Life as an Actress

Words of the week:
котка (kotka) - cat
заека (zaeka) - rabbit

Well, I went from a flood of blogs and writing every week to not writing for two months... or has it been three? A lot has happened I'm sure, but it doesn't really seem like it to me. I've tried to travel a lot, but I don't think a single trip I've planned has worked out. Three times I tried to visit a waterfall near Lovech, once I tried to go on a canoe trip, once to the Black Sea, once on a camping trip with friends, and I had hoped to go to Croatia in September with some other friends, but I can't seem to get any specifics to plan the trip. Well, in two weeks I will finally be able to go on one trip. I'll be going back to Romania with some youth volunteers that I work with for a week long program. The topic will be using the media to fight discrimination. It should be interesting, and it's a great opportunity for my kids to travel and meet people from other countries. I'm hoping that they really like it, and I'm sure I will, too. But really I'd like to travel for vacation some time and see parts of Bulgaria I've never seen. Hopefully I'll be able to do more of that at the end of the summer. We'll see.

Well, since I haven't been able to travel, I've been finding other interesting things to do here in Lovech. This last week I took part in a big theatrical production that was pretty interesting. There's a castle ruins in my town, and the municipality has created a stage up there. They then invited a lot of different groups in Lovech (including the youth volunteers I work with) to participate in big event that re-creates Bulgaria in the first century. We didn't use just the stage for this production, but the whole castle. There were war battles and soldiers on horseback, soldiers invading the castle by climbing the walls, the crowning of a new king, traditional dancing, and fireworks at the end. I played the role of a Bulgarian village woman. Luckily, I had no lines to say. There were about 100 of us who were just doing things that village people do. It was a lot of fun with the grandmas knitting and the little kids running around, and I with my volunteer friends helped to cook and then we did each other's hair and hooted at and talked about the young soldiers walking by. Our scene was about 5 minutes.

At the rehearsals we had a lot of down time, so we took some really amazing pictures of each other at the castle (it may be one of my favorite places in Lovech because it's beautiful there, though the two parks in Lovech are beautiful, too). And we met a lot of other people. The grandmas were all really cute and thought I was Bulgarian and were trying to marry me off to their grandchildren.

We also got some really great pictures while we were all in costume, and we really looked like a village of traditional Bulgarians. We had so much fun taking pictures! And at the end, the community loved the production so much and there were so many people that some had to be turned away, so the municipality decided to have the production one more time this Thursday. It should be fun!

In other news, I should tell you all that I have adopted a cat! Her name's Zaeka, which means rabbit in Bulgarian. She's small and loves to cuddle, which suits me perfectly. I love sitting with her and petting her while I read. Playing with cats is much different from playing with dogs, though. I'm having to learn how to play with a cat. I get the feeling that I'm an unsatisfactory play mate... she seems to get bored really quickly and prefers to play with and eat my hand more than the toys. But she's learning that my hand is not a toy, and otherwise, she still loves to cuddle. If any of you cat people have any suggestions about how to play with a cat and how to help her not be bored, let me know!