birthdays

i can't remember if i have written about this or not so will share again.  in B it's custom to give chocolate on your birthday and very rude if you don't take the chocolate offered to you.  this i may have mentioned but did i mention its customary for the bday person to buy dinner??  yes that's right, the bday girl/boy buys the dinner if you happen to go out to eat to celebrate your bday.  in addition to birthdays, which are kind of a recent celebration for B, there are also name days.  name days are days of certain saints and if your name is the same as the various saints then you get to celebrate on that day too.  name days are a little bit more popular than bdays.  o if you happen to have a bday and invite all your friends out to dinner you better be prepared to pick up the tab!  as you can imagine this could pose quite a sticky predicament for an unknowing birthday person!  now on to some revalations ive had without even thinking twice or stopping to think about what was happening.  just this afternoon i realized i can hold a conversation with people AND THEY CAN UNDERSTAND ME!!  excuse me while i take a moment to celebrate.  YEA FOR ME!!  anyway i realized today, it just kinda hit me and i'm not sure why now, that people for the most part, maybe even more than that but i'm not holding my breath, know and understand what i'm saying!  now i still run into those turkish speakers who have no idea, and vise versa, what i'm saying but for the most part i can hold a conversation and be understood.  i guess i'm mainly talking about the people i deal with on a daily basis and talk to regularly.  for example just this afternoon i had 2 meetings, well one was a phone conversation, by myself and was understood by them and also i understood.  ivan, with the corps and one of the yd trainers, is coming for a visit and so i told the principal of the eng school.  i then realized that i work for the kindergarten and mayor too and maybe shoul let hem know as well about the visit.  i had a meeting with the principal of the kindergarten, by myself i might add, AND called the mayor to let them both know.  y bulg-eng dictionary is still with me the majority of the time but i'm relying on it less and less.   just this afternoon after work i was having a conversation, that alone i think is incrediable, with some teachers in the eng school and they were asking about the corps, the process, and other things like that and i think i got my point across.  if i didn't and you are reading this Tadzhenur, don't tell me they didn't understand; just let me have this one  woke up this am with what i thought was pink eye.   emailed the pc dr and asked about what to do.  thru the course of the day it got better and now i think i'm suffering from a very bad mosquito bits!   don't know where they come from but they find their way into my house and those kinds of ghostis i don't like!  love to all!