Thanksgiving Bulgaria Style

Thanksgiving (ден на благодарност - den na blogodarnost - lit. "day of thankfulness") came and went without much fanfare in Veliki Preslav. People here have some idea of what it is after hearing from other volunteers about it, but it gets looked at kind of strangely from their point of view - "Day of Thankfulness? Turkey? football?" It doesn't quite come together the way we see it, which is a day to spend time with the family, and be thankful that we have people to lean on (in my opinion at least).

I didn't really do anything special the actual day of Thanksgiving. In fact, I had to go in to work since we volunteers don't get American holidays off. It was alright though... I baked up a batch of chocolate chip cookies (more like chocolate chunk, since they don't have chocolate chips here... ended up just smashing a few chocolate bars) and handed those out to the staff. I also explained some Thanksgiving traditions and did some art stuff for the kids. They were more interested in the Pilgrims and Indians part than the turkey and family part ("Did the indians kill the people afterward?" No... Yay for movies!). That night I made hashbrowns and eggs haha.

However, over that weekend, I was able to get some real Thanksgiving food and spend some time with friends and enjoy the holiday. Even though we were thousands of miles from home, we managed to come together as a great big dysfunctional family for Thanksgiving. Coming together was a challenge though, starting with a missed train and an overnight ride in an unheated cabin and ending with missing the bus stop and having to walk (more slipping on the ice than walking) back into the town where we were supposed to get out. It all came together eventually - well worth the missteps - and a good time was had by all.

Turkey was brought in from Sofia, potatoes were mashed, cakes and pies were consumed, football was watched. Something was brought by each of the 20 volunteers that were there, making for a legit Thanksgiving meal, and an great time with great friends.

In other news, I started at the preschool yesterday. Well... to call it a preschool is a bit of a stretch. The kids are 2 and 3 years old and completely ridiculous. It should be interesting to see what I can do with them. I'm not really sure why I was assigned to work there, but at least it gives me something to do in the morning... More to come on that later.

Until next time...