Прoшка = Forgiveness

Words of the week:
Прошка
Сирни Заговезни (Sirni Zagovezni) - the last Sunday before Lent



Last Sunday, I spent the day at Nelly's house with her and her family to celebrate a holiday called Proshka, or forgiveness. However, this word is very similar to the word prashka, which means thong. I confused these words, and it made for an interesting week.

Anyway, we all had a wonderful time celebrating and eating lots of food and talking. I usually go to band practice on Sundays at 4, but I was having such a good time that I didn't go. Goshko, Nelly's youngest son, was very excited about playing a special game with a sweet called halva. A small piece of halva was tied to a string and usually this string is tied to a fan so that it will make the halva swing around. But there's no fan in Nelly's apartment, so instead Nelly and Mitko (Nelly's husband) took turns swinging the halva. While it was swinging, the children and I attempted to catch it with our teeth. It's a pretty funny game, as you can imagine!

Sonya mentioned this holiday before when Heather asked if Bulgarians had a holiday like Thanksgiving. Well, there's a lot of similarities between this and Thanksgiving. However, this holiday isn't so much for people to say thank you, but rather for children to ask for forgiveness from their parents. I didn't notice Nelly's children ask for forgiveness, though, but figured maybe they did it when I wasn't there. I thought I'd inquire more about this, so I asked some children that I met with on Friday whether they celebrated Prаshka (which, remember, means thong) and if they asked their parents for forgiveness. Well, the kids were really good and didn't laugh at my mistake, but they all said they forgot to ask their parents for forgiveness. So, I would say that Sirni Zagovezni is like Thanksgiving in that your supposed to think about and say something meaningful, but really it's just a fun time to get together, eat really good food (but not turkey), and watch a really good game (but not football).

Sirni Zagovezni is also the last day before Lent. I was a little surprised about this because we celebrate Lent starting on Ash Wednesday. So I told them about how people in American protestant churches celebrate Lent, and I told them about Fat Tuesday, too. However, my Bulgarian friends are like me in that they know about the 40 day fast of Lent, but we don't really actually fast.