First Recent Non-Wales-Related Entry

Life's good otherwise (other than missing Wales, that is). At this time, I don't have many assignments due right away, so I managed to do some side things such as write blog entries or run a bit in the morning. Iliana, one of my Bulgarian friends, is coming to London on Wednesday, so I'll hang out with her at the end of this week (YAAAY, we haven't seen each other for sooo long!!). She'll leave on the 31st of March, which unfortunately means she'll miss my birthday by two days :( Oh well, we can celebrate early.. We'll simply ignore the Bulgarian belief that if you celebrate your birthday early, it's bad luck. That's just an example of how pessimistic Bulgarians are :)

Birthday plans - hmm, writing a paper, preparing for a sociology test, eating cafeteria food... Mmm :S Haha, we'll see. It's a busy time of the year (ok, that kind of contradicted what I said above, but the truth is, I do have work to do, only it's not due till the end of April, so right now the spirit of work-ahead-of-time is having a hard time dealing with the spirit of procrastination :)

Anyway, next weekend (April 5 - 11th) my parents will be coming over to London for the first time! That should be fun! :) I'm excited! That pretty much means that I have to cross those days off my study calendar as I doubt I'll be able to get much work then, but I'll have plenty of things to do before then such as clean up my room, prepare some luggage for mom and dad to take back to Bulgaria, prepare an agenda for what sights we should see here and so on... :) And study in the mean time... It'll be fun! That probably means I won't be writing blog entries for a while (though you're probably used to not seeing as many blog entries recently)... As soon as I get a chance, I'll update this.

Until then, I leave you with a cartoon of a horse I did and with a random self-portrait :) I love you and miss you all!

Wales, Spring Break #4: Horses

Beauty out in the field

Rocio and Beauty

Jess and Beauty

Shadow and I

Rocio and Trixie

Shadow bowing for us

Saphire up close and shadow behind her

Beauty doing her little bow

Shadow demonstrating flexibility (and hunger :)

Shadow and I

Gella and Robbie

Gella and Robbie cantering

Conquer

Melody in a funny photo

Justina, Melody, and I

This is the fourth and final post of Wales I'll do, but believe me, it's one of the most special ones! :)

As I mentioned before, Justina is a true horse lover and we would talk about horses and especially Andalusians all the time. Horses always make me extra hyper as I'm so happy being close to them, so you can imagine that when Justina took me to the horse riding place so that I could just take some photos of horses, I was the happiest person in the world :D Not only did I get to take pictures, but I also got to groom both Melody (Justina's current horse) and Robbie (the horse that Gella's taking care of now). I had never done so much horse grooming in my life and I couldn't stop smiling! :) The mere fact that I was surrounded by horses made me feel in heaven. My imagination was galloping wild :) while my camera was taking shot after shot after shot. It was wonderful! This was the pre-story of my whole cooking mayhem - there was a reason for me to be overly excited ;)


Three days later, on Saturday, Justina organized a ride for us at her friend's stables. Can you imagine I was super excited once again?! So excited, in fact, that I managed to forget my camera in the house, so we had to go back just so that I could grab it and take tons of pictures it afterwards... :) We went to the stables at 12 pm and once again had to groom horses. This time, we were taking care of Trixie and Beauty. Trixie is a show pony, so sweet and well-behaved. Beauty is the cutest fluff-ball-of-a-pony baby horsy creature in the world! She's all black and has her long winter coat on which makes her so soft and cuddly! We all loved the two ponies. Rocio even French-platted Beauty's mane - and that was just too cute! :D While we were grooming the two ponies, Ingrid, Justina's friend and owner of the horses, came back from a hack with Shadow (the Welsh cob I got to ride) and Saphire (another gorgeous mare that Ingrid's daughter rides). We were now ready to go for our ride. Rocio got on Trixie, and I rode Shadow. Justina and Ingrid were leading the two ponies so that they wouldn't run off in the field with us uncontrollably wobbling on top of them. We walked around Ingrid's field, took some good shots, trotted a bit, and then took the horses back to the stables for some more grooming. That riding experience made me even happier (if that was possible:). The only thing I regretted was that I had apparently lost training... It was only during the final trot that all I once knew started coming back to me. With that, the desire to go back to Bulgaria and pursue horse riding to the max during the summer also came back :) So that's my plan :) I was a happy camper on cloud nine (i.e. I was experiencing total bliss) that day! It was such a superb experience! :D


