Geri (puppy) Update

Geri is now 4 months old and has settled in and training us well!

She, I believe, is a true Bulgarian dog, as she likes to spend a lot of time outside in the garden. We used to go out, and come home to a screwed up mat and chewed items in the hallway and even at times some mess! Ugg.

However, for a while now we have been leaving her outside, patrolling the grounds whilst we are away. She likes this, as it does not confine her, we are happy as we do not have the mess to worry about. Not sure how this will work during the winter months though.

Geri has a thing about water, you cannot water the garden with a hose without some "help", she dives right in front of the water and loves getting soaked. So we now have an arrangement with her, I water the plants and she waits until I have finished, then I let her play in the spray.

Both Heidi and Geri sleep indoors at night, in fact these days Hiedi (13 years old) only really goes out to do her "business" and bark at any visitors. She is much happier with Geri outside, as Geri wants to keep kissing her and she does not like it!

Anyway I hope you like the new picture.

Bulgarian Life

Having now relocated several ex-pat's to Bulgaria one thing is becoming more and more obvious. When someone moves here full time they soon find a local Bulgarian who becomes thier true friend and helper (with the language). Sometimes it is the neighbour or a local villager nearby, or as in our case a friend in Veliko Tarnovo.
These people are great to be friends with, we get phone calls to advise us if it is a special day or if there is something going on that we should know about.
Maybe the person does not speak much English, so it's time to sit woth your phrase book and do it the slow way. Whichever way it happens, believe me it happens, I always try to explain how nice the locals are, but it's not until you move in that you really find out.
So never fear that you'll be on your own, soon you will have gift's of fruit, vegatables or flowers arriving. The nicest way to repay these people is to give them something small from England, biscuits, chocolate, cheese, anything they may not have seen before, they will show all of their friends and be proud of whatever it is.
We are now having Bulgarian lessons from Veselina, it is a hard language to learn, but you need to keep at it. Please think of me when your reading this, struggling to learn my new words and phrases!

Sally's Big Day

June 3rd saw Sally reach a milestone........50 years old........I know your not supposed to give a lady's age away, but as I have thrown a surprise party for her, most people know now!
The day started as usual, me making a cup of tea in bed for her, so she can wake up gradually. My parents were here on holiday, so when we were all up Sally opened her birthday cards and pressie's. As we sat discussing the day ahead it was decided that we would go into Veliko Tarnovo for dinner out in a restaurant, Sally chose the place.

The service for dinner was awful, there was Sally, my parents, Shane, Annie, Veselina and myself. The last dinner was served 1.5 hours after ordering and 45 mins after the first dinner was served. I complained to the manager who agreed to pay for the whole meal. Nice man!

After this we came back to Resen and home, several friends arrived during the afternoon to wish Sally well and bring cards. The last left at 6.15pm.

It had already been decided during the day that we would go down to Meggie's cafe for a drink in the evening, we were having an early night as my parents only arrived the day before and were tired from the travelling.

Around 7.30pm we left home and arrived outside the cafe, Sally said "That's Bruce's car, and there's Pete's car". I said well it looks like other people have the same idea about drinking out tonight.

I made sure Sally went in first, she was stunned! There were 40 people inside waiting for her, she turned around and tried to walk out, too late I was there, she was crying and very surprised.

Meggie had done us proud, there was a full table of food and wine, the tables had all been moved around and the cafe had balloons and banners. It looked lovely.

Sally spent all night going around talking, telling people off, especially those who had been to our house that day. Collecting cards and presents and generally having a good time.

The party finished around 1am, we went home and Sally had to open all her gift's before bed. She has never been more surprised. The crazy thing is during the day we were talking about parties and she said that if we had a party here we could not get 35 people who we know to come! So it was a great surprise to her to hear that there were 40 people there.

Sally is well known and liked this much is obvious, she is called mother hen by one couple and several other names by others.

I like to think I did a good job, keeping this quiet for 9 weeks was not easy, making sure everyone who needed to know knew. It would have been nice if our daughter Teri was here, but it was not to be this time.

For more pictures of the day please find me on Facebook.com there are a lot more to see.

So ended another great day in Bulgaria.