I've been teaching this wonderful novel in 11th grade called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Balzac-Little-Chinese-Seamstress-Novel/dp/0385722206/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1298566182&amp;sr=1-1" target="_self">Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress</a>. I love, love, love the story. It's perfect for teenagers exploring who they are, developing serious friendships and who are discovering the so-called great novels of Western Literature.  I'd wholeheartedly recommend this book to almost anyone looking for a charming well written book.

This said there's a really intense scene at the end of the book that involves a bad tooth. The man with the bad tooth goes to the city from the mountains to have his tooth worked on. It ends up being extracted only apparently the dentist took the wrong tooth. (Ug.) This man then convinces two main characters who happen to be teenagers to fix his bad tooth. He seems to think that the boys can help him because one of them has a father who is a dentist. (Yes, this is strange.)

Anyhow against all odds, the boys work on the tooth with a sewing machine they've rigged up as a drill. They manage to drill out the decay and rot of the bad tooth and they fill it with a piece of melted tin.

The scene is super intense. I was reading the passage in class and one of my students actually asked me to stop reading (this has never happened to me before). The details just make the scene seem very real from the slow speed of the "drill" and the pain this causes to the blood the man spits out to the smell of rot coming from the man's mouth. I have shivers just thinking about it.

Needless to say, ever since reading this passage out loud two different times in two different classes I've found myself worrying about cavities.  I've been obsessing about whether one of my teeth is hot-cold sensitive. Then this morning I was sure that I was having tooth pain.

The thing is I am pretty sure that my teeth are fine. I haven't actually been having any pain or problems. It's all been psychosomatic. I just haven't been to see a dentist in about two years and after reading about the horrific dental scene in <em>Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress</em> my imagine is working in overdrive.

It seems pretty clear that I need to find a dentist in Sofia. I could really use a check up and a cleaning. And it would be great to rest assured that my teeth are in good shape and cavity free.

I know that some of my colleagues have gone to a Bulgarian-Swedish dentistry practice in the Hotel Kempinski-Zografski which is  recommended on the US embassy website.  Before give them a call, I thought I'd see if anyone else has a dentist that they love here in Sofia. Ideally this is a dentist they love who also speaks English. Anyone? Anyone at all?

Oh yeah, and for the record I'd like to avoid the sewing machine drill if at all possible.