Hey Everybody, thanks for visiting my new blog. Hopefully I'll be posting adventures and pictures here on a regular basis. This is my first posting, a list of the mass emails that I've sent out thus far. They are in order of me sending them, with the most recent at the bottom. Hope you enjoy...
#1
Hey all,
Made it to Bulgaria safe and sound. the flight was long but not too bad. Met up with a bunch of other new teachers in Warsaw, cool folks all about late twenties early thirties. Couple of fellas from the school met us at the airport and got us shuttled over to the school, and I thought I had a lot of luggage. My room in the dorm is pretty nice, the whole building
is newly renovated. I have a kitchen, bedroom and private bath all to myself. Feels empty without all the kids, sounds like there are going to be 14 girls and 14 boys on the two levels.
Last night we had dinner and drinks at the school president's house, met some of the other staff and drank a fair amount of booze. Later I was finally allowed to succomb to my jet lag.
this morning we filled out paperwork, it seems we need to leave bulgaria to get our work visas. So thisweekend we are heading to Greece, Theossiniki where we
will go to the Bulgarian consulate. Sounds nice, its on the beach and the school is covering the transportation and our hotel rooms. Went out with several of the other new teachers to seea flick and get some dinner tonight. Pirates of the Carribean (sp?) with Bulgarian subtitles. The language here is really hard to understand, probablygoing to take me a bit to get sorted out.
anyways, hope your all doing well. I'll write more later when I get more time, still trying to get the internet in my room so I'm borrowing Dan's computer right now. Miss ya all,
Nos Driva, (cheers)
Aaron
#2
Hey All,
Hope your having a nice summer. The weather over here is pretty darn similar to that of WA, maybe a little more stormy... Sounds like its gonna start getting colder soon, starting to remember all the cold weather items I forgot... If you didn't hear all the new teachers had to go to Thessoloniki, Greece to get our work visas and Bulgarian ID cards at the embassy there, for some reason we couldn't do it in-country. After visiting the famous Rila monastary we stayed at the rustic town of Melnik just north of the Greccian border. Had some great local food and wine. The day we visited a much less travelled too monastary at Rouzah. Got yelled at by this long-bearded monk for taking pictures inside the ground...twice, excuse me... Later that afternoon we rolled into Olympic beach and stayed for three nights. It was about 170 km south of the border on the Agean. Contrary to what I've heard the water was not crystal clear, it was filled instead with seaweed and tons of sunburning tourists. Not much to do but lay around and drink, get red skin, etc... Tried to gete the bill at dinner once but they told us to relax, have some free dessert and more vino. Great people. Bad hangovers. Mount Olympos was directly to the west so we got great views of that from our balcony. Look for pics soon on an internet site. The funny thing is we have to go back to Greece to pick up the visas and cards in person, (Bulgaria still adheres to alot of Communist holdover paranoia and anal paperwork behavior) So what, go back to Greece, no prob here. We all want to hit the Pearl Jam concert in Athens with the same stone. Fingers are crossed...
Yesterday we went through our new-teacher orientation, learned about SOPs etc... I'll be having 27 students in the dorm, mostly 8th graders. The school is pretty well organized and it provides a lot of opportunity for students. I'll probably be putting together a photography elective as well as advising for the hiking and snow sports clubs. Met another teacher last night, Greg, who is helping a student rock band do their thing, sounds like there will plenty of chances for jamming, yeah! Might head to Istanbul around thanksgiving to pick up a turkish drum, sounds like the variety and quality is amazing. Not much for instruments here in Sofia though...
Went out with Greg and Cooper to a club downtown, they don't really even get kicking until after two. Too much second hand smoke but the drinks are fairly cheap... Danced my left cheek off and got back in wayyy late, slept a bit, then joined some of the students as they took the lot of us out on whirlwind tour of downtown. Pretty neat city, lots to see. Checked out an old Roman church that downtown has just consumed. So much history all around.
