Mi rojden den

That’s right, tomorrow is my birthday, so I need to make some preparations. For work, I need to buy a box chocolates or two; it is customary to treat your co-workers with chocolate and/or wine on your birthday and your name day (the day your namesake saint was born on—in my case July 13.)

Then on Friday, I am hosting a party in my apartment. I’m expecting about 20 friends and colleagues. So now, I have to spruce up the place (I’ve already bought a Christmas tree) and stock up on snacks and libations. Should be fun; hopefully it won’t spin out of control (Paris spent the weekend cleaning his apartment after his Halloween party.)

BTW, I left “My birthday” (in the title) in Latin letters instead of Cyrillic because I copy & pasted it from an invitation I got from my landlord—he is home for Christmas (from grad school in the US) and celebrating his birthday this week as well. This 'Latinization' of Bulgarian is common in SMS and where Cyrillic characters are not available. 'I' substitutes for the backward N, 'r' for 'p', and so on. Young people are quite comfortable with this, but it causes great concern among language preservationists. Unlike Serbian, Romanian, Azeri, etc. (which were forced to use Cyrillic during communism, and have since reverted to a modified Latin alphabet) Bulgarian is at the center of this alphabet; Cyril and Methodius invented it right here.