It's been an odd week.  I got back from my travels on Tuesday.  The weather had finally changed which was expected but not entirely welcome and then I found myself in the middle of a strange week.

I picked up some groceries and worked on getting settled back into Sofia for a couple of days before going to visit Veliko Turnovo on Saturday for the weekend.  It's always nice to cook a meal after traveling and being away from home.  I figured that I'd do something easy and straightforward and that dish to me has lentils as a base.  I decided to make a pretty basic three ingredient lentil soup.  Then I burned it.  I don't think I've ever done this before.  The stew turned out to be less stew and more burnt and stuck to the bottom of my pan.  The whole dish was ruined.  I thought that maybe I'd be able to eat a bowl of it but it was burnt through so I ate some bread and cheese.

The next morning I had to teach at 8am--three different classes this it turns out was fine.  That's not always the case so I was excited about this.  I had a slice of street pizza on the way home and thought about if one should really but sliced hot dogs on pizza.  (And as much as I hate to admit it, I kind of liked it.)<!--more-->

At home, one of the best things all week happened to me! I decided to start a <a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/" target="_blank">Stumbleupon</a> account.  Wow.  This social bookmarking site is really great.  I used to give one my roommates in Washington DC a hard time about "dating-the-internet" and I officially owe her and apology.  The internet is amazing and the Stumble button is super cool.  The only problem is that it's addictive.  I lost at least an hour of my life "stumbling" around the internet but it was worth it.  I guess that I should tell my readers this: if you are younger and are into the internet you should seriously consider starting an account.  I don't think you'll regret it but if you're older (that might be you MoM &amp; dAd) this might not be a tool that is very helpful to you but I guess that you won't know unless you give it a try so, do what you will!

Then came the weirdest part of my week.  On Thursday, I was invited by a new Fulbrighter in Sofia who is researching Jazz in Bulgaria (I know isn't that cool) to a concert.  The concert was traditional Bulgarian folk music and maybe a little bit long but still pretty interesting (I guess this is not a bad way to learn Bulgarian).  But this paragraph is not about the concert--rather it's about the walk to the concert.  I am chatting about Thanksgiving.  We've been invited to the Ambassador's next week for Thanksgiving dinner and then I am going to have some Americans and random expats over for my own "Thanksgiving and Giving-thanks" dinner.  I am busy explaining why I will not be making my own Turkey for the event and I look across the street.

There on the other corner is a man lying down with cardboard on his face with a parked ambulance near him and two medics just standing there and one police officer directing pedestrians to cross the street.  I stop talking and realize that this man is dead and lying with his legs out in traffic and three men standing in uniforms around him doing nothing else but talking to each other and making sure that pedestrians don't step on this man.

I've seen a lot of episodes of Law and Order and the strange thing was that there wasn't any police tape up or anything and he had a piece of cardboard covering his face.  I couldn't help but wonder what was going on.  Did they cover his face with the cardboard because there was something wrong with his face and they didn't have a cloth or something? Or did they find him like this and didn't want to disturb the scene? More than this, it was just really strange to realize that there was a dead man on the other side of the street and my biggest concern up until I saw him was the fact that I didn't think we were going to have cranberries at my Thanksgiving event.  I guess a dead guy puts in perspective pretty quickly.

Today has been pretty uneventful considering the rest of my week.  Sure I've paid more attention to traffic and crossing the street but other than that it's been life as normal.  I should be packing for my weekend in Veliko Turnovo but I'll do that tomorrow.  I'll be away from the blog for a couple of days so best wishes to every for a lovely weekend!