This morning at the 76 bus stop, I got there at the same time a blind man.

He was walking with white stick and tapping the ground with it as he went. I thought to myself: Wow. That's got to be really hard in Sofia. Then I was struck by the fact that you don't see very many disabled people in Bulgaria.

I was really busy thinking about how difficult it must be to be blind and walk around the city. I was thinking about the ways that you must face various forms of discrimination each day. I was thinking about what a strong person you must have to be and how strong your desire for independence must be to take the bus by yourself. I was wondering if it would be better or worse to have a seeing eye dog in Sofia.

This lead me to wondering if there <em>are </em>seeing eye dogs in Sofia and who is training them. I wondered if he was going to work and where he worked. Making me think about what kind of opportunities blind people have for primary and secondary education in Bulgaria.

I was thinking about the apparent lack of support and resources there are for disabled people in Sofia when the 76 pulled up at the bus stop.  I climbed on.

Only to receive the meanest look ever from this woman riding the bus. She then leans out and yells: This is the  76 bus. Then she sits down.

Then I realized that I walked by the blind man to climb on the bus and that he must have been asking me (and a handful of other people getting on the bus) which number the bus it was. Only none of us bothered to listen to him or to tell him. That's when it became clear to me why the woman on the bus looked at me with such disgust.  It boils down to this: I am a horrible person I almost left a blind man at the 76 bus stop today.