My google analytics reported 13 visits from Pelotas, Brazil yesterday.
So Pelotas, tell me about yourself. Who are you, why are you visiting my blog? I’m just curious.
Ok, all the paperworks is submitted, all the ‘last minute details’ have been taken care of, and my long-term visa application to stay in Bulgaria has been submitted.
The people at the Bulgarian embassy here in Washington D.C. were nice to me, were helpful, and they left me with the impression that because I’m a spouse of a Bulgarian citizen that there should be no further difficulties in granting me the long-term visa.
Of course, 30-40 days must pass, sigh. They told me that I should expect my visa to be available on or about August 1 of this year.
Which works out for me pretty well. My parent’s 52nd anniversary is on August 3rd, so I’ll be staying here … well there in Longview until at least then so I can celebrate it with them. Hopefully within the week I’ll be flying one-way to Sofia.
Now begins the wait.
Yes, I’m back in Texas. Longview to be exact. My Bulgarian adventure continues from the US this time.
I’ll be traveling to Washington D.C. this Sunday afternooon, arriving 12:30 am in the morning. I’ll spend the next day or two pushing my paperwork through the Bulgarian embassy, about a 15 minute walk from the condo my friends own. They have been nice enough to allow me to stay there for a couple of days (thanks Jeff, Don, and Dave).
In the meantime, I bought a new Canon PowerShot SX10 IS. I already own the PowerShot S5 IS (I think that’s the model) and I’ve always been quite happy with the colors you can get, especially daytime colors on the Foliage setting. But one thing I didn’t like was the inability to get really good closeups, with really sharp focus.
I took some experimental closeups of the flowers and bugs in my parent’s yard.
Here’s a closeup of my cat, Tonka, after I woke him from still another nap on the front porch.
And here’s a closeup of a dragonfly
I’m in Sofia, staying at the Best Western out near the airport.
I have to get up at 5am tomorrow, to begin my 22 hour “return” flight to Tyler TX. It’s a bit odd, calling this a return flight, since the start of this trip was back on March 10.
Anyway, here’s the schedule. Ain’t it wonderful?
Return Saturday, June 6, 2009
United Airlines 9296 Economy | Boeing 737-500 Passenger (735) | 2hr 25min | 868 milesOperated by: DLH LUFTHANSA — LH 3489. Please check in with the operating carrier.
Depart: 6:20am Sofia, Bulgaria Sofia (SOF) Arrive: 7:45am Frankfurt, Germany Frankfurt International (FRA) Seat: 6F | Seat is pending airline approval | View/change seats |Change planes. Time between flights: 2hr 55min
United Airlines 8864 Economy | Airbus Industrie A340 (340) | 10hr 50min | 5130 milesOperated by: DLH LUFTHANSA — LH 438. Please check in with the operating carrier.
Depart: 10:40am Frankfurt, Germany Frankfurt International (FRA) Arrive: 2:30pm Dallas/Fort Worth, TX Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) Seat: 20A | Seat is confirmed | View/change seats |Change planes. Time between flights: 5hr 40min
American Airlines 3549 Economy | Embraer RJ145 (ER4) | 45min | 98 milesOperated by: AMERICAN EAGLE. Please check in with the operating carrier.
Depart: 8:10pm Dallas/Fort Worth, TX Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) Arrive: 8:55pm Tyler, TX Tyler Pounds Field (TYR) Seat: 14C | Seat is confirmed | View/change seats |Total duration: 22hr 35min | Total miles: 6096 miles
I’m going to take a day trip to Sinemorets this weekend, stay tuned for pictures.
haven’t had much to say lately, have I?
Well, late spring is on in Burgas, the sea garden is quite beautiful, it’s an enjoyable experience to walk through it and see the local people enjoying themselves. Young parents with their children, people my age walking together, older people sitting on the park benches and just enjoying the spring. What a wonderful place to be 
I’m still taking Bulgarian lessons from Zlatina and enjoying that very much. We have become friends, I’m helping her give english tests to the children at her school and she’s giving me these lessons and we’re kind of calling it even on that.
Lately we’ve been having a late lunch at the Burgas Ethnographic Museum, we spend half our time on the lesson and half our time just chatting like friends.
I’ve had a recent success with the people at the University of Zurich regarding their open source software - I’ve helped them redesign their application build environment using Maven, until recently using Ant. Other people there took it, went with it, did there own redesign and so on.
I just love it, here I am, a man from California, living in Burgas Bulgaria, contributing to software designed and maintained at the Univeristy of Zurich in Switzerland, that software being used by people around the world. It’s good to be a human on this planet. It’s good to have friends in far locations.
It’s just good.
Well, today something happened. The pictures tell the story.
Photos
http://www.burgas.bg/en/news/details/1/3186
The national exhibition of flowers “Flora 2009” will be held April 22 – May 3 at the Sea Garden of Burgas. Parallel to it there will be honey and bee products fair going on.
The Municipality of Burgas has sent invitations for participation to many Bulgarian and foreign companies and it is still open for new applications. To get further information about the exhibition or submit an application for participation, please call 056 / 84 18 78 (Landscaping Department, Burgas Municipality).
“Flora 2009” will open on April 22nd, 16.00 h.
A beautiful sunny and windy day in Burgas in today. We walked to the sea garden just to get away from the computers for a time, and what to our wondering eyes should appear but 10,000 flowers everywhere, an entire day set aside for Flowers.
The wind was coming in from off the Black Sea, something I’ve seldom seen here. Choppy waves on the shore, it even changed the color of the water from it’s normal sea-blue to a kind of turquoise-azure, you can see it in the pictures.
Wish you were here to enjoy it with me. You have to love spring in Burgas
Yes folks, I’m home in Burgas. And it is home, you know? I’ve made this little city my home and I feel happy here.
Had another Bulgarian language lesson with Zlatina today, helped her out with some of her Bulgarian students. Very bright people, these children of Bulgaria seemed quite determined to add English to their repertoire.
This coming friday Nedda and I have a skype conversation planned with some people from the University of Zurich, the authors of OLAT. Basically we’re going to help them mavenize their project, currently the primary module OLAT3 is only built with ant. We’re going to contribute to this open source project, always a good feeling don’t you know.
We’re leaving for a 2-3 day trip to Sofia today, sometime today I think. We’re going to try to arrange for my Bulgarian Marriage, so I can stay here and work.
This mean signing papers, visiting embassies … and while we’re there we’ll just visit Sofia too.
Going to be staying at the Hemus Hotel, from what I’ve read online it should cost 79 лв per day. At today’s exchange rate that’s about $54/day.
Here’s something useful I can tell you: go to google, type in “79BGN=?USD” … you’ll get the … well here, let me google that for you.
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