This post should have been written a month ago! Due to the
fact that we havent posted in a while…this post will, once again, be super
long! And once again I apologize.
Our Bulgarian New Years. We met the new year up in the
mountains, Vitosha Mountain, with a group of very wonderful people. We really
enjoyed our time. It was very cold and there was so much snow!!! It was sort of
a retreat for all the youth in the church's association. So half of the people
were new to us. They were so friendly and accepting of new people though. We're
really happy to have met new people and made new friends. Even though we will
most likely only see each other on facebook. The weekend was filled with
speakers and games and playing in the snow. AND very many fireworks, some of
which we couldn’t see because they went off higher than the fog so it just lit
up the sky in different colors. Still cool. Mike was very excited about the
fireworks, particularly ones that are illegal in the states. 
The last few weeks we did quite a bit of resting. Its been
really cold and the church's missions have kind of slowed down a little. The
orphanage trips were on hold due to the holidays, and there havent been any
random projects assigned to us like in December. So we have been sleeping in.:)
We hang out on the internet…I look up recipes and experiment in the kitchen,
read up on health and nutrition, find new exercises for us to do on those days
when we're indoors all day. (mike refuses to do pilates with me) Mike does a
lot of reading; History, theology, news, sports. He's been playing with some video
editing software he downloaded. Just
trying to keep busy. We should have used all that time to study Bulgarian. We
did some of that but not enough. Its been really great to have so much time to
just read and talk to each other. We spend every single minute of the day
together…J
that of course comes with its difficulties. Its really good for us though. Last
week we had our first Bulgarian lesson. A lady from the church will give us
weekly lessons. Sweet sweet lady! I plan to study really hard and make Mike do
the same! 
We have a personal tour guide, Yavor! He's taken us on a
tour of the city and to a few museums. We did a historical tour of Sofia and
also a modern one. I liked both but the modern one was a little more fun. There
are very many interesting places here. Like this place called "the
apartment". Its an apartment converted into a really neat hang out. Every
room is decorated differently and in a very unique style. Kind of equivalent to
what a hipster coffee shop would be but its not so focused on coffee. They have
food and smoothies and sweets. They show movies every week or so. And the best
part…all the workers I've met speak very good english! Anyway, that is my
favorite but there were a lot that Yavor showed us. Vegan restaurants and cool
looking music venues were among them. There is a lot to do you just have to know
where to go. These unique places arent
very well advertized and I think its on purpose. But luckily for us Yavor
knows!!
We've also been trying to deal with Mike's Hungarian
citizenship stuff. Now that he's been officially accepted he needs to go do the
swearing in. He got an appointment date to do the swear in…it was for a few
days ago…in LA! He couldn’t really be there so he's been talking to all these
different consulate offices and trying to figure out the
best/cheapest/easiest/fastest option. He had to send a written request to LA to
change the location. LA office will send his file to the Hungarian embassy in
Sofia and he will swear in here if all goes well. We don’t know what the deal is with me yet though.
I need some sort of documentation that will let me stay here as well. What we
were told when Mike started the process is that I get membership the EU. Well
we discovered that is not the case. It looks like I'll need to apply for a
spousal visa. I may have to apply for different visas for different countries
which would require me to have documents that are back home. Its all very
complicated and confusing. I hope we can figure it out soon so that I can stop
worrying. Our allotted 90 days in Bulgaria is coming up really soon and we were
hoping to have all the paperwork that allowed us to stay in order. I'm sure
it'll be ok though. J
We were in Venice this past weekend!!! But I will post about
that another day.