Got back extremely bushed, so i hung my hammock and chilled before letting the girls next door feed me an amazing dinner, eating rice pudding with plum sauce picked off the tree in front of the house as we speak. Also picked up a cell phone yesterday so ya'll have to give me a call if ya like, don't have the number on me so stand by...
So yeah, having a good time. The dorm feels really vacant and spooky but that will change soon enough... Miss ya all so keep in touch! ;-)
Dober Vecher! (good evening)
Aaron
ps, this language is a pain in my tongue...
#3
Whats's up everybody? Been a little while since I've fired off one of these things. Hope everyone's doing well. Heard that the fire season is mellowing a bit... probably a good thing. Must be time to go to Montana or start making your own fires instead... Things here in Bulgaria are getting into full swing. Tommorow is their national independence day so the kids have a three day weekend and must leave the dorm, Yay! They have to leave on all long weekends, giving me and Roumy (the Dorm mother) some peace and quiet. I'm going to be heading down to Bansko, a rustic mountian ski town that I hear is developing rapidly. It'll be interesting to see it without snow... getting excited about the season for sure. Got up on the mountain last weekend and looked at the terrain, pretty interesting, there is about a twenty minute gondola ride up to the base area. I'll be helping coach the ski/board team so I'm sure I'll get pretty used to it. Till then I'm trying to stay busy in my wierd schedule. I gotta get up at 700 to get the kids to breakfast. After that I'm free until 1830, dinner followed by a couple hours of study hall. Roumy and I are sharing the weekend responsibilities to come up with activites. It's gonna be hard with 26 kids though to accomodate all...
Well I'll leave off there, what follows is a blurb (not too long I hope) about a pretty fun weekend I had two weeks ago. If you can't get the pics to work let me know....
Cheers and take care!
Aaron...
...So my dad is always stressing the need for adventures in one's life, he says they keep you, I don't know, lets say, spunky... so Friday I get this email from a local shaper (one of the only one's in Bulgaria) letting me know that the waves were gonna be hitting Sunday, for sure at Ahtopol, a small fishing village right above the Turkish border on the Black Sea Coast. He and his buds had been trying to put on a small surf contest for a while and were waiting for the weather to get on board. I had been emailing Antony off and on after he responded to a post I put on a surfing website, letting him know I'd be in the area for a year and finding out the story on the surf action.
At first after reading his email I was bummed, didn't think I'd have time to make it out and back over the weekend, much less surf... but later that afternoon the staff got together and played football (that's soccer for all you Yanks) on the concrete basketball court. Only fell once, minor amount of blood and one goal scored, not bad since I haven’t played since high school PE... Several guys on the staff clued me into the night buses leaving from Sofia on a regular basis, giving me the idea that I might have a chance after all. Even though everyone thought that there would be no surf on the sea, "don't you know it's flat as a pancake Aaron, Duh!?" I said I had the inside scoop and what do non-surfers know anyhow? After Lara helped me get the bus info online (she was heading out on a train to Varna that evening) I decided to give it a try, why not right?
We had a BBQ later that afternoon at the President's house on campus and after pounding a bunch of food and wine, I speed packed and headed out the gate with two others who were heading to the coast as well. The first bump in the road was that the taxi absolutely refused to take my board bag on the roof of his car, I tried telling him that my sister's Honda rocked the board bag no problem but I don't think he understood. Anyhow, we quickly went to plan B, and called up the folks still at the BBQ to rally the school van down and pick us up. T-minus 20 minutes until the last bus. Lara and Dave were super troopers and stayed with me instead of hopping into the taxi, they would be instrumental in helping me procure a last minute ticket at the bus station. Gordon and Dusty (a rock solid couple from Oregon new to Bulgaria as well) showed up not too long after, whisking us through crazy downtown traffic to the bus station. All three of us got on our respective buses with seconds to spare... extra baggage fee was ten leva at the bus but I could care less.
