This is really cool!

You only miss something when you don't have it for a while.

I have been writing after about a month of silence and now people I know worlwide are emailing me, telling me how happy they are I am making entries again. Strange but true!

Just a little thing I realized the other day. I was looking around my room, and the things there were from 7 different countries. I had something from Ecuador, Korea, Canada, USA, England, Thailand, Cambodia and here. WAIT A MOMENT! Seems I can't count. That's 8 right?? What was the middle thing again?? (Sorry, watched Fish Called Wanda" again recently, and now I cant stop quoting it.

Keep your fingers crossed folks. I posted a CV online and I hope to get a humanitarian job in Toronto. I need more good Karma though Frank said good Karma surrounds me. I sure hope so. All I want now is a good job, a little pad to call my own filled with living breathing loved ones from around the globe (Yes S, I mean YOU) and rug rats we make. Not unachievable but in what time frame?

Sort-of off week

Kids are off, unless they are on probation, then instead of going to Dansko for skiing, they are stuck with us and we are stuck with them.

I had 2 grade niners come and have tutorial today. I am trying to teach them the reported speech in passive form; much like newspaper reports "She was seen taking the goods without paying" and such nonsense they will never use unless they become reporters!

Anyhow, I actually posted a resume on a Canadian humanitarian site today, which deals with NGOs and Gov. organizations. I thought if I find something I really like then I will go that route. I will likely have to start at the bottom but there you have it. When changing careers that is what happens and hopefully this is the last time I will change careers.

I am making Jerk Pork tonight. Havent had Jerk anything since the day Rudy (my cat from my marriage) died on my front steps. To this day I am convinced that piece of Jerk burger Sean gave her as a "treat" made her go into anaphylactic shock. Cats arent supposed to eat Jamaican spicy food. But I never did mention that to Sean. I thought it would kill him to know he had killed Rudy. She was such a darling cat. I miss her a lot!

Needless to say I had a thing against eating jerk for some time after that.

When I look back at my life like this, there is so much to remember. I know I have lived as many days as anyone else my age, but somehow my life seems to be full of stories I want to tell. Each small thing seems to become a story in my mind becasue it means something to me. I don't glide through life with blinders on. My life is anything but boring. Sometimes hard, sometimes unpleasant, but rarely boring. In fact boring to me is worse than a bad day. Boring has no pulse. I want envigorating and it isnt so much in where I am or what I am doing, but in the fact that I AM doing SOMETHING! I realized a while back that it mattered little to me what exactly I did as a vocation but that I had a feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day. A feeling of making change, hpefully for the better but at least not stagnant. Still waters may run deep but stagnant waters smell like rot in not too long.

So there you have it. If I get work in the humanitrian sector, even if I am pushing paper, at least I will work for an organization I feel is making a difference and making change. I'm not interested in working for a business set up solely to make money. I can do that anywhere any time, but if I get into this now, I will feel fulfilled in a different way.

Where did ll this come from? The debths of my over-exhausted mind I guess.

The street dogs

As in many third world countries, there are many dogs here who live on the streets. They seem to be OK with it, or at least they seemed to be until it got bitching cold out. Now I hear them barking quite aggressively and they even follow people in the hopes of getting something, ANYTHING from them.

This is one of the things that makes me sad here. I have always had a soft spot for animals and honestly I often think I prefer them to most people. At least their intentions are honest and you know what they are thinking. Its always about self preservation and that is just a matter of survival. No dog or cat has yet hurt my feelings, betrayed me or broken my heart. A couple have bit me, and scratched me but then really those were my fault. I have always had utterly fulfilling relationships with animals (more than I can say for most of the men who have crossed my path, and quite of few of the women as well) and have in general had very good pet Karma.

Now I see puppies, dogs and everything in between clearly famished and freezing in the streets. They sometimes bark all night and there isnt a damn thing I can do about it.

Like an old lady, I now carry pet food in my purse. It is relatively cheap here so I carry a bit to give to puppies especially. Its not a solution but it makes me feel better and that is all I can do right now. There is a black mut up the street who sleeps under an overhang, and he got to taste a few of my dishes last week. I took all my leftovers to him, and now he follows me around town; he walked me to school the other day- rigt to the base of the steps. Soon I will have a pack of dogs following me around. That will make for an interesting farewell at the airport.

