Put Out Your Hands And You Fall Through The Window

Well. That was a hell of a weekend. Normally, I'd have been on Spring Break this past week, but because of the strike, it got cut down to a 4-day weekend. Still, I'm not complaining. Milena came to visit me on Wednesday and left on Sunday, which was severe awesomeness. We'd been planning on going to the Rila Monastery (she's never been, apparently), but the weather decided not to cooperate. Instead, we stayed in, watched movies (Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, the Back to the Future trilogy and some Invader Zim), played word games, and just... enjoyed our time together. Also, I cooked for her (bourbon ginger chicken with rice and sautéed vegetables, curried lentils and rice, and spicy red beans and rice with sausage, Thursday-Saturday dinner, respectively), which is always enjoyable.

All in all, a good weekend. Definitely not long enough, though.

...Stupid distance.

Even though going back to teach was somewhat jarring, getting up earlier makes a tremendous amount of difference in my attitude. If I don't have to rush out the door, I'm more relaxed for the rest of the day, which makes things much more enjoyable all around. Something to keep in mind, certainly.

Also, the new guys arrived in Bulgaria today. As I type this, they're probably en-route to Panichiste (the resort where I was when I first got here a year ago). They'll be there until Friday, when they'll come here to meet their host families and head to their training sites. The first week at their training sites, they'll visit the schools at which they'll be training. This time around, they're using my school as a training school, so I get classroom observers next week. After that, they'll be teaching classes most weeks until the end of May. I've found out that they'll be using 6 of my class hours a week, which should be... interesting.

Time will tell whether this raises my stress level or lowers it. I suspect it will make any control-freak tendencies I might have flare up on a level similar to seeing people mess around with my computer settings. Hopefully, they'll actually be fairly cool, and I won't want to strangle them by the end of May.

Later, flipsiders.