Sleep was a more or less a trial and error process on the bus, maybe I was too excited. I do remember it being long... I woke up once to seeing the light over the sea, eventually the sun rose as the bus winded down the rocky coastline towards the Turkish border. I arrived at Ahtopol after 8 or so hours of cramped bus travel. (All you travelers know what I'm talking about...) I had sleep deprivation dripping out my eye sockets. The Lonely Planet gives the town about three paragraphs of up and downs... wasn't really helpful at all. Tried asking for the two hotels listed but I guess they didn't exist anymore. I went to turn on my mobile phone and found it wouldn’t let me access anything; it needed a PIN that I forgot in Sofia. Great. Thought I owned the damn thing. So much for maintaining prompt communication with crew and adjoining forces…
The town actually was a lot bigger than I thought it would be... so I set off dragging my coffin down the street, looking for that elusive hotel that I didn't know the name of yet. Found it about twenty minutes later, the guy behind the desk couldn't speak English but through hand motions and broken speech I get the idea he says come back at 8 and we'll see. Ok I thought, dropping my board bag in the foyer, sounds good to me. I made my down to the harbor and took in the scene, no waves anywhere; the sea was indeed perhaps flatter than a pancake. Well, shit I thought. The light, being early morning, was decent though so I guilt tripped myself into sluggishly pulling out my camera and start shooting. A long pier extended out into the harbor where I found myself lighting up the fisherman and their funky little boats.
I made my way back up to hotel eventually to procure lodging for the evening. This time their was a lady who spoke some decent English, enough to tell me that all the cheap rooms were taken and all they had left was the VIP suite. "But OK, I give you special price," she said. Fifty leva later (about thirty bucks) I had myself a room although, you guessed it, wouldn’t be available until noon. I then haggled the lady into letting me use her computer so I could drop an email to my buddies in Sofia to bust into my room and locate my friggin’ PIN number. I needed to get my phone working. My next move was obvious, I went down to the park and passed the f’ out.
After waking, eating cheap street pizza, and sleeping more in my lavish hotel room (not kidding, king bed, extra room with big TV, Jacuzzi, etc, And to think I brought my hammock and sleeping bag…) I called Antony from the room phone, he ensured me that the swell was indeed coming and that I was an idiot for not calling him sooner, could have got a ride and a place to stay. Phone problems I replied…
Later I got into an Internet café run by twelve year olds (supposedly didn’t exist) and got my PIN from Kathryn. See what happens when you cook for people? They help you out when you really need them. Talked more to Antony and he said his buddy was coming in sooner, the guy that was actually setting up the contest. Said buddy, Doichen, called me soon after and we met up, the wind had picked up by now and wind swell was smacking into the coast from the northeast. "Waves be here tomorrow, he ensured me." After I bought a ticket back to Sofia for the next evening we took a ride down to Sinomorets to look at the other beach where we might have the contest. Nice place, secluded beach break. Doichen lamented about the changing times and how it used so be so peaceful out in this area of the country. The beach was now covered with umbrellas, empty but ringing of the rampant tourism that floods the coast every summer. "One good thing about the commies," he said, "is that they left nature be." "Now it all gets bought up by the mob looking for semi legit places to throw their dirty money into." Indeed one could clearly see the raging, ill-planned construction sprouting along the coastline like an irregular fungus. While an effort was clearly made to keep the land clean he was quick to point out how a lot of his people had lost respect for the environment, littering and dumping at will. Doichen was thirty years old and clearly remembered the end of communism just fifteen years prior. He spoke of the Bulgarian spirit still being wounded, trying to come to grips with its new place in the world. In 2007 they will get accepted in the EU and he was hesitant about the pros and cons of this venture, but figuring it will all be better in the long run. If nothing else, his business will continue to thrive. Said company, Bulgarian Adventure Sports, constructs custom mountain bikes and sells other board riding gear out of Sofia. Good person to know I thought. He and his friends were the grassroots beginnings of Black Sea surfing, building their boards from whatever materials they could find. Surf films provided their training. Eventually some of their number made the pilgrimage to Spain and Mexico, learning the art of wave riding first hand and bringing their knowledge back.
