Swamped

Enough said. I'm finding my schedule very maxed with the addition of language lessons, because suddenly I find myself spending at least two hours a day studying on top of doing freelance work and trying to fit all of my side-projects into my daily schedule.

I'm behind on two of my personal projects. Sounds familiar by this point, doesn't it? :) If you've been following my blog for any length of time, you'll see that my personal projects often fall to the wayside for weeks or even months at a time. That's not necessarily a bad thing, I think, because my professional career is continually progressing, and that's the important part.

Met some really interesting folks @ my language class. One guy is French, and he's my age, married to a very sweet and beautiful Bulgarian woman (met her the other night; they are a super cute couple. And yes, I used the word cute in a sentence). As far as I understand it, he works logistics for a couple of humanitarian companies helping to get medical and other types of aid packages to various places around the world. We are going out for beers next week, so I'm going to find out more.

There's also a German lady who speaks 6 languages fluently. Her husband is a German language teacher and they have traveled around the world for over 20 years living in various countries for 5-7 years at a time on contract with her husband teaching at various places, and they just came here 6 weeks ago for a 5 year stint.

Then there's this Serbian guy who is probably mid 30s. Apparently unemployed. Not sure if he's married.

Was a British woman in her late 30s/early 40s in our first lesson, but she didn't show up on Wednesday, so no idea what she does.

Another kid is an Indian who is here getting his doctorate in mechanical engineering at some university here. He's probably mid/late 20s.

Then we had a late addition last night. She's a Spanish woman who works for the Ministry of Environment and just came to Bulgaria. Probably in her late 40s, early 50s.

So, with the exception of one, we are all working professionals.

Now, having never taking a language course before, I wasn't sure what to expect at my first class on Monday night. I was totally unprepared. It was not "Hi, welcome to Bulgarian for Foreigners. This is an introduction class and we will be getting you into it nice and easy".

Instead, it was bend-you-over-the-desk-and-beat-you-over-the-head-with-a-wall-of-text. She didn't speak a WORD of English, which was a shock to everyone in the class, believe me. Me, probably least, because I didn't know WHAT to expect, but I think everyone else, who had taken language classes in other languages before, expected some sort of English introduction. Nope. This woman is hard-freaking-core-to-the-max.

But she's also very good at what she does. I struggled through the 2 hour class on Monday, but understood most of the lesson by the end. I came home, I studied, and on Wednesday night it was nice to not have to look at my lesson book like most of the others did when it came time to brush up on Monday's work.

Felt bad for the Spanish lady because she walked into day 2 and had no idea, and she was in absolute shock the whole class, because she had NO idea where we were at. At one point she asked the teacher something in English, which warranted a HUGE sigh from her and a "Only this once. Never again".

Still...we had a hell of a lot of fun on Wednesday night. Still don't understand the majority of what she's saying, but we have learned enough at this point to be able to ask people names, where they are from, what they do for a living, what languages they speak, and the generic greetings. We've also learned some of the really confusing sentence structure for Bulgarian, such dealing with that damn "li" (if you are Bulgarian you know what I mean).

Thankfully I have until next Monday, so I've got a few days to study. Had a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to getting in there on Monday and rocking out. It'll be extremely refreshing here in a few weeks to actually have a CONVERSATION with someone other than my wife and her friends :) It's been a very difficult situation at times when at family gatherings because I always need a flipping translator. Thankfully I have a very patient woman by my side, otherwise I'd be up poo creek w/o a paddle!