Here Comes the Heat

After months of working and trudging through cold temperatures, the weather finally turned  about 2 months ago and the spring has been great. Now, the heat has arrived and everyone is out enjoying it. So much so in fact that students stop coming to school as much as 4-6 weeks before the end of the school year. The senior class finishes school early, during the first week of May while the remaining students are supposed to continue until around June 30th. This doesn't actually happen of course and many teachers are left with nearly empty classrooms the last 2 weeks. Eh, who can blame them. With a beach an hour away and the heat growing oppressive within the schools, it has been this way for years here.

As soon as the spring warmth showed up, I decided to have a go at planting my own herbs this year. Starting from seed, I have been able to start some basil, thyme and even some cilantro-an herb impossible to find in Bulgaria, which makes cooking Mexican food or some Asian foods sub-standard. Seriously, one comes to miss certain small things like that so much that, I swear, none of those foods will be safe around me when I return. When I get off the plane back in America, it's straight to Vietnamese or Mexican food.

Evening watering on the enclosed patio

The basil has been the fastest growing from the get go.

Cilantro takes a while to pop up but you can just make out the start of some leaves in the foreground. The skinny looking ones behind that are the thyme shoots.

Transplantation of basil into a bigger home.

In May I was able to get away from Shumen to the Radope mountains to help with a Music festival project called Meadows in the Mountains. It was the third annual event, organized by a British family that lives in both Bulgaria and England. The musicians were mainly from Western Europe with a few from Bulgaria but the people in attendance were from all over the globe. While there were probably only 300-400 people in attendance, they included Australians, Kiwis, Dutch, Danes, Swedes, Brits, French, Germans and of course, Bulgarians. A true multi-national event. Not everything was good about the festival though. While as volunteers, we worked 12-16 hour days-difficult on its own, the organization was so poor and the work load so heavy that many volunteers had some intense disputes and fights with the people 'in-charge'. Overall, it was a lot of work helping to run everything but we had a few hours off in the evenings to enjoy some of the music.

Some of the attendees and volunteers on the way to the meadows site. We had to help translate for them at the lunch stop here on the way up.

the horse cart transportation from the village store up to the  festival site. 

The view from one of the campsites.

Riot Jazz, my favorite performers at the festival.

The Cowboy....or at least that's what everyone called him. Minutes before this set, he didn't look like he could even stand up but everyone said he managed to play an awesome show.

Dawn breaks with music still thumping in the background.

They hired some villagers to pit-roast and serve 5-6 pigs and a ton of chickens over the weekend.

The man hired for the job, cutting up the meat with the beautiful vista in the background.

A local giving rides to party-goers 

Alas, all parties come to an end. After so much hard work, I think all of the volunteers welcomed it. 

Near the last day of school, it is a tradition at my school and I'm sure many in BG to have a priest come and do a ritual blessing of the school for closing out the year and presumably for the coming years success. The priest himself was a former student and he seemed happy to come back to his former school and deliver the blessing. The ceremony involved some prayers, blessing of bread and wine(which everyone then eats), followed by being sprinkled with holy water by the priest or director of the school as they walked around the faculty. The rituals in Eastern Orthodoxy are not entirely different than Roman Catholicism but there is more of a focus on idolatry and old, pagan rituals retained from this area woven into their version of Christianity.

My director sprinkling us with holy water before the celebratory meal afterwards.

So, with summer finally here, I'm planning on taking a little bit of a break, enjoying the beach a few days and hopefully catching up on some personal duties I haven't had time for during the school year. My dad comes to Bulgaria later this summer so and we have a trip planned around Bulgaria, ending in Istanbul before he heads home. To all back home-have a good summer, I miss you all and I'll see you in a year!