So why am I writing about this now? Well in general I have been a bit blue and these things effect me ten-fold when I am not at my best. I find myself in near tears on an off simply becasue of a dog, who for all I know is perfectly content being free on the streets. I was first effected by this in Ecuador, but it is certainly not limited to South America. Korea as you know had a problem with people discarding their pets. 25,000 dogs a year are left on the streets in Korea by their owners. Most get run down, but the odd one makes his way into the arms of a foreign sucker. Like Oscar did!

Anyhow, at least it is a Friday before a week vacation and next week the students are off on a ski trip. WE still have to come to work! Oh well.

My cries did not go unheard

So I realized what my problem is. I have hit the 4 month mark, and passed it and now life has gotten boring, into a routine and what's more I am lonely. So I have started telling people I work with that I am lonely and that its making me slightly crazy. I had 2 invitations today for this weekend and I plan to space them out one this weekend and one the next. I guess it comes down to the fact that if you need something, you better be ready to ask for it.

I also had nothing to look forward to as far as seeing my love was concerned, so I emailed my travel agent and I booked another ticket for spring break, April 2nd for a week. If I cannot get him here, at least I know I can go there. So now there is a countdown again, 2 months away but its a faint light at the end of a rather loooooong tunnel at least.

And who said I couldnt socialize with my students? As a matter of fact they are some of my favorite people in VT, and Phillip used to invite us over to his house all the time and we didnt think it strange. We were in high school then. So that is what I will do. I will have a few of the girls over for dinner and scrabble after the 2nd term starts.

Darina, the Romanian girl is in the same predicament as I, and we commiserated over lunch about just how hard it is getting being here alone with no significant other to distract or fill up the empty hours with. At least I have company. Misery loves company after all. Guess she is invited to dinner.

Next week I shall face a few demons, fulfill a few New Years resolutions and cook a few awesome meals. We dont teach next week, we only tutor in the mornings. YAAAAAYYYY!!!

Where the hell did the time go?

This week it will be 3 weeks since my return from England and I have blogged but ONCE! Life is catching up with me and my health buckled under the pressure once again. I was really sick after I came back and had a lung infection. I was "ordered" to go home by the school nurse (God love her) and was perscribed pills that would knock down a horse. I being considerable smaller than a horse, was totally wiped off my feet by these Bulgarian strength drugs, also likely illegal-in-every-country-but-here-and-possibly-Iran!

Added to the nasty anti-biotics were anti allergy drugs becasue apparently Petya who took these same anti-biotics last, blew up like a baloon and so as a precaution, I was given these pills to take with it. It worked like a switch. An hour after taking them, I was out like a light. I slept an average of 20 hours a day the first three days I was on them. My days consisted of eating (a lot) drinking (gallons- them drugs make you thirsty) and walking Oscar (not a lot).

I had a few concerned emails from sweet students and a visit from Ava who as I told her later that week managed to feed my body AND my soul. She brought me juice and croissants, as well as a CD with some cool pics, writing, paintings of Van Gogh and awesome music on it (a Christmas gift I hadnt managed to look at earlier).

Now we are at end of term which means we are teaching a regualr course load and marking 69 exam papers (23 students, 3 different tests) and still trying to have a normal life. IN -20 degree weather no less. going down the hill is REAL fun!

So my friends if I am less than verbose, it is because I am overwhelmed, am trying to take time for myself to make myself good meals, insted of talking on Yahoo all night, and am trying to keep my spirits high. It is cold, I am trying to be frugal and I am lonely as hell! ME NO LIKE! The winter blues are hitting hard and I am really starting to wonder why I didnt stay in Manchester and smuggle in Oscar somehow. I came back for the kids. But even they are stressed and you can see it in their behavior, so it is HARD being here right now. REAL hard! Like I said ME NO LIKE!

I'm sure even this will pass, or not....

A pinch in time

Its ironic that the two weeks I looked forward to for so long have now dwindled down to a pinch in time.

Yes I am back in Bulgaria, by far my easiest trip, and I dont feel as if I ever left, except for the ring on my finger, the wonderful feeling inside and the numerous warm fuzzy memories!!

The two weeks flew, and we did a lot, including getting engaged in one of my favorite places in the world called "White horse hill" in Oxfordshire England. It is the place where the white horse is drawn on the side of the hill in limestone (the one tattooed on my shoulder). It is apparently 3000 years old!!!

Words dont seem sufficient in expressing my feeling of the last 2 weeks so this will be a short entry. A quote from The English Patient comes to mind however, and pardon me Michael Ondaatje if it isnt exact: "Every night I cut out my heart, and in the morning its full again".

And a quote from me: I never knew I could feel this rich inside.

Happy New Year everyone