Heat!

Things have taken several turns for the awesome over the past few days, but before I talk about the ones that don't involve me being warm, I just need to express my gratitude for perhaps the best thing that has happened to me since I got here.

Heat! I has it!

My landlady, messenger of the Almighty that she is, snagged me as I was coming up the stairs from a long, tired day on Friday, and asked if she could come into my apartment to turn my radiators on. You, of course, know what I said. And just in time, because:

Snow fell on Sofia yesterday. Improbably, beautifully, poetically, the snow was falling when I woke up late Sunday morning, and it pretty much made my day twice as nice. It didn't stick, but I loved it anyway; I love what snow does to the world. Winter is, admittedly, not my favorite season, as I've come to prefer almost anything to the cold. But when it snows, I can overlook the miserable temperatures outside. Snow reminds me of the Christmas season descending upon my old home on the East Coast--don't worry about that fact that it's mid-October--and it means the time for lights and festivity is coming. I hate winter; I love the Holidays.

It wasn't actually snowing that hard, but man, does this picture look epic.

I'm dreaming of a white Halloween.

So, staring out my window for a few minutes while the first flakes of Winter fell--don't worry about the fact that it just turned into Fall three weeks ago--I got all warm and fuzzy inside. It really put me in the mood for cupcakes. 

So, I went and got some. And while I was out, the foolish novel idea struck me to make soup. From scratch. Have I ever done that before? No. But the snow really put me in the mood for that, too. 

And so, while my laundry hung out to dry in the bedroom, I spent two hours committing culinary acts that would make Paula Dean cry in the pursuit of one lousy batch of tomato soup. I won't post a picture because, to be fair, it didn't look appetizing in the least, but it tasted much better than it looked, so while the snow fell, I dined on homemade soup and crackers. Let it never be said that my domesticity won't elevate me to top-notch marriage material someday.

Working backwards: Saturday was another mostly lazy day, though the night was fantastic. I went out to dinner with some interns at the Danish, Norwegian, French, and Belgian Embassies at one of the nicer Greek restaurants in town. Aside from my love of Greek food, it was a great time getting to know still more cool people, and was made the more notable for the fact that the waiters didn't speak Bulgarian; rather, they were Greek, but, thankfully, completely fluent in English. After the restaurant, we headed to a rock and roll bar, where I heard more hard rock in three hours than I had in the past five years. So after an extremely enjoyable night of dancing to Metallica--yes, it can be done--I headed home to my warm (!) apartment.

It was a good weekend. This week will see me do more research, reach out to some people with knowledge on the Shopi, go to Pernik on Wednesday for the folk festival in honor of Sv. Ivan Rilski's Day, clean my apartment, and on Friday, Laura comes to visit for the weekend. Let's get it done. Честит първи сняг!