Daily Life in our Apartment and our new World

Tom and I have now been in Plovdiv three weeks and have begun to settle into some routine-sorta. Some things remain the same: Tom gets up first and makes coffee. I like this ritual particularly well. However, he has been sick, and this shatters everything. However, he is never down for long. Yesterday he had a stomach virus that had him down and out on the couch. Very unusual for Tomas. Today he has rallied and is cleaning house. Vacuum out like a weapon, on hands and knees in the shower with the terrible drain, and ripping sheets off the bed. I always know when he is feeling good because order is restored and I am the beneficiary.

 
My duties include taking care of food, cooking, and laundry. Right now these chores are daily. The washing machine holds about a purse-size load. The machine tucks neatly behind a kitchen cabinet door. The refrigerator does the same.  This is all neatly compact.

When I do laundry, which is often, I tablespoon laundry detergent into a tiny drawer that won't pull out completely. Literally, I take a tablespoon like I am scooping up sugar and place it carefully in the little slot.The shortest cycle is an hour and half and that is for baby loads.

Once removed, I lay the garments out on our Hungarian dryer--this is our word for it. Our apartment in Hungary advertised having a washer and dryer. When we arrived, we discovered that the dryer was a hanging rack and that this was all anybody had. Now I have a similar rack to dry clothes on in San Luis Obispo and am quite attached to it. The Bulgarians in apartments across from us hang their laundry out on poles that extend out on their balconies. Our dryer sits in our living room.

Cooking and Grocery Shopping

Cooking has gone well. We have a small oven and two burners. I have made a lot of soup, bought rotisserie chicken (a luxury) that lasts for three or more meals and then I make a chicken soup. When Tom was sick yesterday, he wanted chicken soup. None was made, so I went to the store to buy some. No cans of soup-none-no Campbells-nothing. I am sure that Bulgarians make soup and don't buy it. As I have reported, the Cyrillic alphabet is challenging. I have learned only the letters A through G, so I can't read any labels. Also food brands are entirely different. No Delmonte, no Campbells, no Heinz, no General Foods, no Trader Joe's.  I didn't realize how much I rely on labels to identify products: Advil, Tide, Kleenex, Cascade. I wrote about this in another blog entry. Alone at the store I felt conspicuous holding up boxes and cans like a Martian wondering what they contained. Many people don't speak English, so I didn't want to intrude on ordinary citizens going about their day.

The store not only did not have cans of soup; it didn't sell chicken broth either. Think of all our cartons of chicken stock! I found very small boxes that looked like they could contain boullion cubes. I just couldn't read what kind. I had a Bulgarian dictionary with me and found the Cyrillic word for chicken. Looking for these exact letters gave me the pace of an archeologist exploring a newly uncovered site. Eventually, I felt self-conscious and grabbed something that looked chicken-like.

At the checkout counter, the clerk showed me the printed amount on the receipt. Okay, I've got this. I have mastered the money! The bill was 22 lev and 71 cents. I handed her a 20 lev bill and a 5 lev bill. She said something to me in Bulgarian, probably asking me something. At this point in my grocery shopping experience, I already felt like a child, so I figured I had done something wrong and apologized in English for not understanding. Then it occurred to me that maybe she was asking if I had one cent. By the time I got my coin purse open, she grumblingly handed me the change as others impatiently waited in line.

I returned to the apartment after one last mishap. I stopped at a corner grocery, almost every corner has an urban green stall. I stopped to buy water and beer. In front of me, a very attractive red-headed Bulgarian woman with black leggings and over the knee leather boots screamed when I dropped a bottle of beer behind her. The glass crashing on the tile floor was astonishingly spectacular as was the flood created by the frothing, surging liquid beer, some of which splashed on customer's leather boots. She spoke loudly to the cashier, grabbed napkins to wipe herself, and wouldn't look at me as I profusely apologized. The cashier was very nice and kept saying, "No problem." However, my accident covered the entire floor space and made it difficult for other customers to come in. I quickly grabbed a plastic bottle of beer, tried to help her clean up, and left.

I returned to our apartment chastened by my day. Fortunately this morning, all is well. Tom is feeling good, back to cleaning, and playing bridge on the Ipad. We are ready to greet this new day.