His Life's A Great Big Bang-Up

So, funny story.

I just managed to lock myself out of my apartment. While on my balcony.

As that sinks in, I'll elaborate. Every door that leads directly to the outside (i.e., the porches/balconies) is a two-layered door system. Sort of the same principle behind storm windows. Normally, if you want to hold heat in, you would just close the outermost door whilst outside. In this case, I just sort of swung the doors closed, meaning the inside door latched shut, as well. This is, as we say, a problem.

This is a problem because both doors open inwards, meaning that I can't get to the inside door to open it. Also, since my apartment door is currently locked, I can't get call anyone to come to my apartment to let me in. Thus, I have two options. Climb down, or spend the rest of the day (and the night) outside. As I live on the 2nd floor (3rd floor in America), neither option is particularly appealing to me.

Fortunately, there are a great many protrusions, ledges, and other balconies that I was able to use, though I imagine it would have caused awkwardness had anyone actually been there to watch (specifically when I had to slide under an antenna support bar to land on one the balcony railing of one of my downstairs neighbors).

The escape route:



Still, no harm, no foul, and I'll admit that, in the end it was a bit of a rush.

...That doesn't mean I'm eager to have a repeat performance.

Later, flipsiders.

I Can't Leave You Alone For Five Minutes

So, a week into the new year, and I've done approximately nothing so far. I meant to go skiing, but, due to my friend who lives near the ski slopes having scheduling conflicts, that got pushed back a bit. Ah, well. There's still snow on the ground here, and I don't think it's coming off the mountain anytime soon. Sometime this month, it will happen.

Regarding the rest of my holiday, I ended up going to a small town called Bobov Dol for New Year's Eve. There were several other PCVs there (2 from my group, one from the group immediately preceeding mine), so we ended up drinking together, cooking tasty food, and playing cards. Later, we venured out to see how the natives were ringing in the new year. The center got pretty crazy, and I learned that the Bulgarians love their firecrackers. People lighting them and tossing them pretty much everywhere - I had one go off right in my face as I turned around. My ears were ringing for days. On the plus side, there were a lot of entertaining drunks and a lot of people doing the horo. I even played (they play the horo, instead of dancing it) one with them, though they were doing one far more complex than the few I know.

On a completely unrelated note, I have realized that at this point, I officially have less than 18 months to go - I'm 1/3 of the way done with the total time, and 1/4 of the way done with my actual service time. Crazy. Further, there's only 3 months before the next group of newbies arrive. It really seems like just yesterday that I was getting off of the plane, and now, I'll be the old hand.

*shakes head*

Time does weird things when you let it. Which I suppose explains why the past two weeks were a blur and don't seem nearly long enough, and simultaneously have me feeling restless and in need of things to do.

Speaking of time, how the hell did I end up in my mid-20s? Has it really been over a year and a half since I graduated? Have I really been here for 9 months already? Jeez. I'm not sure my perception of time will ever really be the same, after this.

That's not necessarily a bad thing.

To wrap this whole meandering update up, I've started growing a beard (as of 2 weeks or so ago). See?



Side view:



Later, flipsiders.