I Was in This Prermaturely Air Conditioned Supermarket...

---

Things I have yet to do in Bulgaria:

* Have a conversation in Bulgarian. It's amazing what can be accomplished with single words, pointing, and the occasional bit of mime.

* Successfully poach an egg. I've tried it in a saucepan over a hot ring, in a boiling kettle, and in a slowly cooling bowl of boiled water. The result has been either pale and watery or hard and lumpy.

* Have sex. Gah.

* Develop a sleeping pattern that doesn't leave me exhausted at 2pm and WIDE AWAKE at 2am.

* Um, teach.

Still, there's hope. Yesterday I drank coffee, got paid and got drunk. all for the first time here. Oh, and this morning I got hungover.

---

Air conditioning is installed in both classrooms, and one of them has electricity - plus whiteboard and tables. We should start advertising after the weekend.

The going rate to pay for English lessons in Montana is two leva per hour. That's eighty pence, the price of a ten minute taxi (Taksi) ride, or a bar of good chocolate. Most people just don't have large amounts of cash to spare.

So you can see why most schools have a "quantity over quality" approach to things.

But before we start lessons I'm going to have to devise a set of tests to estimate how much English the students already know. Most students (who will mostly be children in early teens) will know 100-200 words and very little grammar. They'll be at the level of "Hello, my name is...", "I come from...", "What is your name?"

---

Sometimes the packaging on food tells you what's inside. Sometimes the labeling is useful - "Sol" and "Sardin" aren't hard to work out. But sometimes you're faced with a row of five different types of tinned fish, you don't know your picine species well enough to differentiate the photos, and (as usual) you forgot to bring your dictionary.

So tonight's evening meal will be pasta with...some kind of fish. With some clever orange juice. Yes - "Clever" (pronounced as the English word) is a brand name, covering dozens of basic food items.

Update: "Skoomriya" is Mackerel.

---