Streams in the Desert: Ups and downs

This last week was a week full of ups and downs. It all started on Tuesday with a major down. I submitted my FBI fingerprints in July and still gotten the results. I really need to results so that I can have my homestudy updated. So, I finally called Tuesday morning before my meeting to see where in the process they were, only to discover that they were never processed! I was shocked and upset to say the least. I got through my meeting for mentoring and was telling a co-worker what was going on. Another co-worker was also listening to the conversation and told me that my agency has fingerprint cards in the office I was in. We went down got a fingerprint card and my co-worker (who was in charge of the meeting) sent me off to get my fingerprints taken. I got them done and all the papers filled out and FedEx the next morning. I will be calling in the next few weeks to BEG that they expedite them for me. I also am going to call my USCIS Hague officer to see if I can get my biometrics done prior to submitting my renewal form.

On Thursday I got some good news from another PAP, but that is another post (thank you Viviane!). I also was able to find, after a year of searching, a Bulgarian family that lives about 2 hours away from me. We emailed yesterday morning and early afternoon and decided to meet last night. I had a great time meeting them. They actually live in Macomb IL, but the wife is currently a grad student at the University of Iowa. They have offered to help me in anyway that they can. I'm so excited that I got to meet them and I learned so much from them. So, here is somethings I learned. In Bulgaria, a child's middle name is their father's first name. For a male child they place a V on the end off the name (I'm guessing this signifies that this is the child of _____) and then for girls they get VA on the end of the name. I also learned several things about the language....I was sharing with them the words I had learn through the Bulgarian phrase for Children CD....I'm going to apologize for this now, but the one word I quickly learned was "peshka" which in the verb tense means to go pee, what I didn't know in the non-verb tense it means dick (now you know why I apologized)....I had figured that would be my safe word to let people in country know I needed to go to the bathroom....Can't you just see a silly American running around saying "peshka" in the wrong way...who knows what would have happened. Glad I learned about that one now! I also learned about the site malincho.com I is a site that you can order Bulgarian food items online and sent to your home. There look like some yummy things to try. They also have a travel site for flights to Bulgaria.

Also this week I was IMing with an adult adoptee that I met at the reunion this summer. She shared with me the transparent language website....you can get to it through byki.com There is a free download for Bulgarian language and 2 different for sale programs. I have downloaded the free version, but am still trying to figure out how to download the different lists onto my computer. I think that it will be a great place to start with learning Bulgarian and with the help of the Bulgarian couple I met, I'm good to go :) Also, for those of you with I-pads, I-touch or I-phones....I have also found a Bulgarian language app that is fairly good. The couple I met, said that the recorded voices sounded like native Bulgarian speakers. So, here are some pics of the app :)