not a terrorist!

I am the proud owner of a lichna carta.

"Lichna carta? what is that?" you might be asking. well, this single card is possibly more important for bulgarians than a cell phone is to a notorious gossip. This card serves multiple functions; you must have it to work, to check into hotels, to enter the US embassy, to have a legal address- essetially, its a suped-up version of the marriage of a US driver's license and Social security card. Without this card, a person can't really do anything except order coffee at a cafe. Needeless to say, my life with this card will be much improved (especially because it means I can leave my passport at home!), but they can be tricky to aquire! Some PCVs spend as many as 5 weeks trying to get their card- luckily, I got mine in a week. The last step of the process, however, was definately something I was not prepared for! I had to be interviewed by the local authorities to determine wheither or not I was a terrorist, in the country with malicious intent, or anything else vile or presenting a threat to the state. This interview would be challenging enough, given that I'm a single female working with an NGO that works on minority issues (very, very strange here in the BG), but throw in the fact that I only understood about 30% of the questions I was being asked...well, lets just say that a few times, I just answered "yes" and hoped for the best. hahaha.

In other extremely exciting news, the central heating system in my apartment starting working on sunday night and i have a TV! this marked the official end of my sleeping while wearing a stocking cap and socks! Granted I don't really understand what's going on on the TV, but it also means that there will be a serious decrease in the number of mildly depressing nights where I made feeble attempts to stay warm while singing various english songs that I still remember...

okay, just wanted to post this while I could! andrea asked some really great questions, and next time, i'm answering them!!!!