As we got back in the car to go back home, I wasn't as excited any more... I knew that I had a paper to finish up for one of my art classes - due in 2 days. How could I sit down and write a paper after such a great day?? Thankfully, we got some more excitement - namely, going to Justina's horseful :) house to do some computer-related stuff; and then having dinner fell into the category of fun things.


I did get to write my paper, on Sunday morning, between 8 and 10 am - I didn't get a lot of sleep, but at least I didn't waste a minute of my final hours in Wales :) Luckily, I got to go to the stables once more to help Gella take care of Robbie, which once again made me want to ride horses and move to Wales and all of that.

Well, when we came back, we chatted for a while until Pookie made us our final, amazing Welsh/Bahamian meal. We ate the food, took some for back home, and reluctantly dragged our suitcases towards the cars parked outside. It was supposed to snow, but that forecast never came true :'( (except for at 3 am that night when I was finishing up my load of laundry back at Richmond). It was time to say goodbye and I was ready to miss a week of school and stay longer, but alas, it was not possible. Plus, I couldn't live a week without Jess and Rocio :) So that was the end of our Welsh experience. It was the best vacation ever! I'll never forget how kind and amazing Pookie, Justina, and everyone else was!

PS: Here are the links to all my pictures again... :)

Wales - Spring Break - most photos
My first visit to the stables with Justina

Wales, Spring Break #3: Food

Everyone at the Bahamian dinner. Left to right: Tonia, Jess, Gella, Rocio, Justina, and Pookie

Cousinly love

Gorgeous Gella

Right, so there's no way I'll write this entry without mentioning food. After all, cooking proved to be quite an exciting task for some people, cough, cough.



As college students, we have trained our taste buds to ignore the gross taste (or lack of taste) of cafeteria food, yet once a real tasty meal is put in front of us, our taste buds go wild and enjoy every bit of it! Therefore, we were absolutely delighted by all the tasty meals we had in Wales. Pookie is a great cook! Well, I decided that it was only right for me to return the favor in a way and prepare a Bulgarian meal for the entire family one night. It was a good idea, but its execution was somewhat extreme and way more eventful than I originally planned. What I wanted to make was Shopska salad (can a Bulgarian meal go without it??), tarator (cold cucumber and yoghurt soup - delicious in the summer), and fried potatoes and meatballs (not a great example of a traditional Bulgarian meal, but still a good, easy to make, usually universally tasty dish).



I started off enthusiastically (I was hyper that day - you'll know why in the next post - ah, tension! haha). My first task was to chop up the cucumber for the tarator. I hate chopping cucumbers, yet I didn't want to grate it since it tastes better chopped (in my opinion). I was chopping and dicing until I got annoyed and decided to split the last piece of cucumber into two and eat the two halves. I put them both in my mouth, chewed one of them fine, but I didn't seem to quite chew the second piece. "Fine then, stubborn piece," I told it, "if you're not gonna be chewed, I'll simply swallow you - see how you like that!" I swallowed it, yet there was something wrong - it only went halfway down my throat and didn't want to move. I tried pushing it down with my fingers from outside my throat, but it still wouldn't move. I was trying to act all cool, you know, hah, I can swallow it, it's ok, I just need to take a breath and, you know, try again. This is where I began to panic... I couldn't take a breath! I couldn't speak - nothing! As if my entire throat was vaccuumed! Whoops... I slowly turned to Justina, who was also in the kitchen, but she didn't know that I was having a fight with a piece of cucumber. When I looked at her and she looked at me, I didn't know how exactly to tell her what was wrong so I just made a desperate look and stomped with my foot (apparently, I had missed Choking 101: when choking, you should point at your throat, or simply embrace your throat with your hands - hellooo!). Thankfully, Justina quickly reached the conclusion that I was indeed running out of breath (I was changing colors :), and she rushed to me, made me bend over, gave me some instructions on what to do, and was just about to perform the Heimlich maneuveur when I managed to spit the stupid cucumber out of my throat and into my mouth, take a breath, and then somehow managed to swallow the darn piece again! This time, however, it was only for a short, short time, since I knew how to get rid of it, and I was no longer panicking - I was angry at the piece! Eventually, it ended up in the trash can. Justina was trembling, I was laughing and shaking, and thinking what could have happened if she hadn't been there... Whew. That was so extreme! It was the first time I ever choked and I'm happy it wasn't the last one :) Justina saved my life for which my mom and I are very grateful ;)



