Dear Sally, Part 2

Dear Sally, 

I was very pleased to receive your e-mail because it gives me the opportunity to say that I really am alive! Yes, still here and breathing. However, there have been a few changes over the last few years. 
With some Chinese friends

After five years in China, we left Shenzhen and moved back to our house in Bulgaria, about 60 kms north of Sofia. Having been retired for about six months, I was a bit bored and applied for a teaching job at St. George's School in Sofia. Irena was quite happy with the idea of living "in town", especially as the school provided us with quite a nice two-bedroomed apartment next to a huge park. The park was particularly popular with our naughty little Jack Russell. 
A tiny Tina, before she became bigger (and naughtier)

After 18 months of teaching at St. George's, the pandemic came along and so did the lump sum from the TPS, so I asked myself, "Do I want to carry on doing this?" I retired again and a few months later we sold our house near to Sofia and we bought another country house in Daveri, a little village in the middle of Bulgaria.
The front gate of Castle Dracula
The front gate looks like the entrance to Castle Dracula. I am going to send you a few photos. We quite like it and it is not too far from our other property, the apartment in the city of Veliko Tarnovo. 

For the second half of last year, we just stayed in our new house and we got some house-related things sorted out, like the central heating and some new appliances. Although COVID has not been as bad in Bulgaria as it has been in some places, we did not want to get it. We had a nasty chimney fire that was quite scary, as well as eating some mushrooms that could have been fatal.
An intravenous drip, charcoal and many trips to the bathroom 
(Bulgarian hospitals look pretty grotty on the outside and they do not have the latest electronic things that go "ping", but the good news is that the doctors and nurses know their stuff.) We are supposed to be getting our second COVID jabs this month and Irena is hoping to go to the Crimea and see her family this summer. Or maybe in the autumn. 

Well, I do not have much else to report. I think that being retired is a lot better than working. Occasionally I still have nightmares, usually ones that involve long staff meetings and writing endless end-of-term reports. 
St. George's in Sofia
My blog is something that is still getting scribbled occasionally and it has collected more than 70,000 "hits", so I suppose that a few people read it once in a while. 
Mark has now left Egypt and is back in the UK. Jack is now 14, so I hope that he gets another little dog soon. For a while he was having a few problems, but he seems to be back in teaching once again. Whatever happened to the Ruckers, I wonder? Didn't he become the deputy head of a school in Libya, but it all went horribly wrong and they had to do a runner for the airport asap? Probably we will be moving back to our apartment, once the pandemic is more or less over. 
While I would like to make a trip to the UK to see a few old friends, I just do not know when that will happen. 

Best wishes from Bulgaria, 
Simon

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