Life on my own: I am living for the very first time all by myself in a one bedroom apartment but more than this I am living for the very first time abroad. I've just started day two and so far so good.

My landlord and his wife met me at the <a title="The airport you will use if you fly into see me." href="http://www.sofia-airport.bg/default.aspx" target="_blank">Sofia airport</a> yesterday but I thought that I was meeting my landlord's son who speaks a little bit of English but then his parents were there greeting me. It turns out that the son had a work project that he couldn't leave so his father found me and said "Karoleen" not quite Carolyn or Karoline and told me he was Emil's father. Then his mother appeared and here's the great part neither one really speaks English and get this after 6 weeks of Bulgarian lessons I don't really speak Bulgarian.

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This however wasn't one of the things I had anticipated worrying about. I had been pretty nervous about getting to Sofia but not the language thing. In my mind I was worried about my plane being a little bit delayed and I wasn't really sure about my visa or passing through customs but everything went off without a hitch and my bags (50 pounds each) arrived as well. So here I was with two monster suitcases, a stuffed full backpack and an LLBean canvas total (size large) full of teaching materials that at some point before I actually started carrying the bag through airports I thought was a good idea to bring with me.  I think that there must have been 30 pounds in books and print materials but what's a girl to do? I didn't want to disappoint my students.

And this is how my adventure in Sofia began with four huge bags, two parents who don't speak English and I haven't really slept in 20 plus hours. And then I surprise myself: after spending three hours in Munich and another two on an airplane listening to everyone around me speak German, I say something in German and it turns out that I can communicate better with my landlord in German than in English or Bulgarian.  <em>(So for those serious readers of my blog you'll remembering me moaning that my college German wasn't going to help me.  Well, I take back what I wrote--learning German was actually pretty helpful in this mixed up situation.)</em>

[caption id="attachment_41" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Car on the sidewalk. "]<a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/crazy-car-11.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-41" src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/crazy-car-11.jpg?w=200" alt="Car on the sidewalk. " width="200" height="267" /></a>[/caption]

We walk to the car and just barely get my things and ourselves in what I think is a tiny <a title="The one I rode in was white" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelwardphotos/243140755/" target="_blank">Fiat</a> and from here we drive into Sofia.  The city is a strange mix of new buildings and crumbling old ones but frankly, there was too much to take in at once.  The driving was great.  No one driving pays much attention to things like right of way and people park in the streets however they want.  I guess that they don't give our parking tickets like they do in Washington DC but a DC meter maid would have a day in my neighborhood alone.  Hopefully the picture does a decent job illustrating this.

The apartment is great too.  I was surprised by a couple of things.  First, you can't flush your toilet paper down the toilet.  The pipes are old and can't handle it.  But after 20+ hours of jet lag and my in ability to read the sign on the bathroom door in Cyrillic, I forgot and tossed in the tp and as soon as I did it I thought, hey that sign must say something about toilet paper.... awesome (and yes, I had to get it back out).  Aside from this, I had hot water/language issue with the hot water heater.  It turns out there is a switch that the water heater is on.  Zero is off and one is on.  When it was explained to me, I didn't understand what the switch was for but I understood that it was important to not leave it on for more than two hours at a time.  This said, I figured the smart thing to do was to leave the switch off.  The problem is that means you also don't get to take a hot shower (and it's your own fault).  I know what's going on now but at one point, I thought: gosh it's going to be a long year if I always have to take cold showers.

Then this morning my landlord and his wife came back to the apartment with two plants which they keep calling (Blumen--flowers in German), two new rugs for the hardwood floors in the bedroom and to show me Aleksander Nevski church.  This the son of my landlord claims is the largest orthodox Christian church in the Balkans.  It is a beautiful church and has a crypt full of old alter pieces, icons and paintings of the saints and the church.  But before we could see the church we had to stop for cafe and torte (yep that's Bulgarian for coffee and cake). I'll be going back to the church on my own at some point because I didn't get enough time.

My landlord was very happy to rush through and point out the dates of all of the paintings.  I think to prove how old the pieces are and what a rich history Bulgaria has.  It was much, much less about the art.  It was however a great introduction to the church and the artwork. This concluded with a super-speed walk by Sofia University and through a huge park and ended at an outdoor cafe where we met up with the landlord's wife and son.  I had a Coca Cola from a glass bottle with a straw.  Wow.

This afternoon, I walked to the Fulbright office.  It was a little bit hard to find because the buildings on the street aren't very well marked but I asked a couple of people and luckily the card I had was in both English and Bulgarian so I got pointed in the right direction pretty quickly.  Everyone at the office was so nice to me and I got a number of questions answered so that was great.

After this meeting, it was clear that I should go and get my cellphone up and running.  I chose the Bulgarian company <a title="My GSM company " href="http://www.mtel.bg/checkpoint.php" target="_blank">Mtel</a> in about the same way I chose Tmobile in the states: the names are clever--you know exactly what you are getting, there was store close to my apartment and I liked their colors.  I took my American phone with me-- I had the unlock code from Tmobile.  It was pretty straight forward and now I have a fully functioning phone. The one funny thing is that everyone calls their cellphones GSM and yesterday I had no idea what my landlord was talking about.  I get it now but this GSM thing is not going to be cheap.  So friends in the US don't you dare call me--just set-up <a title="Get Skype Silly!" href="http://www.skype.com/intl/en/" target="_blank">skype</a> instead (and for those of you worried that it's too hard or something silly like that just know this, I set it up on my computer all by myself and you guys know how good I am at technology).

Okay, this is for me today.  I am off to find some beer to buy.