So yes, I"m back in Bulgaria, back at The Sofia Echo, and very happy to be here. I returned last Saturday to an apartment covered in dust, due to some minor repairs undertaken by my landlord (now I will not trip over the lifting-up linoleum! now there is tiling on the once-crumbling balcony ledge!), so decided to make use of a few free hours and clean: I even bought a mop. And scrubbed down all the walls and the floor and the cabinets. This is a good thing!

Now, it"s back to work and life here in Sofia.

Greece, though trying, was a good thing: gave me time to evaluate where I"m going, showed the faithfulness of God, improved my Bulgarian language for sure!

Got notice Wednesday afternoon, took the night train to Thessaloniki last night, picked up my visa this morning (after sleeping a bit at Hotel Rex, where I"m staying tonight -- btw, the employees here are very kind and the location is ideal), and taking the early train out tomorrow to... Sofia. Yes, I guess that I"m happy!

Идва от колега ми сряда: Имаш виза! (Той е приятел на адвоката ми.) И сега, съм в Солун, пияки гръцко кафе в хотелската си стая (мерси на милите работници в Hotel Rex!) с... една българска виза! Законна съм! Утре сутринта (рано-рано) отивам с влака до София. Три месеца е дълго време да си навън.

Films watched in the past two weeks:
--Babel (directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and written by Guillermo Arriaga; interesting; makes me want to move to either Morocco or Japan)
--Charlotte Gray (Gillian Anderson! She of Little Women; also a good film)
--Hollywood Ending (Woody Allen; cute)
--Old School (тъп, but funny)
--some film by Ken Loach about the Spanish Revolution, but I only got half way through that; half of it was in Spanish and the only subtitles available were in Greek. Plus, it was too much of a battle film.
--Ararat (a 2002 film directed, written, and co-produced by Atom Egoyan about the Armenian Genocide) --a really cool French crime film from the early "80s
--Le Gloire de mon pere (d"Yves Robert, adapte des souvenirs d"enfance de Marcel Pagnol )

Yesterday, Elena and I went to the shore, down near the last stop of the A3/B3 buses in Glyfada. A nice little beach, with clean water, warm but not too, and not crowded. Across the bay, I saw a пространство (a stretch, what, but the Bulgarian fits better) of white umbrellas, and decided to swim there. So I did. Calm water, no boats, no people in that area, either. It took about 45 minutes. Almost there, I saw that it was blocked off by netting on boueys, so I swam under, and got scratched. Then, out on the shore, I saw that I was bleeding. Oh well. And walked out of the private "aqua park" (10€ for a day at la plage? goodness) and took the road home, or back to our beach. I should have counted the number of honks I received. "Twould be amusing. :::::::::: It was a good day.

I do not understand how people here feed the pigeons. It is so gross: they toss them starchy food bits, and the pigeons flock, and it is so gross. These birds with their beady orange eyes, dotted black; scrawny necks; deformed legs; brazen audacity towards humans. Euf. Disgusting. Why would anyone want a comemorative photo with a flock of these rats with wings?

Still in Athens. I"ve developed a routine: wake up, go on a walk, go to Syntagma and go online, go home, have lunch, wait till it"s cool enough or late enough to do something. Do something. Have dinner. Read or watch TV. Go to bed. Yeah. :::::::::::: Some variation is involved. ::::::::::: Now that I"ve started freelancing for Athens News, at least there is something for me to do, interview Bulgarians, what, about their miserable exploited lives here in Greece. :::::::::: Get hit on by guys :::::::::: Watch TV5 Monde (not bad, actually, and it helps my french comprehension) :::::::::::: I"m amused by greek workds like "lefko" (white), and how the "igrek" (what looks like an english letter "y"), when written in lower case, looks like an english letter "u", hence english words like "leukemia" (should be "lefkimia") and so on. :::::::::: Also amusing: "igrek", "i-greque", etc, ie, the French name for the letter "y": it means: "a greek "i"". Spiffy, eh? ::::::::::: If I cannot speak greek, at least I can understand it sufficiently, if I feel like playing along. If not, I just leave the place when someone addresses me in greek. If I lived with greek people, we"d probably, by now, be having basic conversations in greek. Instead, I"m learning arabic.

Too many things are not yet, so I will not write them here. ::::::::: (an attempt at a paragraph break) ::::::::: It"s 10 degrees cooler today. I watched Babel last night, and enjoyed it. It made me want to move to Mexico.