Now, if this was a reasonable situation, things would have stopped there. After all, it's not every day that a person almost chokes to death... However, my bad cooking luck still haunted me. I was already on the final stage - frying the potatoes. Pookie has a gas stove - something I am not used to... Where there's a gas stove, there's flame... Where there's flame, there's always the random chance that while trying to get the potatoes out of the frying pan, one would set the napkin which is meant to absorb the grease at the bottom of the bowl where the potatoes go on fire (that was a long sentence, but it was true - guess who managed to start a mini-fire? -That's right, me!). Rocio and Gella were in the kitchen helping me, and while I was rushing to the sink to put out the burning napkin, they were cracking up! :) The fire was out, yet all the smoke rose and spread throughout the entire kitchen. Both the door and the windows were closed, so when Jess entered the kitchen a few minutes later, she said we were going to suffocate by all that smoke, so she opened the door. I continued cooking, and a few minutes later, as you could probably guess, the fire alarm went off. At that point, I was so embarrassed and sorry that my good intention dinner was turning into a disaster. Thankfully, Pookie and the others looked at the bright side of things - at least now they knew the alarm worked.



In the end, we ate slightly burned potatoes, slightly dry meatballs, slightly saltless tarator, and a good Shopska salad - but everyone was polite enough to say they liked the meal :)



Now I have to mention a second dinner which took much longer to prepare but was so worth it! Pookie treated us to a Bahamian dinner. That was so delicious, plus it was deprived of any accidents whatsoever. We had a special potato salad, coleslaw salad, chicken, coconut rice, punsh, and a pasta bake... Mmmmmm, tons of food, but SO good!!! I was really impressed and am considering moving to the Bahamas some day :) Another special feature of the Bahamian night was a whole dance session which included classics such as 'killing the roach', 'exuma', and 'feeling hot, hot, hot' - Charlie's specialty :D



It was lovely and was definitely one of the best culinary memories I have :)

Wales, Spring Break #2: Culture

Pookie wanted us to see as many points of interest in Wales as possible. She and Tonia were taking us places every day, which we thoroughly enjoyed. We got to see remains of a Roman palace and barracks in Newport. It reminded me of the Roman ruins in Plovdiv, one Bulgarian city. It was interesting looking through the remains, but there was one main problem: why, oh, why did it have to be annoying-primary-school-kid-monsters' field trip day?? We were surrounded by them! Hoards of children! Aaaaa! (That's not over-reacting at all ;) Charlie, the poor pup, was going crazy, as he wanted to follow the kids' voices. In the mean time, we wanted Charlie to listen to us and smile for the camera: I was giving him a photo-shoot. In the end, the smarter ones (meaning, of course, us) left the battle and fled away from the kids. Charlie was enjoying it all, though.

The Roman remains (with a few kids in the background)

Charlie jumping through the barracks

Puppy encounters

We also went to downtown Newport for a few hours to look at some of the main attractions there. We visited the museum there and were planning of going in the art gallery, but that was closed for some reason. Instead, we went to a local bookstore and mentally bought some books.

