It's time for a living on your leva update. Things have been going pretty well. It turns out that my cellphone wasn't dead after all. One of my students suggests that I wiggle the flip part of my flip phone and now the screen is again connected to the phone and I can both see the screen, make calls and send text messages. Um, thanks!

I am pretty glad that I didn't have to buy a new phone.  Also, I really like my phone. I am a creature of habit, remember? So not having to get a new phone is nice on two fronts: first I don't have to buy a new phone and second and I don't have to learn/adjust to a new phone. In my book, that's pretty lucky.<!--more-->

So, phone aside, the budget hasn't been too difficult to stick to. I miss having a coffee in Onda with my colleagues much more than I miss the actual coffee. But my thermos of homemade coffee has been treating me pretty well. The one thing is that I think I am actually drinking more coffee now than I was before. I should probably cut back on the caffeine but I love coffee, so I am not.
<ul>
	<li><strong>Sunday, February 7th:</strong> Breakfast and lunch in Rome. Dinner lentil stew with rice. Cheep and easy. Given the size of the batch of soup I made and the inexpensive nature of the ingredients I'd guess that dinner was not more than 2 leva. The one problem with making this much soup is that it's all I've been eating. All week.</li>
	<li><strong>Monday, February 8th: </strong>Breakfast, standard oatmeal, milk, banana, coffee at 1.20 leva. Lunch, lentil soup and bread at 2 leva. Don't ask me why I had lentils for lunch knowing that's what I'd have for dinner. Snack, corny bar and coffee at 1.20 leva. Dinner, lentils and rice at 2 leva.</li>
	<li><strong>Tuesday, February 9th:</strong> Breakfast, standard oatmeal, milk, banana, coffee at 1.20 leva. Lunch, stuffed peppers and bread 2.20 leva. Dinner (at 9pm at night after entering grades all afternoon and evening), bagel and an apple at 1.50 leva.</li>
	<li><strong>Wednesday, February 10th: </strong>Breakfast (wosa, I change things up), coffee, bagel and a banana at 1.50 leva. Lunch, (I splurge--the cafeteria was serving two of my favorite things) potato cream soup and sesame chicken at 3.80. Dinner, lentils and rice (part 3) at 2 leva.</li>
	<li><strong>Thursday, February 11th:</strong> Breakfast (turns out I liked breakfast yesterday so I have it again), coffee, bagel and a banana at 1.50 leva. Lunch, mushroom stew and bread 1.80 leva. I am still hungry so then I have a slice of cake made out of biscuit cookies and vanilla pudding at .60 leva. Snack: apple at .50 leva. Dinner: I decided to make lentil, lutinitsa, kashkaval cheese, brussel sprouts and green olive pizza. Don't ask me why. Sounds strange, I know. But it was good. Now I've got 2/3 of a pizza left in my fridge. I'd guess that the cost was pretty low on this dish--not more than 1.50 leva.</li>
	<li><strong>Friday, February 12th:</strong> Breakfast, coffee, bagel and a banana at 1.50 leva. Lunch soup, bread, banana cream pudding at 2.20.</li>
</ul>
So far so good. This "week" I've spent 29.70 leva. More updates to come.