I woke up early the next morning and checked out of my room. After stashing my pack in the back yard I crammed some Bulgarian breakfast and skipped down to the harbor just in time to see a windblown lefthander peel across the side of the harbor. Good morning Bulgaria! I met Doichen further down the shore road, watching the waves roll in. His impression was that the waves were crap. Sounds just like a local, I thought. Pretty soon cars started showing up crammed with dudes looking forward to the contest. I took this as my sign to run back up to the hotel and grab my board. The hotel matron gave me that look that older folks give you when they think your crazy, "Have fun, don’t kill yourself!"
Down at the harbor I met Antony and we talked for a while about his shaping business, as far as know he is the only one actively shaping boards in Bulgaria. He had several in his car to show off to the others there. We talked about how hard it was to get supplies shipped in. The smallest short board blank cost him fifty dollars and half that again just to ship them. Australia, not surprisingly, turned out to be his most reliable and cheapest supplier. More of Doichen’s buddies had showed up by then and were all milling around, deciding whether or not to do the contest here or not. It didn’t take too long for some to decide that the indecision was killing them as they donned wetsuits and splashed into the water. I followed about four seconds later behind Doichen, figuring if my ride was going in then so could I.
I went to paddle into my first wave, and realized too late that I was in the wrong spot. The wave jacked up and rolled me over the falls. Afraid I might auger into the reef I came up quickly, still clutching my board. I spat out a bunch of briny water and made my way out of the impact zone. Doichen must have seen my ill-fated take off because he paddled over to warn me about the shallow bottom and to stay away from the steep big ones. Yeah, no shit! I laughed back. I caught my next wave easily enough but getting out of the quickly closing out whitewash was proving to be a problem. I had a series of rides that never broke out onto the face, the waves were all closing out to soon. Antony, Doichen with his longboard, and a couple others were the only successful ones in getting any decent rides.
The waves continued to roll in, broken and in irregular sets. The current was proving to be a definite force as it worked to keep sweeping the lineup into the deeper part of the bay. By now I was thankful I had donned my thick wetsuit, at least the colder water wouldn’t be draining my energy, I needed all I had to keep paddling. Some of the other surfers wore only their boardshorts and rashies and were clearly shivering. Doichen said just a month prior wetsuits would have never been needed.
Eventually all off the surfers on the beach made their way out into the water. I counted at least fifteen at one point. Not too crowded but enough considering the small, shifting take off area and current. I had been in the water awhile by now and was content to watch the Bulgarians charge the incoming sets. Obviously they were unhappy with the conditions because everyone started filtering out. By the time I made it to shore Doichen was yelling for me to get my stuff in the car, we were moving the whole posse to the other beach. His ever-present wingman, an old hound dog named Barry, hopped into the front seat between my legs, slobbering all over my neoprene.
The beach break was even windier than the day before and kicking up some decent waves. It looked like the contest was on. Every one was quickly divided up into four person heats with Doichen brandishing his bullhorn like a movie director. Antony was in the first heat and ripped up eight waves before the others had even got four apiece ending the first heat quickly. The next two heats timed out after thirty minutes each. One surfer launched an aerial but it looked like Antony was going to have it all sewn up.
I was told that I’d be in the fifth heat but in the confusion got put into the fourth at the last minute. The three other surfers had already paddled out so I hustled down the beach and took the riptide out to the line up. My caught my first wave and tried to go right but the windy whitewash beat me to the outside. I spent the next ten minutes (it felt like an hour) caught inside before another surfer told me to paddle right and catch the rip back out. Here the waves were even more unpredictable than at Ahtopol, coming in irregularly and completely windblown. Yet I was still lovin it. I caught three or four more before the heat ended. I never did end up with a good ride, only several half assed attempts at breaking out of the whitewash. I did manage to hang five over the nose as I rode the foam in on my last ride. My smile could have split wood.
By now my body was completely spent. Between the two breaks I figured I had at least four to five hours in the water, not too bad for not having surfed since May. I spent the rest of the time at the beach shooting and getting sunburned. Eventually we all packed up and moved back to Ahtopol. It was still breaking there, although really infrequent. I was content to continue shooting up and down the beach while Doichen and one other longboarder grappled for the few waves coming in. Sunset was dropping behind the sleepy town and shed a beautiful cast on the lighthouse outside the harbor. Must have taken twenty photos of the darn thing before I finally got a beauty with the surf crashing around it.
