Bulgaria with Noodles

The end of the semester is not the easiest of times.  First I had three (yes, three) separate trips to the bank, in order to send a pile of cash to our account in Bulgaria. As readers of my previous post, Don’t Bank On It, will already know, a visit to a bank in China comes near the bottom of my “Fun Things To Do” list, just above going to the dentist or having brain surgery. Each little trip to the bank took at least an hour and the first two were unsuccessful. It was a case of third time lucky, after an epic hour-and-a-half, plus the obligatory question, “Where is your old passport?” (Well, I have now had my current passport for four and a half years. That makes my “new” passport quite old, doesn’t it?) The heart of the problem, when transferring money abroad from China, is that the bank wants to know that you have earned the money legitimately and paid tax on it. Then Irena had her most interesting modeling assignment to date. 2,000 RMB is more than two hundred ...

  For several weeks, Irena has been feeling unwell. She has been waking up in the morning with swelling on her forehead, face, lips and throat. Usually the swellings gradually fade away after a couple of days. Near Coco Park As well as the physical discomfort and the embarrassment, she has found it difficult to plan anything, as she never knows when these swellings are going to come back. For a long time, we thought that perhaps the swellings were caused by some sort of allergic reaction, but we really did not know what was causing the problem. Irena does not have much faith in doctors anyway and she had already been to the clinic once about this problem. Finally, this morning I managed to persuade her to give the medical profession one more go.   The Ping An skyscraper. It's big. Green Oasis School gives all of its teachers and their families free medical insurance through the Ping An group, so our visit to the Chiho clinic should not cost us anything. Mor...

The view from balcony of our villa in Kalotina, BG Why is this blog called Bulgaria with Noodles ? Well, at moment we are here in Shenzhen (SZ) and then, next summer, we will be moving back to Bulgaria. In the meantime, I bore to death all of my unfortunate colleagues at Green Oasis School by telling them about that country in SE Europe. Although physically I am still in southern China, my heart is in Bulgaria. As this is now my fifth year in the Middle Kingdom, maybe you would like to read one or two points of comparison and contrast between the two countries. Noodles, at last! Firstly, food. I am sure that all of my Chinese friends would agree that food ought to come first. Chinese food is, well, okay. Eating out is cheap in China. I am writing this after having eaten lunch in the Green Oasis cafeteria. For a school lunch, it was not bad. Yes, there are some particularly annoying things about haute cuisine Chinoise , such as the strange concept that a chicken’s head, fat,...