22 August 2005

Your paper work is in order

Didn’t do anything worth reporting this weekend. I should have gone hiking with Rich and Maury; they had two good days of hiking in the Pirin Mountains without any rain (which is what I was concerned about since I don’t have my raincoat/windbreaker yet.) However, here in Sofia, the weather changed from hour to hour. Every time I went out on Saturday it began raining; I would go back to my apartment, and within an hour the sun would be shining! I’ve gotten soaked on several occasions now, so I always (well almost always) take my umbrella with me whenever I go outside now—you really can never tell when it might rain.

This morning we had our second Bulgarian test, which was a surprise to me; for some reason I thought it was supposed to be on Tuesday. Needless to say I didn’t do well, although it wasn’t that bad either—I generally don’t study much for tests anyhow. Plus it’s hard to get motivated when the grade doesn't really count for anything. Actually, despite the fact it is an obscure language, I would like to gain as much proficiency in Bulgarian as I can since I will be here for over a year.

Right after lunch we headed to the police station again (this makes it 5 times now) to submit our application for our “lichna karta” (residency permit/identification card.) There are over a dozen windows here, but each agent has a specific function. So you can wait in line for over a half an hour at one window while the agent at another window is filing her nails, only to find out you’re in the wrong line and now have to stand in line in front of another window. Thankfully there were no long lines today and Delcho was there to help us, but upon presenting our passports, we were told it would take a half an hour to stamp them. So we head down the street to a slatcarnitsa (literally sweet shop) just to kill some time. They had all kinds of delectable cakes and pastries, but I just had a piece of baklava and a Coke. We returned and signed the application in all the right places, so now (hopefully) we only need to go back once more to pick up our lichna cards.

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