Imen Den

This week has been kickin' my ass. I have been trying to recover from my four day New Years Marathon and this is the week that work starts to pick up. On top of that, I have been to so many Na Gosti's(guest party's) because of peoples Imen Den's(name day's). A name day is a religious holiday Bulgarians celebrate. Every Bulgarian has a day when their name is associated with the name of a Saint. Sometimes this day is bigger then their birthday. This week the name days for Jordon and Atanassov, and of course all the derivitives of these, were celebrated on Thursday and Friday respectivley. At these little Na Gosti's drinking is pratically a requirement.

Yesterday I was about to leave work when someone said, "Haiday Matyoo" because there was a Name day party in the cellar bar. "Ah man", I thought. For them these parties are a time to relax, but for me it's work. I have to listen hard when someone is talking to me and try to understand what they're saying. Then I have to figure out how to respond. And of course once I got down there that one lady grabbed me to dance. I guess there is a little joke that she likes me because everybody was kidding me and my counterpart was trying to hook me up with her. But she's too old for me. I don't know how old she is, but it doesn't matter once they hit thirty. The PCV's joke about how Bulgarian women are gorgeous until they hit 30, then the ugly stick gets them. And it's true. Ah, I had fun anyway. It is nice to be the center of attention.

The night before I went to a Na Gosti for another Imen Den and stayed out till 2am. Rise and shine for work at 8am. The good thing about these Na Gosti's is that I don't have to worry about dinner. The bad thing is they last so long. I was there for 8 hours. At one point in the night they sang some old Bulgarian songs and then they wanted me to sing. They said, "Sing something country." So I sang the Gambler by Kenny Rogers. He he! They enjoyed it.

So now it's the weekend and I want to go out. Maybe visit some of those bars I talked about in Plovdiv. But I should probably set this weekend out.