The nectar is done!

So, as posted before, I hunted rosehips in the mountains last weekend. This weekend, I made nectar compot. It was kind of a long process, but definitely worth it. Isabelle, one of my best friends here, guided me through the whole process. We spent about 2 hours cutting the ends off of every tiny rosehip. After that, they soaked for an extra hour. They were then boiled together with apples, sugar, and “dulla.” I’m still not exactly sure what dulla is or if we have it in America, but it’s amazing. After boiling it, we spent about 4 hours mashing the rosehips and straining the juice. The next day we poured them into Queen’s juice bottles and sealed them in a cauldron outside. They should be all ready to drink this spring, so book your plane/train/bus tickets, kids!
PS I actually am working as well, it’s just not as interesting as what I do afterwards, sorry.
Till later,
Rajun





Isabelle













Squeezin' juice from the rosehips

Mustafa explaining something

Pretty self explanatory

Acting like it's actually hard work :)

When it's time to party, it's time to party

So, today I didn’t have to go to my office (the museum) because it is the day after the election. This, of course, doesn’t mean that I didn’t work, in fact, I find myself working more and more in my house, rather than at the museum. I guess this is for a number of reasons. First, the museum is right in the center of town and it’s a prime “na gosti” location. At any random time I’m entertaining anywhere from 2 to 8 people in my office. Second, my boss has a tiny case of ADD, and can’t stand to sit for long periods of time and frequently says, “get up, we’re going for a walk.” Third, I don’t have internet in my office yet, and the majority of my work involves researching funding sources on the web, so I have to go to the school here (because it’s the only place in the village with internet) to search. So, today I woke up to a call from the director of the school who wanted me to come and translate “some documents” for him from Bulgarian to English. I was super excited because it sounded really profound, and I’ll be honest, I was kind of puffed up at the thought that this man trusted me to translate documents! When I got to the school, dictionary in hand, there he stood with a box of pain relieving gel from England. Nuts. I took a deep breath and with the best of my Bulgarian ability, told him that he was to rub this on his sore muscles twice a day. Not as official as I’d hoped, but hey…if I have to help Grohotno one torn ligament at a time…so be it. So, my friend Jemkata had a birthday today. She’s been talking about it all week, she was so excited! She made tons of banitsa and this huge cake for the occasion. One of the 3 local cafes shut down for about 4 hours and about 10 of us ladies hung out and ate, drank, and played horo. I don’t want to brag, but my sugar cookies were a pretty big hit, too. Posted a couple of pics below, so maybe you can get the jist of it all.
Ciao, ciao…
Reggi





this is the guy who owns the cafe we partied at


Misle, the birthday girl, and me



Playing Horo with the gals




Me trying to play "Kurchek" to no avail