Bulgaria with Noodles

Yes, the never-ending battle of my Chinese Police Certificate is still going on and it does not look as though it will be over for a few more weeks. As well as taking up big chunks of my time, it is also rather expensive. I have been working hard on writing lots of PowerPoint presentations (ppts) because the headmaster at St. George’s wants me to be involved in Professional Development (PD). So far I have written ppts about Assessment for Learning (AFL), Design and Technology , Robotics , Flash Cards , Gifted and Talented Students (G & T) and How to write a PowerPoint ! The ppt about G & T students is rather good. One of my better efforts, in fact. I did not realize that I had some many photos of my students doing all sorts of interesting things. In some ways I am quite looking forward to doing some PD at St. George’s. Doing some PD yourself ought to be a lot more fun than listening to some of the dreadful so-called PD that I had to endure at GOS. The principal was add...

Red peppers, mushrooms and pieces of sausage There is one bad memory that I have that is to do with China. This bad memory is to do with the Chinese Embassy here in Sofia. The first time I went to get our Z visas, more than five years ago, it was a disaster. I queued for ages, but they would not even let me into the building. Finally the guard sent me away and told me to come back on another day. Great! It took me about an hour and a half to get to the Chinese Embassy from our villa in Kalotina. Eventually I did manage to get inside, but I had to queue up at five o’clock in the morning. There were already seventeen people ahead of me in the queue and some of them had been there all night. Finally, I did get into the building, at about eleven o’clock, and the Chinese official who looked at all of my papers scrutinised every line of every document. When she had finished, she went through them all again.  The petchka in action I did, however, score one or two little point...

On the way to Stefan and Poly's villa. Poly and Stefan are Bulgarian friends of ours. They have a small villa along "the Drunks' Road", the old cobbled road that used to be the main highway between Sofia and Belgrade. It was my old friend Peter Adams that gave the name to this neglected country road. Perhaps he gave it this title because we were usually inebriated after visiting Stefan or maybe because this is just about the only road where you could drive "under the influence" and not be a danger to anyone, except perhaps to yourself.  At the market in Dimitrovgrad. I think that we must have known them for about thirteen or fourteen years, as we got to know them soon after we bought the villa in Kalotina. (Stefan used to be a diplomat and I have known him to carry on multiple and simultaneous conversations in English, French and Russian.) Last Friday, we went with them over the border into Serbia, to Dimitrovgrad, as it was the market day. ...