in charge of putting the batter into the pan and getting them into the oven and I just kept mixing.  Thankfully, we had a stand mixer or it would have been horrible.  However, after the first 8 cakes, you memorize the recipe and it goes much faster.  I even ran home to grab every large bowl Pink House had to offer so I could continue mixing.  I left that night at 12:30 am. 

The next morning, I arrived at 10 am to find H having a minor meltdown over the desserts.  She had been there since 8am.  Well, I just started mixing again and we managed to knock out all the cheese cake by noon.  Then I folded in the butter to the fruitcrisp topping (our other dessert.  9 double batches, of course) and then got some help mixing in the sunflower seeds from another teacher’s 5 year old son.  Needless to say, I’m pretty sure more went on the floor than into the topping.  After this, I fired up the industrial dishwasher (thank you Lakeside Lab for the training and experience) and knocked out a few loads of dishes before going home at 1:30.

I watched Chasing Mummies on the History Channel (it is in English) and headed back over at 3:30 to prepare for dinner.  We baked the fruit crisp, cut up some cheese (naturally) and got ready to serve.  I was on gravy duty.  I served well over half the guests before I was relieved and able to go out and eat.  Then, it actually became fun. 

My table got 2^nd place at pub trivia.  We only missed two questions.  If only I’d paid more attention to the Mayan calendar.  We put that the world ends Dec 20, 2012 instead of Dec 21.  I guess, at times, being superstitious could pay off. 

After the fun, came the clean up.  Lots of dishes.  It was exhausting, but the Bulgarian faculty was so nice and appreciative of our work, that I will certainly do it again next year.  However, I probably won’t cook again until then. 

I have never been so tired after a weekend in my entire life.  On Sunday I caught up on the school work I couldn’t do Saturday and on Monday and Tuesday I was so tired that I told my Bulgarian tutor the date was October 24 (it was November 22).  I caught up on my sleep Tuesday night and on Thursday I am heading for Vienna Austria.  So, my next blog will recount my traveling adventures/traveling naps, since I am still tired from Thanksgiving.   

Part 14: Uchiteli Utd

(uchiteli= teacher in Bulgarian)

Every year the school I teach at has an intramural soccer tournament and the teachers always field a team.  This was part of the reason I ended up in Bulgaria instead of at a school in Costa Rica.  I love soccer.  Unfortunately, we lost our first game to some 9^th graders 2-1.  It was a close game, and we led most of it, but, frankly, even if you’re in shape at 25, that is not the same thing as in shape at 15.  But I digress.  

I showed up to the game and noticed that the 9^th grade team was all boys and so was the teacher team, Uchitelli Utd (although two more females showed up later in the game).  I’m certainly not intimidated by playing against boys.  In fact, I never played on an all girls team until I was 24, but I knew I had to play harder than the men on the team to prove I should be there as more than an occasional sub. 

I started playing soccer, or football as the rest of the world knows it, sometime in elementary school.  Then I played through middle school and joined the team in high school.  The boys team, since girls in my hometown ran track and only about 4 would go out for soccer every year.  4 girls and over 50 boys.   These boys were divided into 3 categories.  The first, and smallest, were my actual friends on the team.  My neighbor, a smattering of people I’d known since elementary school, and a few others that were nicer and more secure than the average teenage boy made up this group.  The largest group was the ignorers.  They ignored my existence at all costs.  Never spoke to me, rarely passed to me- super mature as you can see.  Then there were the jerks that insulted me, mooned me, etc.  The coaches were very strict on behavior, but no coach can see what’s going on all the time, especially when we ran 1.5 miles of trail before every practice. 

The coaches were very nice men, and excellent coaches (they really knew soccer).  However, I spent the large portion of my high school soccer career riding the bench because I was a girl.  I wasn’t expecting to start varsity, but for JV, I was just as good as the boys.  There was one assistant coach that would start me in games, but once he left, I was back on the sidelines, in spite of the fact that several of the boys on the team, including some in the “jerk” category, acknowledged that I was pretty good.  

