It was exciting to read signs in Bulgarian! I'm glad that I studied before coming so I can read. (That only goes so far, though, when you don't know if you're putting salt or sugar in your coffee. Then you have to go old school, take a risk, and take a taste!) It turns out, "sol", even though you can read the word "ekstra", which might be extra-sugar -- "sol" still means salt. :)
Six of us walked around our neighborhood, Nadezhda, which means "hope" in Bulgarian. It has its share of run down, old Soviet era buildings, but is not short on charm. Already, we've had some very lovely exchanges with shopkeepers & bank tellers. I successfully exchanged dollars for leva, learned the word for cents - "stotinki", and had fun purchasing cherry juice, "vishna". We observed lots of beautiful pastries that we will no doubt sample at some point. But, we were saving room for our big dinner at Tzvetanka's house. Good thing we did -- there were big chunks of feta, deep red tomatoes & fresh cucumber from the garden (which I turned in to "shopska salata"on my plate - so good!), freshly baked moussaka, dark black olives, salami and kashkaval cheese, lukanka (sausage) and of course, the most delicious part of the meal -- singing with Tzvetanka & Ivan after dinner.
Most of us made it until about 8 pm for bed, and then crashed out until 4 am. Most of us experienced the "lay flat, lie still, for just a little longer" phenomenon, but we had a lovely pre-breakfast of plums picked from the garden, apricot, cherry, and black currant juice, watermelon, and honeydew melon. There's banitsa waiting for us at T & I's house before we are off to sight see Sofia for the day.
We have our first dinner with local musicians tonight -- hope we stay awake!
Ramona is jumping for plums!
Moussaka! 
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