I am happy to report that after a very long winter everything seems better in May.

It's been a long time coming.

To start with it was actually a long cold winter. The longest, coldest and most snowy that I've ever experienced. Granted that's only four winters but that's got to count for something. My first winter Bulgaria ran out of natural gas in the middle of winter for something like 10 days to two weeks and let me tell you, that was cold. But this winter was longer and over all colder.

On top of this in January I got my first of four different UTIs. In the beginning I thought that it was no big deal and by number three I was pretty freaked out about the whole thing. Not to mention sick. I was really sick for the months of January, February and March but for much of this time I managed to ignore this fact or make excuses for the way that I was feeling.

For the record, this wasn't my best plan ever but really, who makes good plans when they are sick, sick?! I made of tour of two different Bulgarian hospitals--the <a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/2012/03/30/an-afternoon-at-pirogov/" target="_blank">public emergency hospital Pirogov</a> and the <a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/2012/04/02/on-to-takuda-hospital/" target="_blank">private Japanese run hospital Takuda</a>--and I did a fair amount of crying.

Then I got my act together. I admitted I was sick and I gave myself a break.

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For the month of April, I've been taking two different kinds of medicine and in five days I'll be completely done with the course of medicine. Fingers crossed, that everything is okay. It's been a long two months without coffee (well caffeine actually) and alcohol. I don't miss the alcohol but I do miss the coffee. A lot.

It's been especially hard in the mornings in my building on campus because I have to walk by Onda on my way to my classroom. I adore the smell of coffee in the morning. I also love the routine of buying a coffee and getting my day started. So it was difficult for me to recalibrate my day. I've managed but it hasn't been fun.

In the meantime, I've been drinking herbal tea with honey. This, however, is a poor substitute for coffee. Luckily, I can start introducing coffee again when I've finished up my medicine. Hip-hip-horay!

The thing that I'm most excited about is the fact that I am thisclose to being caught up with my grading. I fell painfully behind when I was sick and I've found it incredibly hard to dig myself out from under it. I couldn't be happier about the fact that I am nearly caught up.

I don't like being behind and as such the grading has been weighing me down both physically and emotionally. I've spent a lot of time feeling guilty about it but recently there haven't been enough hours in the day to teach, to plan lessons, to grade and to sleep. This week though was the turning point and I am so relieved.

Given the craziness of my health and school, I've also found it difficult to keep up with blogging. For a while, I wondered if my blogging had run its course and maybe I was over blogging, maybe I was done with it. It felt much more like a chore than anything else.

So I didn't blog as much and I spent some time reconsidering this whole thing. I've been blogging almost everyday for four years. That's a lot. This said, I am really glad that I didn't make any major decisions about the blog while I was sick. Recently I've even found myself contemplating a revival of my currently dead tumblr blog in Bulgarian. Crazy, huna?

Last but not least, this past week in yoga my toes seemed much closer than <a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/2012/04/27/at-yoga/" target="_blank">they did the week before</a>. <em>Phew</em>.

Needless to say, it's nice to be on the mend. And I for one am glad that May is here.