So, you can understand why my jaw nearly hit the floor when two men from the teacher team complimented my playing- really complimented it.  What a change from the high school crowd.  Of course, the teachers I play with are obviously more mature than high school boys and they are genuinely nice, but I had still fully prepared myself to mostly ride the bench until someone needed a sub solely because the amount of estrogen in my body is greater than the amount of testosterone, but that may not be the way this one goes. 

So, maybe the “real world” isn’t always the same as high school (even though, ironically, I spend most of my time at a high school) and perhaps I will start to fill in this soccer ball shaped chip on my shoulder. 

Part 13: Paris Oct 29-Nov 1

What do you do over a four day weekend?  If you happen to live in Bulgaria, you go to Paris.  Paris, France.  I could have gone to Paris over a long weekend when I lived in Kansas City, but Paris, Missouri isn’t really the same thing.  So, early (really, really early) Saturday morning, I headed to the airport with two fellow teachers to catch our Wizz Air flight at 6 am.  Wait, make that 12 pm.  6 hours of sitting in the Sofia airport gave me time to come to the following conclusion:  Wizz Air has the “wizz” part down, as we had to use the lovely terminal 1 bathrooms several times, but they clearly needed to work on the “air” part.  Anyway, after changing us to a completely different airline and telling us they apologize for the “3 hour” delay (maybe I shouldn’t trust people who can’t do simple math to fly me through the air) we landed at the Paris-Beauvais airport and hopped the bus to the city center.  We were tired, so our first night in Paris consisted of watching French TV.  A show entitled something to the effect of, “My House is the Most Original in France.”  Needless to say, I was asleep before 10 pm. 



d'Orsay

After losing a day to Wizz, our next more started with croissants for breakfast followed by the Musee d’Orsay.  The d’Orsay is in a remodeled train station that is just as impressive as the art it houses.  There is a large collection of impressionist paintings here.  It was a little surreal to walk around every corner and see a painting that you’ve seen prints of in people’s houses, calendars, and textbooks.  We saw Van Gough, Monet, Manet (though I’m not a huge fan of his), Rodin, Degas, and Renoir.  I was feeling very cultured by the time we left. 



Seine

We grabbed some lunch, headed across the Seine and over to Musee De l’Organerie to see Monet’s Water Lilies.  They are displayed in 2 large rooms.  One represents early day and afternoon and the other room showcases the evening paintings.  They are extremely large and amazing to look at.  The Orangerie also has a large lower gallery with paintings by Picasso and the like and they had a 19^th century Spanish paintings exhibition there as well. 

Monet- Water Lilies



Stairs in the Arc

We hopped on the subway from the l’Orangerie to the Arc de Triomph.  First, we had to find the correct tunnel to take under the crazy Place Charles de Gaulle roundabout.  This roundabout is ridiculous.  Twelve streets feed into it and so many accidents happen there each year that insurance companies and police alike have a 50/50 rule on every accident.  In other words, if you get in a wreck here, the fault is always split right down the middle.  You do not want to walk across this road.  Once successfully navigating the tunnel, we climbed the 284 stairs up to the top.  The view was excellent.  From the Arc, you can get the Eiffel Tower in your pictures, which is what everyone associates with Paris anyway.  Once back downstairs, we saw a car cut off a motorcycle and cause him to wreck.  It was a little scary.  Luckily, he was alright and this wreck is what prompted our investigation into Parisian traffic laws.  We then went about imitating the carved figures on the outside of the Arc, using a poster tube for a sword, of course.  We meandered down the Champs-Elysées, taking in the shops we can’t afford as we headed back to our hotel to change for dinner at…