Did you know that there are only 6 transporter bridges in the world, and the biggest, best, and only one still operating is the transporter bridge in Newport? We went to see that famous bridge, but it, too, was closed because of some construction works. Nonetheless, we got a special tour of the small bridge museum by this funny Welsh guy who was in love with the steel construction. Despite telling us the entire history of the bridge, he had fun teasing Rocio because she apparently has a mischevious twin in Newport, and he also made the most random jokes which, if I could understand, were clearly examples of Welsh humor :)

Transporter bridge

The bridge by night

Pookie, Jess, Rocio, Charlie, and I in front of the bridge (at night)

Tonia was out with us for two days. The first time she took us to the Brecon Beacons (a Welsh mountain range) where Rocio, Jess, and I went on a little hike that could have cost us our lives at several points :) Hehe, it wasn't scary, but we had to go through some slippery creeks and walk through unexplored terrains - that was fun! :) I also took up the role of a scout in the end and went ahead to check the route which we had to take to go back to civilization. In the mean time, Jess and Rocio had their wedding portrait taken on top of the hill we were climbing. The random thing was that there was a motor-bikers' convention or something right where we parked our car - and there was nothing there, only hills, bikes, our car, and a burger stand. Charlie had fun sniffing bikers... When we left the Beacons, we were just driving around which gradually made me sleepy. Yes, I discovered that unless I was driving, I was bound to fall asleep (especially in the back seat).

Charlie, the fearless leader, Tonia, Jess, and Rocio

Our second adventure with Tonia was a visit to Big Pit which is an abandoned coal mine that was turned into a mining museum recently. That was exciting and a bit awkward since we were 4 girls in the company of about 20 old, old men... but anyway... Walking around the mine was fun; imagining how people used to work there for long, exhausting hours and how there would be gas explosions and such was scary. The part that frustrated me the most, however, related to the fact that there used to be horses living in the mine; 72 horses with only 6 people caring for them. The animals would spend the entire YEAR underground with only a short two-week break :( What's more, once the horses got older and slightly slower, the miners would not let them be free somewhere on a field, but would simply shoot them! Grr! That made me so sad :'( I'm glad I wasn't a horse back then... At least later that day as we were driving around the mine area, we saw a herd of wild horses by the side of the road and I took some pictures which made my day :)

Big Pit (air view) - we were actually undeground; beyond what you see...

Pookie also took us to the Welsh Ethnic museum which consisted of reconstructions of Welsh houses through the ages. It was a good educational trip, once again hindered by the presence of obnoxious teenage students.. ugh :) Finally, we went to Cardiff, the capital of Wales. There, we visited the National Museum of Wales and Cardiff Castle. Both were impressive! The museum had a small dinosaur display (dinosaurs are the best!) and many interactive activities which caught our interest. Sadly, most of the times we would have to watch movies in Welsh which none of us knew how to speak... we still had fun, though. As for Cardiff Castle, I personally recommend that place. It's so vibrantly decorated (in the 19th century Gothic Revival style, with lots of ornaments, golden paint, and animal images) and includes a tour of both the newer parts of the castle (12th-15th century), as well as to the 11th century tower inside the castle's courtyard. Cardiff was a good addition to our Welsh cultural trip, and, as Pookie said, we can't go to a country and not visit the capital (especially when it's 30 mins away from where we were).

Cardiff Castle and the Millenium sports center that we didn't see from up close...

The old tower at Cardiff Castle

The Welsh red dragon (also a good radio station there:)

Three friends climbing up the old tower

A view of the castle's yard and the Millenium center in the distance


No cultural value; this sign simply made me smile :)

Wales, Spring Break #1

If there's one thing I remember about this Spring Break, it's that it was the most amazing Spring Break I've ever had!! I can't really tell you all how much I loved our stay in Wales... If you don't believe me, just ask random people from my classes when you get the chance. Ask them what I tell them when they inquire how I've been. My reply for the past 10 days has been "I miss Wales!" Hm, I sort of remember feeling the same way after the first time I went to Wales last year, but trust me, the second time was so much better!! According to my rough calculations, I'll keep talking about Wales all the time for about one more week, and then I'll gradually move on. But yeah, it was SO FUN, WONDERFUL, AMAZING, BRILLIANT, SUPER EXCITING, etc, etc, etc, etc. Right.

