Bulgaria with Noodles

This morning we went to the notarius in Elena and we completed all of the paperwork. We now have the keys for our new home, this beautiful house in Daveri, built in the traditional Bulgarian style. Our agent assured us that the socks are not a permanent feature of this property. This is the left side of the house, looking towards the fence at the end of the garden. This is the outdoor dining area or "summer kitchen". A millstone's life is one long grind! The pond is a bit overgrown. Maybe we should buy some goldfish. This is a view of the garden, looking towards the fence at the bottom. It really is a lovely view! This fence is going to need A LOT of work. Painting this fence with wood preservative will keep me busy for a long, long time. And what are we going to do with the extra bit of land? I think that it is about 600 sq m.

Here is yet another e-mail I wrote to a would-be international school teacher, who contacted me through the TES. I am including a few photos of my two years of teaching at the BSB, the British School of Bucharest. Dear Austin, It was great to get a message from you! Yes, of course I will help you, as much as I possibly can.  Chemistry! Yes, of cours e this is very much an "in demand" subject. Maybe it is not quite in such demand as PHYSICS, but Chemistry teachers are still hard to find. Therefore I do not think that you are ever going to be unemployed. No, that is not the issue. The real question is where you want to work and what sort of school you want to work in. Who is this silly man who is standing next to me? Generally speaking, international schools come in all sorts of shapes and colours and flavours. Broadly speaking, there are "British" schools that mostly employ Brit teachers and more or less follow the National Curriculum in the UK. "American" ...

Lots of young (and some not-so-young) teachers write to me via the TES. My alter alias is “the hippo” and I try to help and advise everyone who asks for my help. As young Tom is taking over my old job at St. George's School as English teacher for Grade 3, I really felt that I ought to meet him and try to give him some guidance. The good news is that last year I spent hours (and hours!) preparing lots of teaching resources, so Tom does not have to start from scratch. There is a huge “ability gap” between the most able students and the weakest ones, so lots of different resources and teaching strategies are needed. And the lunch? My Chinese readers ALWAYS want lots of photos of food. I hope that you are not too disappointed. The tomato-based salad was good (I love mozarella) and so was the pizza.

He does not look very happy about his VIVACOM bill. This morning we explored the big park in Veliko Tarnovo, the one on the hill next to the university.  That naughty little doggie was very happy, of course, and we were able to let her off the lead for a good run. The park has some pleasant walks, with plenty of shade for a hot day like today. The 1970s architecture of the University of St. Cyril and Methodius in VT rather reminded me of Southampton University. C & M looked as though they were looking at their latest bill from VIVACOM, the Bulgarian telephone and Internet company. They did not look very happy.

We have just come back from a little camping holiday. Our campsite was near Varna, on the Black Sea.  It was pretty much a last-minute thing. We were in VT, so we thought that a little trip to the seaside would be fairly simple. The bad news was that the distance from Veliko Tarnovo to the coast is actually a lot further than we had thought it was. Yes, there is a lovely stretch of new motorway – well, what passes for a “motorway” in Bulgaria – but the other roads were pretty ghastly. Finding the campsite was also not so easy! When we were coming back to VT, we took the old road by mistake and that probably added an hour to our journey. Anyway, the actual location of the Eco Club campsite is wonderful, with lovely views of the sea and lots of nice pine trees. Our fellow-campers were a helpful and friendly bunch. Most of them seemed to like the company of a naughty little Jack Russell. The beach was quite good, fairly sandy and the water was clean. Although we had a little bit of ...

I am not going to write very much for this post. No, I am just going to have lots of photos. At the moment, we are still in Veliko Tarnovo, but tomorrow morning we will be going to a campsite near Varna, to spend a few days next to the Black Sea.  We had a pleasant morning at the waterfalls near the village of Hotnitsa, about 10 km from VT. It was a very hot day and the countryside was, as usual bucolic and beautiful.  The waterfalls (there are about three of them, on different levels) were pretty, although not spectacular. Some of the steps that led up the side of the cliffs were really very steep ladders (not for the faint-hearted or those carrying naughty Jack Russells).