The Eiffel Tower.  We took the very large, two storied elevator up to deck one of the Eiffel Tower.  I didn’t really pay attention, because things like this terrify me, but I hear the view was nice.  We ate at the restaurant on Platform One, which is still plenty high.  The food was decent, but the service was bad.  Of course, when in France, I think it is obligatory to have a rude French waiter at least once.  Once dinner was over, the tower was closing, so we didn’t get to walk all the way around, but we still got to see the view from a few angles.  On the way back down, I actually managed to look out the elevator windows a little bit.  It wasn’t too bad; however, I was more than ready to be on solid ground again.  Once down, it was only 7 minutes to midnight, so we stayed to watch the LED light show.  It basically looks like the tower is covered in glitter.  However, I can see why the French hated it when it was first unveiled.  It is sort of gaudy and maybe a little tacky, considering the historical nature of the Eiffel Tower. 

The next day we were heading to St. Chappelle, a church with a sanctuary made almost entirely of stained glass.  When we left the subway, we turned the wrong way, but ended up eating at a really nice little café for breakfast.  We then got ourselves going in the right direction stopped briefely at Shakespeare and Company, a recreation of the book store frequented by Hemingway and Joyce in the 1920’s.  Basically, Mecca for English teachers, and I was traveling with an English teacher.  We got to St. Chappelle and added ourselves to the extremely long line to go through security.  Due to the way it was built, the entrance to St. Chappelle and the supreme court is the same, so you have to go through the usual metal detector-bag X-ray set up, which makes it take awhile.  It is worth it when you see this church.  It was finished in 1248 and has one of the largest collections of 13^th century stained glass in the world.  It was commissioned by King Louis IX of France and connected directly to one of his palaces, so he could basically get to church without going outside.  Although it has not been a church since the French Revolution, it has been fully restored and is considered a French monument and many concerts are held there every year. 

From St. Chappelle, we got some sandwiches and ate in the park behind Notre Dame.  My sandwich’s bread was delicious.  We then checked out some fun stores on the Île Saint-Louis where we got delicious ice cream.  On from there towards the Louvre.  We decided to walk because it was such a nice day and we wanted to see more of the city. 

When we got to the Louvre, my first thought was, “they need some landscaping.”  My second thought was, “Wow.  It’s big.”  You hear the Louvre is big.  It is the largest museum in the world.  But you don’t fully realize just how big until you are there.  It is also busy.  Luckily, we bought a museum pass for our trip, so we could skip the marathon line at the pyramid entrance.  Even if you don’t visit every museum on the pass, it is worth it to skip that line.  We got inside and decided to do the famous pieces.  First stop:  Venus de Milo.  It is a very beautiful statue.  I even managed to fight my way through the Asian tour group to get a good picture of her.  I also fought through the GIANT crowd to see the Mona Lisa. 

We saw so many famous paintings and sculptures, it was amazing.  We also took a quick turn by Gabrielle d’Estrees and Her Sister, or, as we liked to call it, the nipple painting.  Apparently, the woman (Gabrielle) was Henry IV of France’s mistress.  The odd nipple pinch is meant to convey the she is pregnant.  However, it is mostly just awkward.  We also saw the remains of a medieval fortress, that the Louvre was built on top of, in the basement and Napoleon III’s apartments. 

After the Louvre, we grabbed some coffee/hot chocolate in a café we passed before going to Cremerie Restaurant Polidor.  This is a local restaurant recommended by Rick Steves’ guide book.  They seat you at community tables and we started out by two French women that sort of laughed as my friend put the water into the wine glass, but we ended the night by a German couple that was in Paris for their 35^th wedding anniversary.  The women “would recommend it (marriage) if you get the chance.”  They were really nice.  Also nice, was the food.  I had curried pork and for dessert, chocolate pie. 

