| Monday, 17 December 2001: PDM |
| Hey everyone. I'm back from Stara Zagora, and I had a great time. I learned a bunch of stuff, all about project design and finding funding for different projects. In fact, I have already had my first meeting with the director about the computer lab and the language resource center. On thursday I will present it to all of the teachers during a special meeting, and at some point this week I need to meet with the mayor. And to top it all off, I leave town on thursday afternoon to travel to Bucharest! Talk about busy. After the break, I will start an english language course for all the interested teachers at my school, and we will get working on the 2 labs. If nothing else it will keep me from getting bored! I started doing all my laundry on saturday when I got back from S.Z.. Unfortunately, since this is done in a bucket, it takes a long time. I need to have 2 weeks worth of clean, warm clothes, and that poses a problem. Well, I got to work, and soon had a whole mess of clothes out on the line. I was exhausted (as I usually am after fighting with the laundry) so I went to bed early and woke up late. When I got out of bed, I was surprised that it had been snowing (and from the looks of it, it had been snowing all night). I ran out onto the patio to save my clothes, but they had already frozen completely. This is a problem. Not only do I need them clean and dry, but when clothes freeze, you hae to pry them off the line. This is not easy, and if you try to have a little dignity while doing it, it only looks worse! I got all the frozen, stiff clothes inside, and realized that I had nothing to do with them. I tried to string a line across my living room, but my walls are concrete and I couldn't hammer nails into the wall. So, after much thought, I decided to tie the nylon rope around the door handles and string them up that way. It meant that my clothes were hanging low enough that the devil cats could play with them, but they soon realized it was cold and dripping on them so they left the clothes alone. I had to give up doing more laundry only because I now had a limited space to hang them. 2 days later they are still frozen, but I can only hope that they will dry by thursday. It's still snowing here, which is nice, except the wind is still here, and that makes it even more cold. I couldn't tell if it was snowing this morning on my way to school, or if the wind was blowing snow from the tops of the houses. All I know is that the snowflakes, which are small, feel like tiny shards of ice or glass when they hit you in the face. It's cold. I don't know if I can make you all understand just how cold. Maybe it's because I'm an Arizona girl, but I do know that when I go into my bathroom, or any room that's not the living room or my bedroom, I can see my breath. It's that cold. I unplugged my fridge because I had it set to the lowest setting and everything was still freezing. I made kool-aid last week and didn't have room for the bottle in the fridge, so I set it next to the fridge. When I cam back for SZ, I tried to pour a glass. It was frozen. I'm keeping as warm as I can, but I understand now why everyone told me that your social life dies in the winter. It gets dark at around 4pm, and it's COLD. Why go outside where it's even colder? I left the house yesterday only to go next door to the little shop to buy an egg. That's it. The rest of the day was spent cleaning, cooking (because the stove puts off some extra heat) and doing laundry. Let me tell you, doing laundry sucks. My hot water heater has decided to stop working, and I have to rinse my clothes in cold water. Normally this wouldn't be bad, but the water that comes out of my faucet is below freezing! I can only rinse a shirt at a time, before I put my gloves on and hold them over the heater to warm them back up and try to defrost the blood!! Well, enough about the weather, I'm sure you're all warm and toasty, sitting next to the fire. Drink that apple cider and think of me!! This will probably be my last journal before Christmas, so enjoy the holidays and know that my thoughts are with you all!! Be good to each other and remember to tell people how much they mean to you. I love you all, and miss you more than I could say. Merry Christmas "Vesela Koleda" Happy New Year "Chestite Nova Godina" And Happy Birthday Mom. I love you!! Love, Sarah |