Thanksgiving '09!

Zdraveytey everyone!

So this time I’ll be taking a few steps back to tell you all about what I did for Thanksgiving. I wanted to write this post way long ago but I got sidetracked by the whole primary teaching thing and put it off. I think if I put it off anymore then I might just forget everything about the holiday altogether. That being said, my memory is not completely flawless. I tend to make things up and take them as truth vehemently. But if someone who was there reads this and wants to make a correction then please call me out. I’d appreciate that.

I spent the Thanksgiving with a married couple Mike and Lynn in a nearby big city. They are in a pretty central location so they invited a whole bunch of us to their apartment for turkey and whatever else is served during Thanksgiving. They had a great day planned ahead for us and once we all gathered it was time to go crazy. By crazy I just mean that we climbed a hill. This was crazy for me because if you think back this was a couple weeks after falling out of a bathtub. My ankle hadn’t completely recovered. I still went though even though everyone was more or less concerned about my lack of concern. I thought to myself, “This is a beautiful day and I’ll be damned if I don’t go on this walk. In fact, I expect my ankle to be the size of a grapefruit by the time I’m done here.” I might be a masochist.

Regardless, the walk to the top of the hill was easy and beautiful. From the top you could see almost the entire city and you would’ve been able to if there hadn’t been a haze of smog in the distance. You could also see the other hilltops scattered around the city. It was pretty awesome. I’ll need to upload those pictures some other time. We also came to the conclusion that a little snack stand at the top of the hill would be very well placed. The trip up was nice and easy with only a couple steep slopes to worry about. It was the trip down that became a great adventure. We started taking little shortcuts in the paths to get to the bottom a little quicker. The shortcuts were basically little paths trod out by people who didn’t want to walk around and around the hill. Then we found another little path that seemed to be one of these shortcuts. It was not. It was merely a space in between bushes that descended slowly at first. That slow descent quickly degraded into a slope that the safest way down could be described as “Sliding on your ass” but it was really fun. My ankle took a couple hits here and there but for the most part it was pretty exciting trying to not tumble down a rocky incline. After this, we took an alternate trip back to their apartment that let us see other parts of the city.

Let me take this opportunity to talk about their apartment now. They have a terrible, awful apartment. It has stupid stuff like a full-sized fridge and washing machine. The apartment is marred by crap like a dishwasher and it certainly loses points for having climate control. I hate their apartment so much. It was too comfortable. It made me forget I was in Bulgaria. Damn their apartment. Damn it to hell.

Back to the story now. After we returned from our trip we all settled in their living room and played games and helped cook. I didn’t help cook. I’m not good at that sort of thing and there were at least 5 people in there. Also, their kitchen looked like something out of a Skymall catalog. I hate Skymall. That evening, the thirteen of us sat around their table and enjoyed a pretty good meal with two turkeys. It seems that we were bad at the whole eating thing so we were only able to effectively consume one of the turkeys. Shame on us. Even afterer, we played a very rousing game of Uno. I don’t think I’m remembering this properly but I recall it getting violent and that people started shouting and a sword was involved. The more I reread that sentence, the more incorrect it looks. Oh well, I’m leaving it in.

We then watched a movie, and had a big sleepover in their terrible living room. I mean, it could barely hold all five of us on the ground! (My apartment looks sad whenever I think about their apartment.) I left about midday after that because I had a bunch of tests to correct but it was a damn good Thanksgiving. Biggest thanks to Mike and Lynn.

So that more or less concludes my kinda abbreviated account of my Thanksgiving. The next couple posts will be in the same vein, discussing the Christmas and New Years and what I did.

This is the Peace Corps and Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated normally where you serve.

-Zack