Technically, it all started when we decided not to go to Barcelona during Spring Break because 1) we already went to Spain once, and 2) we didn't really have enough cash to afford that. This is where dear Jess came into play. She offered that Rocio and I join her in her trip to Wales. She has two aunts there, as well as 3 cousins, and she had already visited them all a couple of times before this break. How could we say 'no' to such a proposition? We bought tickets for the bus to Wales and waited eagerly for the last day of school to come. The moment classes finished, we all rushed to our rooms, packed our bags, and left the school with the intention of returning 9 days later...

We started from Red House, London... And went west to Pookie's place in Wales...
A little bit closer - Newport and Cardiff (capital of Wales)

We got to Victoria station. The trip was easy, except for the fact that I had a huge suitcase full of books, clothes, and random items that I had to take with me, so dragging that around the London streets was pretty much the only drawback of the whole trip. We got on our bus, which was already packed, so we had to sit in separate seats, yet we were fine, we could survive for a few hours only on the battery power of our iPods and MP3 players... This trip definitely started off without any extreme experiences like the ones we endured on our way to Spain ;)

2 hours and 30 mins later, we had crossed the English border and entered Wales. Soon, we stepped on Newport ground. First impression: it was COLD! We had to wait for a few minutes until Tonia, Jessica's cousin, arrived with her car to pick us up. To this day, it remains a mystery how that poor little car beared the weight of my suitcase, plus 4 people, plus two more suitcases (small, but still). The car should receive a medal of honor...

The first picture that we took on Welsh ground

I was, naturally, super excited and hyper! Perhaps Wales works like Red Bull for me... I was talking, laughing, gasping, and commenting on almost everything while we were driving up to the house. A few minutes later, we arrived at Auntie Pookie's house. It's a cute two-storey house in a quiet neighborhood in Newport. The first person to greet us was Charlie, the cutest puppy in the world!! :D He was hyper, too, jumping and running around the house like a little cloud of fluff. I fell in love with him; I'm not sure if that classifies as puppy love or love at first sight... After Charlie was done with his little greeting ritual, we met Pookie, one of Jessica's aunts. She was really friendly and immediately made us feel welcome at her house. She had everything organized and ready for our arrival. All we had to do was empty out our suitcase which dear Daniel had to carry up and down the stairs. Daniel is Tonia's brother and another one of Jessica's cousins. The first evening at the house was dedicated to relaxation, getting to know each other, sitting on comfy couches, feeling the power of holding a remote control in our hands without having other students fighting us over it... Ah, true bliss. Later that evening, we got to meet Justina, Jessica's other aunt, and her daughter, Angelika. Justina is a horse lover which in turn made me very happy :) Gella, a.k.a. Jessica's favorite and most humble cousin ;), was smiling and funny all the time, and was a great addition to our freaky trio. Before I leave off to the next day, I must point out that we had spaghetti for dinner, which was the absolutely most delicious meal we had had in months... Down with cafeteria food, hooray! :)

Pookie's house (and her light turquoise car)

Just like everything else, tomorrow had already been planned. We simply got out of bed, took a shower, ate breakfast, and off we were to Tredegar house. Tredegar house is a mansion situated in a beautiful park where I managed to take pictures of various forms of wildlife, including white fluff-balls jumping over hedges (yes, I'm talking about precious Charlie:). The weather was sunny, a little bit chilly, but either way, we had a great walk and also got to explore a culturally significant place (also the house of some extremely rich people who owned lands all around Newport...). After we left the house, Justina took the four kids in her car and showed us the stables where she and Gella ride horses. At that moment, I wanted to move to Wales and live on those beautiful stable grounds forever, but I still haven't fulfilled that plan of mine. We came back home to another lovely dinner, accompanied by the puppy show Crufts and a particularly amusing 9 year-old Welsh boy whose accent made everyone laugh. Soon, our first day in Newport was over, and we all thought it was the perfect introduction to Wales.

Tredegar house from the air

Troublesome trio ;)

Swan bully - he wouldn't let the poor goose go in the water!

Tredegar house
Gella the Great

Four happy friends

Charlie-Barlie

His famous jump!