A new friend

I had the best day today.  Yes, I had to be at work for seven hours, but I love my tutoring job, and I got to help several nice students today.  The best part though was making a new friend who just happens to be BULGARIAN!  Yay!  Ivan is the first person I have met who was born in Bulgaria and speaks fluent English AND fluent Bulgarian. 

This was sort of an arranged friendship.  Ivan is friends with one of my co-workers, and my co-worker arranged a meeting for us.  Ivan is super-nice, very smart, and of course is well-versed in all things Bulgarian.  We sat and talked for about an hour today about the climate, language, and geography of the country, and he even began giving me some travel tips for when we go there (hopefully this fall).  

And he gave me this: 

A Bulgarian chocolate bar!  It was yummy!  Ivan wants to help us in any way he can, and I am just so grateful for this opportunity to build new friendships with him and his family.  Jeremy and I hope to meet them all and even have lunch together soon.  We're hoping Ivan can help us learn a little of the Bulgarian language this summer too!

On top of all this, we also finished putting two coats of the base paint on the walls in Ivelina's room.  I'm going to post some before and after photos when we're all done.  Next, I have to work on the colorful border that I have in mind.  Next month, we hope to shop for furniture, and I have a little refurbishing project I want to do to her toy box.  Fun, fun, fun!

Another good part of this day:  it was beautiful outside!  I can't remember a cooler month of May in NC.  It was in the sixties today with a crisp fall-like breeze, my favorite!  A perfect evening for a long walk in the neighborhood with my dog   =) 

Thanks for reading,

~Shelly