I finally said see-ya to the guys around eight and made my way back up to the hotel. My bus left at 10:20 and I wanted to get a decent meal and get there on time to board. This was one I couldn’t afford to miss. All the new teachers had to head to Greece to pick up our visas from the embassy in Thessoloniki the next day. This time I managed to sleep on the bus, go figure. I woke up as we were pulling into Sofia, around six in the morning. Greg and Gordon were waking up to come pick me up in the van but when I got to the bus station a cabby offered to take me and my gear. We stuffed my board into his small car and started out after I called Greg and told him to go back to sleep. He made sure to tell me not to pay more than eight leva for the trip. As we made our way through downtown I noticed the cab meter going up rather quickly, already passing twenty leva, and when I mentioned something to the driver he babbled incomprehensibly pointing to the tariff sign on the window. After getting him up to the ACS gate he demanded a payment of almost forty leva. Way overpriced, obviously trying to ruse the stupid American. If you know me, as most of you do, I am not a morning person and gave him a ten leva note, telling him that was all he was gonna get so piss off. He threatened to go to the police and I said sure, they are right up there (the police training academy is next to our campus and they maintain the gate day and night.) By the time he made his way to the gate I had my pass out and flashed it to the sleepy guard, burning right past the irate cabbie. What a way to start the day. Got back to my dorm room and passed out, waking up in a couple hours to go to more orientation meetings. We left for Greece at three that afternoon, allowing me more sleep in a bumpy vehicle. No real adventures on that trip unless you count the restaurant we ate at that night, but that’s a story for another time.
#4
Kak se everybody!
Let’s see, it’s the middle or so of October, gearing up for Halloween over here. Were throwing a big bash over at one of the teacher houses. Gonna have a haunted house set up in the tunnels and bomb shelters underneath the campus. We just got a tour by the president and know one else knows about them yet. They were pretty sweet. Those of us that are throwing it are going for a Wizard of Oz theme, gonna be the Scarecrow myself, that’s one character you can really get into. Downloaded a cool DJ program onto my computer today and combined with the massive sound system were borrowing were really going to thump the place. Am excited, I let ya know how it all turns out.
Been continuing my theory of adventure preservation every weekend so far. Four weeks ago several of the campus couples and I traveled down to one of the major ski towns, a quaint little village called Bankso. The gondola was closed for the day so we didn’t actually get up on the mountain, decideding to spend the day eating, drinking, and generally being merry instead. In this I believe we were very successful. There were several weddings going on throughout the town during the day so that was cool to see. They don’t run like American ones. Everyone in a Bulgarski wedding takes to the streets led by a troupe of drummers and other musicians. They took over the city squares and locked them down for some serious dancing. Later on that evening we went bowling for Derek’s birthday and I surprised the hell out of myself by bowling a 148 on the second game (it’s all about having the right ball and emptying your bladder in between frames…)
Bankso was a peculiar town in that there were virtually no stray dogs. This is highly uncommon for a Bulgarian town, normally the dogs are as thick as rats. I hear that the government has a policy that prevents the killings or spaying of loose dogs, something about ‘animal cruelty’ whatever that is. Anyhow, what was even crazier is that Bansko was overrun by stray cats! We all hypothesized that there must have been some grand war back in the day and the cats came out victorious. Who knows? Anyhow Bansko was a cool place and I look forward to heading there this winter to snowboard over some fleeing felines.
The following week was prep week, all the preps had the week off to play games, learn special skills and meet their fellow 8th graders. (There are about 180 of them…) I helped out by taking kids on tours of the dorm and serving as a group advisor for the rest of the week. Friday was sports day and the entire school broke into teams and played at different sporting stations. I ran the ultimate Frisbee course, man that was Chaos! Try teaching people how to play ultimate when they have never even thrown a Frisbee before. My fire crew would have been laughing their asses off.
