Christmas Time

December 22
There was a Christmas Holiday Bazar (market) held in Kamchia to raise money for the foundation that aides underserved children in the municipality. They have it every year, normally it is here in Avren, but since the community center is under construction they held it at the Russian resort center on the sea because it is empty during this time of the year. Each village in the municipality had a table and the brought homemade breads, cakes, cookies, meat dishes, wine, rakia etc to sell. All proceeds go to the foundation. So we had a Christmas Bake Sale basically, but Bulgarian Style.

Avren school director on the right, selling Christmas cards made by the kids

Priceltsi brought a whole roasted pig, it went for 240 or something

Priceltsi

Dabravino

Ravna Gora

Culinary School in Sindel

Kazashka Reka

Tsaravetsi

Sindel

Baba made Tekvanik, its pumpkin, cinnamon, brown sugar and walnuts cooked in philo dough

Baba also made pitka

sale

Sale at the Dabravino Table

December 23
There was a holiday concert at the school on Thursday, their last day before the holiday break. The kids did skits, sang songs, did a puppet show and some dances.

My tutor was in charge of this segment :)

its a mixture of lots of different grades

puppet show

Snow White is a Christmas Princess and those are elves

girl a little in front had a solo, she is really sweet and I dance with her mother

guys in the back row sang, girls danced

girl on right sang a salsa sounding song while they dance

Mambo No 5

Moemba Dance

Traditional Dance Group for the village

Traditional Dance Group for the village

Traditional Dance Group for the village

Traditional Dance Group for the village

Snow White and Santa gave all the kids candy gift bags

I had been helping get the concert room set up (curtain making) and finishing up the decorations (the big tree on the back wall) earlier in the week so I was included in the teacher holiday lunch that was provided in the teachers lounge for everyone, after we cleaned up the concert room and carried all the chairs back to the school. It was nice to sit a relax with all of them, and we got to talk a little bit about what they would like me to help with in the new year so it was a very fun and productive day.

December 24
Christmas Eve is just as big here as Christmas. There is a big dinner, that's supposed to be vegetarian, with seven dishes. We ended up having too many so we put a few bowls of nuts on the table and made it 14, we also had a little bit of roasted pork just because.

Dinner was with my counterpart Dori's family. Her mom my land lady/Baba hosted (so I was basically at home), her two kids Niki and Stelli, her twin sisters Niki and Violeta and Niki's boyfriend were there. We snacked on nuts while Niki the son dressed up in traditional clothing to go caroling with the other boys in town, as they do on Christmas eve.

I helped to decorate the tree in the morning before everyone got there

Baba and Niki in his outfit

Ivan, Niki, twin Niki, me and Violeta

We then had dinner and opened presents. I made peppermint bark for the kids, got my landlady some yarn because she knits all the time and got a bunch of nail polish for the sisters to pick from. I got a stocking full of candy, a poinsettia, a shirt and some socks! Christmas Eve also happens to be Stelli's Birthday so Dori had gotten her a big cake and candles.

14th Brithday

Candlage

December 25

Violeta had to work at the train station early Christmas morning so Dori drove her into Varna, I hitched a ride in to head to Hannah's apartment where other volunteers had collected the previous night for holiday festivities. There were even 2 PC volunteers from Morocco that were there. One had found Lexi on couch surfers and planned to come, and the other just happened to be traveling around Bulgaria for the holidays so we had them both with us.

group shot under the tree, Kerri, me, Lexi, Morocco 1 and Hannah

I got there at 8:30 so I had breakfast and spent the whole day helping to get stuff ready for dinner, going to and from the store, showing people the seaside and snacking to tide myself over for our great feast. Also, Hannah had internet if you were careful enough to not touch the grey ethernet cable too much, SO I got to make this video call :)

Pavolche!! That light in the middle is the camera LCD screen, it has a picture of me on it :)

We did Secret Santa just before Christmas Dinner, which Hannah had organized for us all to even include the Moroccan fellows so everyone had a gift.

Morocco 1 got a Levski hat

Priscilla got Santa ear muffs

Tom got booties and a pirate eye patch

Morocco 2 got this doodle thing

Lexi loved her present

Brent got a bear ears hat

Audrey got jewelry

Dinner was really good, and we managed to eat most of the food, which was relatively surprising. We had two turkeys, fish, cheesy garlicky mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing, gravy, peppermint bark (from me) from scratch chocolate cake, spiced cider and snacky type things.

Dinner Buffet Style

seating arrangements

food

Later we found out that there were 3 Euchre players so we taught some people the game and played a few rounds.

Not too shabby of a week.

and I leave for Sofia tomorrow night to go to Dubai and see monkey and friends