Recently I've been thinking about how much fun I had and how much I learned last year in February with my "<a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/2010/01/15/to-live-within-your-leva/" target="_blank">Live within my Leva</a>" project.  It was quite a project. I figured that I'd come up with a budget, stick to my budget as best I could and write about the whole experience.

Easy-peasy. Or so I thought.

I figured that I was doing it for me. I'd been shocked to see a report about the average salary in Bulgaria and I wanted to be mindful about the opportunities and privileges I have as an American living and working in Bulgaria.  After I made up my mind to try to live within the constraints of an average Bulgarian salary I figured it would be a challenge but I like a challenge and a competition so I figured why not. Mostly I wanted to see if I could do it. After <a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/2010/01/22/living-on-leva-maybe/" target="_blank">a lot of number crunching</a>, plenty of feedback from my Bulgarian readers and some serious consideration I figured that I'd try to<a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/2010/01/23/my-budget-400-leva/" target="_blank"> live on 400 leva for the month</a> of February.

An adventure ensued. A big one.

It started on <a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/2010/02/01/living-with-leva-feburary-1st/" target="_blank">February 1st with my first post </a>which ended up garnering 15 comments ranging from support, questions and even the decision to also track one's spending. And in the middle of the month I was contacted by Nova TV a Bulgarian television station because they were interested in doing a  series on what a week of my life looks like.  Totally weird and funny–<em>right</em>? You can check out this series Nova TV did on my life at the end of February 2010 (<a href="http://karolinkabulgaria.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/day-2-nova-tv/">Day 2</a>, <a href="http://karolinkabulgaria.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/day-3-nova-me-the-bus/">Day 3</a>, <a href="http://karolinkabulgaria.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/day-4-i-dance/">Day 4</a> and <a href="http://karolinkabulgaria.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/day-5-the-wrap-up/">Day 5</a>). Needless to say this whole thing was amusing and slightly terrifying.

So now what? Well, I certainly can't do the same thing I did last year. I mean I could but what's the challenge in that? The only problem is how I can I compete with what I did last year?

I've thought about this problem walking to and from school this week. Mostly it's gone like this: What can I do? What can I do? Why can't I think of a single good idea? What's wrong with me? How did I come up with this project last year? And on, and on.  Not very inspiring huna. That's what I thought too.

That was until I was walking home from school in my kickboxing clothes: yoga pants, tennis shoes, sweatshirt. It turned out kickboxing was yesterday so I had more free time on my hands than I'd originally planned and nothing much to obsess about.  Well, other than the fact that I'm stupid and got the days of kickboxing mixed up. Don't worry I beat myself up about it too badly, I chalked it up to jet-lag and figured I'd just go next week.

So I was thinking about school, about new year resolutions, yoga, book club, what's on sale at Hit, the fact I need to take my chipped nwhat to make for dinner, why it's been so foggy recently, the fact that the only two Bulgarian dishes I've ever made are shopska salad and mountain herb tea. And I am not even sure if the last one counts as a dish. While I was trying to determine who I could call to verify whether or not Bulgarian mountain herb tea counted as a dish or not, I realized: maybe this is my project.

Maybe in the month of February I need to learn to cook 28 new Bulgarian dishes. That's one dish for every day of the month! Thoughts?