That weekend Netherlands was in town to play the national Bulgarian team so a bunch of us teachers got some cheap tickets to go see for ourselves how crazy this ‘European football’ thing was could be. We had to it right though, read “pre-funk,” I got Trisha to watch the dorm for me that evening (it was my weekend to play babysitter, I am responsible every other weekend.) We pre-funked at three different apartments downtown before catching taxis downtown to Levski Stadium. It had been raining all day and we assumed that it would let up later that evening… yeah sure. Good thing we came prepared with rain gear and a heavy buzz. The crowds outside the stadium were intense with cops in full riot gear everywhere. Lets just say it was a good idea not to wear anything remotely orange colored. After pounding our liter Zagorka roadies, gotta love the open container law, we filtered in with the mob, turns out Dave and I had tickets for the other side of the stadium so we spent the game split up from the rest of our crew. A brief run around the stadium brought us to our section, high and behind the goal. The game had just started and man was it intense. Standing room only, for ninety minutes, in the pouring down rain. I had a little paper Bulgarian flag and must have waved the thing to tatters shouting ‘Bulgari Unatsi!!” Means ‘Bulgarian heroes’ or something like that. Not that I could hear myself, I had a cheeky fellow blowing an air horn in my ear the whole first half. Bulgaria was the first to score a goal with Holland making it a tie game later in the second half. Didn’t see any soccer hooliganism myself but the guys on the other side watched a dude get pounded into the ground by a cop’s riot shield. I guess when they say ‘stop’ they mean it… I think everyone honestly expected Bulgaria to get their asses handed to them but the rain, and perhaps the Kamanitza god, gave them a tie.
The game got out at after eleven. After tying back in with out crew we hit the closet watering hole to get away from the rain, but not before powering down some cheap street meat doner sandwiches. Needless to say the rest of the evening drifted away into the kind of blurry oblivion best known by fire crews, Bulgarians, and frat boys. Thankfully I made it home with both my wallet and all my clothes. The next night we celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving. I jacked a ladder from the campus workshop and picked some of the local apples (still raining like a torrential monsoon) to make a bomber pie. You can find the recipe at www.shit_out_of_luck.com
Ok, so that was all fun and games. Until all that exposure made all of use who went to the game sicker than dead cows. Mine came on about Wednesday. I gave my first photography lecture on Friday, blowing snot into a slimy rag the whole time, don’t know if the students were impressed. Cool thing was I think it actually made me better. I felt good enough to play in our teacher vs. student football game later the same afternoon. Thinking I had it whipped, I joined Greg, Gordon, and Dusty on a hiking trip down to the Rila mountains over the weekend. After meeting up with four of Greg’s Bulgarian buddies we loaded up into the school van and rolled about 100 km late into the evening. We arrived at the trailhead around nine’ o’clock and started heading up the trail. We planned to stay at a mountain chalet up the valley. Greg’s buddies claimed it was “not too far…” Sure, maybe it wasn’t, I was too busy watching my footing as we hiked up this path that resembled a rambling creek more than a trail. Eventually we hit the chalet, dropping our packs in our small, eight bed room. Time for a beer we decided.
The next morning came early, too much Zagorka perhaps… Dusty rolled me out of bed and I rolled downstairs to a dope omelet. After collecting the troupe we started heading up the trail. A thick fog was hanging in the valley, obscuring everything in our way. After making our way up the trail the fog began to lift in patches, exposing pockets of shear cliffs and rocks here and there. Upon reaching the head of the valley we struck it up the mountain side, near vertical, following a system of cairns and painted rocks indicating the trail. The first pitch was a bitch, eventually peaking us onto a high mountain cirque(small lake that freezes throughout the winter) Fog is magwah in Bulgarian and there was a lot of it, clinging to the sky and surrounding rocky peaks like mold. We did get some good pictures of the lake in between the fog breaking in and out. We continued our uphill slog to the ridge that separated two huge valleys. After taking some wind shelter along the edge we broke out some snacks, exposing Greg’s Bulgarian buddies to peanut butter in the process. Needless to say they liked it. With our newly revitalized bodies we continued on the ridge to its highest point, the summit of Malyovitsa. Two big rock cairns, a flag pole, and a huge drop off signified the summit. I still haven’t gotten word whether Malyovitsa is the second, or third tallest peak in Bulgaria but I hear it’s up there, 2730 meters to be exact. The fog never did lift, denying us the view we had heard a lot about. But oh well, at least we made it and it was pretty bad ass.
