I turned 32 in May and thought: I am half my parents age. Then I thought: If I am lucky I've just lived a third of my life. This was followed by this thought: to date, I've spent half of my adult life in Bulgaria. The cherry on top was this gem: I need to get back in shape.

So the day after this internal monologue, I pulled myself out of bed at 5:50am and went for a walk-jog through Mladost 1A. And, I've done it every morning since (well aside from three when I thought I was dying of the fly/had strep throat). The thing is, I am not saying this to brag but to set this up, Mladost at 6am is totally different from the Mladost that I am used to.

At 6am Mladost is still asleep. It's peaceful and quiet. Cars aren't doing crazy things. The dogs are tucked away under bushes.  The garbage men haven't arrived yet and the only real people I see are making their way silently to the metro stop. At 6am the Banitsa shop seems ghostly but by 6:25 the lights are on and I can s