I've got a long list of to-dos in my life and because of this I try to do at least one thing of this list a day.  In the US, this would be a silly goal and I would be frustrated with myself if I could only do one thing of my to-do list a day.  Here however, I've learned one thing is about all you can expect.  Today was my day to meeta with the lawyer hired by the Fulbright to help Fulbrighters in Sofia make their visa extensions and apply for the Bulgarian ID card--the Litchna Karta.

Even to get to this step has been a lot of work.  First, I had to get a signed copy of my lease.  One would think: not too hard but this turned out to be a little more work than I imagined.  My lease was in both English and Bulgarian so it is something like seven pages long and at the end of the seventh page it says that if for some reason the lease has to be examined in court the Bulgarian side will take preference.  Well of course this makes sense but I am not going to sign something if I am not sure that the Bulgarian says more or less the same thing as the English so I took to the Fulbright office to have the coordinator read it and make sure.  Luckily it was the same.

Then the day I thought I was paying the rent and the deposit my landlord came over and read through the whole thing to me in Bulgarian and kept asking me in Bulgarian: razbirash li? do you understand? Well, yes, kind of.  Finally his son came over and did some translating and my landlord, his father, was satisfied that I understood what I was signing and took my money and signed the lease.  While this may have been kind of a pain, the thing I have to remind myself is that no landlord in the US would be so nice or concerned that I understood what I was signing.

<!--more-->

So with lease in hand, then I could go to the police and register as a foreigner living in Bulgaria.  I decided that I was going to need to take a Bulgarian speaker up with me for this and I was glad that I did.  Because first we went to the police station to register but it turns out you do this in another building that is about five blocks away and hidden behind another building.  Here, it turns out that you have to fill the form out twice.  One copy for you and one for the station.  The form is in both Bulgarian (Cyrillic) and in English.  I understand that this is an improvement from the past when the form to register as a foreigner living in Sofia was only in Bulgarian.  But, after filling out half of the form in English, which seems reasonable, considering the form is in English, my friend thought to ask and we were then told to fill the form out in Bulgarian.

So, I sat next to her on a bench while she filled the forms out for me. Twice. My paperwork was approved by a rather surly looking Bulgarian behind a glass window and the man who was helping us originally came out from behind the window to give me a large brochure on Sofia.  It was very pretty but of course, in Bulgarian. He was very proud to give it to me so in my best Bulgarian I said merci.  Okay just kidding, I said: blagodarya which is thank-you but for the record, merci is also totally acceptable (one of my language text books says merci translates as thanks, a French loan word) but really you'll hear people using it every where.

All of this brings us today, the day I had to meet with the lawyer to make my visa extension and then apply for my litchna karta.  I have to do all of this because the Bulgarian government will only issue me a 90 day travel visa with the option to extend my stay with the visa extension.  I understand that this is because the US government makes it equally hard for Bulgarians to apply for long stay visas--somehow I knew this was the US government's fault.  I know, safety, safety, safety but really why do we have to make everything so long and complicated that other governments feel obliged to do the same?!?!? (Insert sigh here.)

Anyhow, the lawyer was great and I was glad I decided to take some extra passport photos with me to Bulgaria from the US and happy that I took these with me to the meeting.  She looked over all of my documents, made photocopies, asked me to write on a pad of paper answers to some of the questions on the two different application forms (one for the visa extension and one for the litchna karta). The paperwork took less than 30 minutes to do but it would have been impossible for me to fill out because both of these forms were in Bulgarian and had to be filled out in Bulgarian.

The one question that she told me couldn't help me with but she could give me a calculator for was to figure out my height in cm.  Uh.  So, I don't this and I don't even know what the conversion factor is (why didn't I pay more attention in high school science?).  What I know is that I am 5'11" and that my dad had hoped that one day I might be 6 feet tall because that would give me extra advantage playing basketball or rowing but we all know how that turned out--I'm not 6' tall.

I did a little math and figured outed that I was 71 inches tall.  Then all I had to do was figure out how many centimeters where in an inch.  I guessed on my first try 3cm to an inch but this math resulted in me being over to meters tall.  This was too much and I confirmed that by calling another Fulbrighter to see if she knew what the conversion rate was.  She didn't know but she confirmed that a meter stick (or 100 cm) was taller than a yard stick (or 3 feet). So I figured that I'd better guess a height that was under 200 cm.  I guessed that I was 175 cm tall.  The lawyer thought that wasn't unreasonable.  So in Bulgaria I am now officially 175 cm tall. Not bad.  Especially not bad when I got home and looked up the conversion: about 2.5 cm per inch and at 71 inches tall I am really 180 cm tall but really what's 5 cm here or there? Considering, I feel pretty good to only be 5 cm off.

What was amazing was that it took longer to walk to the office to apply for my visa extension that it did for the extension paperwork to go through.  The lawyer send me with one of her assistants and in something less than five minutes and 13 Leva later, this part of the application was completed.  Then we had to stand in another longer line and once at the front of this line the woman looked at my paperwork, looked at my passport and visa and then gave me a number and told me to come back in seven working days.  I guess at this point, I'll be able to submit my paperwork for the litchna karta and it will be like I am almost a real person here in Bulgaria and  I won't have to carry my passport around as ID!  Wow, what a day.

Of course, there are still a number of steps for me to take to get my ID card but I've gotten good at breaking down my to-dos into smaller to-dos so that I can feel like I accomplished something each day.