We arrived back at the chalet tired and hungry, but overall pretty satisfied with the venture. After some hot tea we got a couple of beers and set into getting ourselves dinner. As it turned out the lady running the joint had an obvious dislike for Americans(maybe it was all foreigners.) We had a hellava time getting ourselves fed. It would be like, “Oh, were out of that…” only to see it brought out to another customer twenty minutes later. We ended up scrounging some potato soup and bread. Greg and I also split a plate of stewed meat. Oh well… Gordon did end up finding a pretty nice digital camera up on the trail, left his number at the chalet but as of yet nobody has called to claim it. The next morning we got up kind of belatedly, (Greg’s buddies and I had stayed up late and killed a fifth of whiskey I had hiked up.) After hiking around some more we loaded up our gear and made our way back down to the trailhead. We had planned to stop off at a public hot spring on the way back but when we got there it turned out to be really really crowded. No thanks we says…
The following weekend I was back on duty at the dorm. The whole week prior I spent trying to get the kids stoked to play Capture the Flag. On Sunday we went at it, and holy cow, I think I might have created a bunch of little monsters ‘cause all I hear now is “when we gonna play again!” It took them a little while to catch onto the rules and tactics of the game but they’ve got it now. We played again later that week. Pretty fun stuff. Even got Greg to come out for that one, the kids like it when other teachers get involved. This weekend were gonna switch back to softball though…
I’ve also been jamming with Greg and Daniel in the school’s newly soundproofed(by students) music room. We play almost every Friday. Last one was pretty good, we’ve started recording stuff. Both of the dudes are really good musicians so I’m stoked about the stuff were putting together. I think our international tour will commence next summer, will be looking for roadies and groupies… After finishing our session Greg and I got a wild hair up our asses, deciding it would be fun to longboard to downtown. It was really late with minimal traffic and both of us had a comfortable buzz going. Was probably one of the most fun and intense skating sessions I’ve had yet. All downhill and since we were on the street most of the time the concrete was relatively smooth. We made it about five or so miles, to Pliska, and decided to stomp over to Cooper’s pad for some beers. Damn guy, made us drink Bulgarian vodka and more beer. Killed our skating vibe. Anyhow, we caught a taxi back to campus later on and while walking up to our houses I got caught looking back at Greg pulling his body on the board like a penguin and somehow managed to skate into a pothole, pitching myself forward onto my face. Oww. Always knew I was a gaper but jeez… All that intense riding and I hurt myself twenty feet from my bed. Woke up the next morning with a mild concussion. Sure makes the case for not riding under the influence, as well as a helmet.
I’m actually finishing this email on Nov. 2nd. The first of November is a school holiday, called the “Day of Enlightenment.” Don’t know about that, I was pretty, uh, ‘sleepy’ after our Halloween party. Went off pretty damn good. Managed to scare a lot of folks in those haunted tunnels. We played it up as if Dorothy got captured by the wicked witch and we all had to go find her. I wore knee pads under my pants and flopped around all day as if I was indeed made of straw. We had a lot of the staff make it, as well as a lot of Bulgarians that stayed until we booted everyone out. Good thing we had it when we did ‘cause I’m looking out my window right now and there is a full-on snowy blizzard hammering the campus. Right on!
I hope all of ya’ll had a good Halloween, wish I could have made it to your parties as well. JB is throwing a bash at his house this weekend, if you can make it I’m inviting you as a former roommate of his.
Cheers everybody, love you all!
-The Scarecrow
