March: The Trickster Month

March is very tricky. It starts out nice then turns nasty. It seems like it'll be a short month, with a long holiday at the end, but turns out to be the true Longest Month and the holiday disappears. I can't believe it's only half over! I'd swear it's already April and my calendar lies, but unfortunately it doesn't. March looms on.
I believe it's Easter this weekend in the States. Happy Easter! They celebrate the Eastern Orthodox Easter here. It isn't until the end of April so you still have plenty of time to get those Easter packages off and here on time :) The eggs here are brown so we can't dye them and they don't have that fake plastic grass. There are some neat traditions here, that don't involve fake plastic grass or peeps, and I'm excited to learn about them.
This past weekend I went to two birthday parties, one for one of my Bulgarian students and the other for two of my PCV friends. It's funny to compare parties in each culture. At the Bulgarian party I went to Petia's , the birthday girl, apartment. Her parents had left for the evening and there were about 12 people there. The tables were spread with food. We sat there talking with the TV going and music playing for about four or five hours (or until the room filled with so much smoke that my eyes turned red and I started crying). Then afterwards they went to the disco; I went home. At the 'American' party, for lack of a better label, we went out to eat and stuffed ourselves with Indian food. Then we wanted to go sing karaoke, but it turns out there's only one place in Sofia to do that. We ended up at an Irish place to celebrate St. Patrick's Day early and played "pick out the ex-pat". This game is becoming more and more easy the longer I'm here. We would look at the other tables and guess if the people at them were Bulgarian or not. Very politically correct. Then we went back to the hostel and talked for a little while. Actually they weren't really too different. One was just closer to home and much smokier.

Almost

For three weeks the weather was... perfect! Sun shining to wake me up every morning. Temperatures in the sixties, or seventies even. For three weeks my clothes dried in hours instead of days. I woke up at 7:30 naturally. The temptation to go for a daily walk couldn't be resisted. My students were happier and less restless in class. And then yesterday the clouds came again. And today the temperature dropped rapid and steady until it settled around freezing.
Oh March! why did you bring the cold? They say it won't last that long and that it's not going to get much colder than this. I hope so! I was ready for spring.
To be fair, it's only March and the weather shouldn't be all that warm yet. It was only by freak chance that we had the 3 weeks of premature spring and I did enjoy them throughly. So I am grateful for the break from the cold and the preview of coming attractions that the end of February and beginning of March gave us.