The next day we got up early to go to Notre Dame.  It was All Saints Day and we arrived just in time for Mass.  However, I was excited by this because we got to hear the organ play and the boy soprano who was the cantor (I think that is the term for the song leader) was really good.  However, one of the men in charge yelled at me for taking photos during the mass (which I wasn’t) so I was a little annoyed by that. I mean, I’d been sitting there respectfully for the entire service.  Anyway, Notre Dame is impressively large and also pretty simple, as far as cathedrals go.  I actually really enjoyed looking around.  We were planning to see the Catacombs after the cathedral and I was so excited.  This was the one thing I wanted to do in Paris and…  it was closed.   Sad.  I was really disappointed.  Oh well, we grabbed some breakfast and then went back to the hotel to pack up and head for the bus to the airport.  Luckily, our plane left on time and now I am back in Sofia and preparing for the hell that is the end of the 1^st quarter. 

Part 12:For Better or For Worse

A trivial list of things I find myself missing:

1.  Gallons of milk/jumbo packs.  Everything here comes in tiny packages, so you have to go to the store a lot.  Now, some people may just point out my “American ways,” but economy/bulk packaging actually saves consumers money, saves producers money, creates less waste for the landfill (plastics are forever, people), and saves energy in the manufacturing process.  Bigger really is better (for you and the environment).

2.  Running down Ward Parkway, looking at real estate I will never be able to afford on a side walk that is level, going to Irish dance on Saturday morning, and indoor soccer on Thursday night. 
3.  Ice tea glasses or Quick Trip giant cups.  I may only drink water, but I drink a lot of water.  All the glasses are baby-sized, so I have taken to double-fisting it.  I fill up two baby-glasses to get the same amount of water as my giant glasses in the US.  This way, I have to make the same amount of trips to the kitchen. 
4.  Forced air furnace.  We have radiators (granted, my house was built in 1929), so some parts of our house (downstairs) are chilly while some parts (mostly my room) are sweltering, or in the words my former student, Henry F, my room is “like a thousand Satans.”
5.  Mexican food.   You can get food that is sort of like Mexican food (you know, the menu says things like “taco” and “burrito”) but it’s really not.
6.  Food not drowning in cheese.  The first Bulgarian phrase I learned was, “bes cirene,” which means, “without cheese.”  There is        SO                 MUCH               CHEESE               EVERYWHERE
7.  Physics. Sigh. It really is phun. 
8.  Lunches with the SME science department that are full of horrible science puns and questions such as, "How do you throw a massless, frictionless rope?" 

9.  Tampax.  I’ll spare you the details, but if you want the details, my friend’s blog pretty much sums it up:  http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/2011/09/10/one-of-my-favorite-pharmacies/

10.  Not getting a headache from reading signs.  The Cyrillic alphabet wears me out, plus I sound like a kindergartner when I read:  p-ar-k… p-ar-k-e…n-g.  Parking.  Yep, “parking” in Bulgarian is “parking” and it only took me 15 seconds to figure that one out. 

I’m not a Negative Nelly, so here are some things I find I like better:

1.  My washing machine.  My clothes are really clean.  I love it J
2.  I get lots of 4 day weekends that I use to travel around Europe. 
3.  Bread.  Lots and lots of bread.
4.  Doners (chicken, cabbage, French fries, some sort of sauce, all wrapped in a pita-type thing)
5.  Mega Extreme Bowling.  This is the name of the place.  How could it be bad?  Plus, I had a score over 100 there, and that is nothing less than a miracle. 
6.  The hot chocolate at Onda (the coffee shop in the school).  It is like drinking a melted Hershey bar.  I try not to buy it too often.
7.  Mountains with lots of trails. 
8.  Teacher intramural soccer against the students.  We will dominate.
9.  Large pizzas for 10 lev ($7).
10.  Being able to see the Science Building from my front door.  If I want to be at school by 7:30, I have to leave my house by 7:28.  Some people may not like this, but I think it is great. 

A brief mention of something I like the same:  McDonald’s French fries.  They taste the same everywhere, which is really nice.  Sometimes you just need reliable.