So October the 14th is a town holiday in my Bulgarian village of Avren. The church in town, Bulgarian Orthodox, is dedicated to saint Petko (Peter). In Bulgarian people are named after saints, and every saint has a day, when your saint has a day its called a Name Day. Its celebrated like a birthday, so since the town is dedicated to St. Petko its like the towns birthday, and its my birthday :)
We went to the church in the morning. The priest guy wore his special holiday robes, instead of his black ones:
People got candles at the door and lit them in honor of their family members. The ones on the ground are for the dead, the ones on the stand for this living:
When you leave you have to take a cup of this. Its a traditional gift from the church on holidays. Its wheat cooked with sugar and a little lemon something, with a hard sugar ball on top. It wasn't bad.
Then there was a town celebration in front of the municipality building, Those red letters hanging from the entrance say "Happy Holiday Avrenians". Thats the mayor there at the mic giving a speech.
Then the children's horo group danced. They are the ones I see at the school when I'm there, and sometimes I watch their practices since they're right after mine.
The my dance group went. I'm not good enough to preform yet, but they told me yesterday that I', going to be for the next time they have something to preform in... kinda exciting
After the concert there was a lunch in the community center cafeteria for everyone. There was red and white wine (both excessively sweet), bread, kebabche and kufteta (grilled pork things), and a traditional pork soup that used to be made for people, back in the day, when they were really close to death and it would heal them. So now they do it for remembrance when they have a celebration.
So during all of this its was my birthday, and people wished me a happy birthday "Честит Рожден Ден" and stuff like "many more", "good wishes" , or "health and happiness" which I dont exactly remember how to say at present.
You have to buy chocolates and hand them out to people on your birthday so I brought a box to the celebration and gave them out to people, and I made some banana bread for the office. I got flowers from Dori, Stoyka (my landlady), Zori and Tedi, the mayor, Minka and Ivan and Krasi which is a normal gift for your birthday. I also got a scarf (green!) a watch, and a mug.
It was a really good birthday actually with the celebration all day, and not having to be at work. I did go back after lunch b/c the people from Varna didn't have a bus til 4:30. I sat at my desk googling Halloween origami and making it to find out which ones will be good for children to make for the Halloween party me and Svetlana are gonna throw. My English friends and I cooked a duck for dinner and relaxed, played pool and then went to Minka's for a bit.
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