Cart before the horse

As a history teacher you would expect that I would do well with dates. For instance, knowing that the Greeks came before the Romans; that World War I came before World War II; or that Thanksgiving come before Christmas. Ok, I can honestly say that I know all of these things, however, it does not excuse the fact that I have posted about Christmas before posting about Thanksgiving (sort of).
Thanksgiving actually came in two parts last year - the campus celebration, and the trip to Istanbul. As I'm sure you know, the Istanbul trip has been posted, but the campus celebration is truly blog worthy as well!

Questions: How many international teachers does it take to prepare a Thanksgiving feast for 150+ Bulgarians? And how many turkeys should be prepared?

Answer: About 20, if you include the bartenders and DJ. And at least 25!

That's right, in the American College of Sofia's effort to bring a little bit of American culture to Bulgaria, a former president thought it would be a great idea to introduce Thanksgiving to the Bulgarian staff by having the international staff cook for them and their families. The only problem this year? No one on staff had actually prepared a full Thanksgiving meal before - including the turkeys. But we're a creative, resourceful, and adventurous group that is not going to let a little thing like ignorance stop us from having a successful party!

On the ambitious menu:
-25 turkeys
-braised carrots
-homemade potato biscuits
-mashed potatoes
-garlic-rosemary roasted potatoes, made by yours truly (thank you Gretchen for the recipe)
-homemade apple pie
-homemade pumpkin pie, made from real pumpkins we split ourselves!
-two types of stuffing
-sweet potatoes
-gravy
-wine
-beer
-rakia (Nikolai's homemade goodness!)
-a few other things that I can't remember at the moment, but hopefully will be added in the comment section below

Let me start by saying "hats off" to Will Heron, our resident Econ/Math teacher who took on the challenge of prepping and making 25 turkeys that came out DELICIOUS!!! Well done, Will! In fact, for having little-to-no experience with most of these dishes, everything came out really good. The hit of the meal, however, was those tasty garlic-rosemary potatoes. No, seriously, they got a lot of compliments. I know this sounds rather conceited, but they were very popular. Perhaps someone who was there can post a comment about them so I don't seem too egotistical.

Regardless, the meal was an enormous undertaking involving two days worth of prep by the staff, strong coordination (thank you, Derek), a lot of beer drinking, and a hefty bill covered by the College. And on top of all this good food, we had handmade decorations (nicely done Jaime and crew), dancing, and open bar, a great DJ (DJ B-Ranch) who also created a trivia game, and 150+ Bulgarian who thanked us for days after the party.

Here are just few pictures of the event so you can get an idea of the undertaking. As always click on any of the captions to bring you to the Picasa page to see more.

Abby making sweet-taters

Amanda heating things up!

Enough turkey to feed a Bulgarian army

You want turkey? We got turkey.

Nobody panic!  We're professionals.

Jamie making fresh dough with the ACS rolling pin

More butter than you can shake a carrot at

Potato biscuits for everybody!

DJ B mixin' it up on the 1s and the 2s

Culture successfully shared!

Nazdrave.

Our first Bulgarian Christmas

In our first year abroad, we have tried to be smart travelers. And as they say in Bulgaria, "sometime win, sometime loon." (Yes, this is quite a popular phrase; it was originated by the Bulgarian national superstar soccer player Hristo Stoichkov, the player-turned-coach who led them to fourth place in the World Cup in 1994, and whose English is only slightly better than my Bulgarian [check out the video here]; Bulgarians take their soccer seriously). And while we have had our share of "loons", one of our wins was definitely the choice to take a few days to ourselves before traveling for Christmas. And we seemed to be some of the few that made this decision. Our co-worker Jess White, and her brother who braved the elements and came from America, were the only others with this ingenious plan.

I find Christmas travel is always a gamble. When I was younger, we would open presents at our home in the morning, then head to my grandmother's house about an hour away for dinner and family-time. For a number of years I failed to notice the traffic on the freeway from everybody who, I assume, was doing the same thing. As I got older, not only did I notice the traffic, but I began traveling longer distances to see people; and the most important thing that I learned was the following: airport traveling at Christmas is comparable to having a root canal done by a epileptic dentist. And this last year, I hear it was worse. Many of our co-workers decided to go home to the states to visit family, and all of their stories were remarkably similar. Remember the storm that dumped on the East Coast last Christmas? You know, the one that shut down airports, train travel, roads, and public transit? Yeah well, our great win of the season was NOT putting ourselves on a 24-hour intercontinental flight, infested with cranky air-travelers, to fly through the century's worst blizzard. To those of our friends who did, our hats are off to you! You are seemingly more brave than we are. But would you choose to do it again? Yeah, I didn't think so. And what is it about the holiday season that puts everybody in a bad mood? You would think that at the time of "tidings of comfort and joy" that people would be more relaxed, friendly, and supportive. Not travelers.

So to continue with the "win" portion of the story, we decided to stay home, nearly alone on the campus, spend some quality time together, light fires in our fireplace, and dog-sit Jack, our friend Sarah's newly-adopted puppy.


Cute, isn't he? And while might have been a little rambunctious, he was so cute that we had a great time with him. That's right, no fighting with lines, being stranded by a delayed/canceled flight, risking life and limb aboard an airplane headed into the worst weather on the planet; just a lovely time enjoying a Christmas morning together, eating out, and watching movies.

And then once things calmed down, we flew to Prague for New Years. But that story is for another post.

Nazdrave!

The First Snow

Winter was not your normal winter this year. Supposedly, it wasn't as cold as it was the year before, although the people who are telling me that are also the ones who had to suffer through the heat being shut off by Russia at the height of the cold last year. Regardless, it was cold enough for this Southern California boy who has never lived an entire winter in a place that snows.

How did I survive? Quite well, actually. I wore thermal underwear everyday, we built fires in our fireplace, and I often found the snow to be particularly beautiful. Here are just a few pics of the first snowfall of the year.  Technically, it was the second, as the first occurred the night of Halloween, (and yes, we had an American-style Halloween party, but I've been asked not to post the pictures) but it didn't stick, and I was unable to get pictures of it at the time.