A nice nostalgic walk down my hometown's narrow cobbled streets

Yesterday I allowed myself a nice walk around the old part of Veliko Turnovo.
It was simply marvelous.
I won't tell you any more, just see the pictures:)

It's a GIRL!

The new PAI is Gabriela Albescu
also known as
Gabiza!!!!
A girl with one of the most wonderful smiles I have ever seen!

WOW - and - the first woman-president of Aiesec since 1998!
I'm sooooo excited to see what she has got to show us!
Go girl and good luck:)

Funny videos on youtube

Yesterday, while searching for the "Happy feet" trailer on YouTude, I accidentially came accross The Brothers McLeod Show.
These guys have some really funny pieces - at some points of The M man I was laughing out loud.
Other personal favourites are A history of Rock and Fuggy Fuggy 1.
Enjoy:)

On this day ...

Sometimes you have a feeling for things before they happen...
Today I felt quite retrospective.
Remembering IPM in the Netherlands.
Thinking how time has flown for me.
365 days have passed since my first post here - I found that while searching the archives.



A lot has changed.
I feel AIESEC quite distant now.
I am working a completely different job from I had imagined - yet quite challenging and interesting.
I was disillusioned.
I am excited.
I will not be at this IPM , but still I am really excited.
Cause some people I can call friends are running for AI.
Cause my successor has chosen the difficult path of building something from scrach.
Cause Egypt will gather 200 great people at one place and the feeling will be amazing.


Like it was at our MCP "crying" session in the Netherlands.
I remember everyones face. More than 50 people and almost everyone with tears in their eyes.
Grateful tears.
I am so happy to have been there.
And I am quite sure these people have stayed as great as I knew them. I sincerely hope they are all OK, no matter where around the world.
Among friends, who could not be OK :)

Happy feet

Yep :)
I just watched the movie.
And this video is literally "breaking the ice"
Hihi

I'm not crazy...

In case you need to sing you can get the lyrics here. :)

I am NOT proud to be Bulgarian because...

...our politics are not acting as defendants of our rights abroad. Bulgarian nurses are convicted to death. 8 years nobody does nothing and hundreds of dollars are paid for lawyers without any success. Now...an initiative to save the nurses is started. It is called "You are not alone"..It is supposed to support the prisoners and their families and to express the public opinion with the hope that something might be changed and can be free. Yet, the whole campaign is getting too commercial.It is everywhere! You have the "you are not alone stickers", the "you are not alone" ribbons. Shops are putting the "you are not alone" sign, demonstrating a very populist maketing aproach. I even so "you are not alone" sugars packets and "you are not alone" salads:(
... a group of taxi drivers block the whole capital in an agressive protest, causing a terrible delay and losses for business. They have the right to protest - their collegue has been killed.Yet they do not have the right to be as arrogant as to ask some special privileges from the Parliement - like being able to drive without safety belts and getting more money per drive...
...a "businessman" (connected to the mafia) puts in his retail centre -TZUM an aquarium and there he places...a baby tiger to entertain the customers!!! After a serious protest the businessman decided to move the poor animal to the Plovdiv zoo.You might think that he finally understood how obnoxious and inhumane it is to keep an animal in a glass cage.No, you are not right. Yes, he is extremely stupid - he is serching for a black panther to replace the tiger!
These are free of the reasons that certainly don't make me feel very proud to be Bulgarian!!!

A favourite song

Once I used to love that Bulgarian band called PIF quite a lot. They wrote meaningful texts and made beautiful music. I guess it was a part of my grunge-romantic period :)
Then, some of the band members left...so the magic was gone.
I still enjoy listening to the music. Brings back so many beautiful memories of concerts and people.
Enjoy...:)

My Valentine's day present

...as I hate all the "marketing" and "artificial" ways people "celebrate" love on the 14th of February
...as I am sick of pink, hearts, sugar and teddy bears
...as noone will giv me a present for this day
...as I am quite doubtful about the existence of love
I decided to make myself this present.
Candles.
Simple.
Beautiful.
Burning.
Like hope and desire.

Potty training

I just love this Reuters picture called "potty training" - it makes me laugh so much:)
Enjoy the teamwork and have a very sunny weekend!

I refuse to admit...

You called me 5 times today.
I see an interesting relation - you call me very often you are away, and seldom when you are here, working in an office just a few streets away from mine.
I cannot understand if you are calling me because you want to hear my voice, or because you just need to talk to someone that will listen and understand?Or is this one and the same thing?
You told me you do not believe in love, as all we call "love" is just the need of someone else's physical presence.
I refuse to admit a relationship (be it between a woman and a man or between to men or two women) is only this.
It is not true. The fact that the person I loved so much says that love does not exist doens't mean it does not exisist, right?

I realized some days ago...

...that I am "latin" by heart. I do not know a single word in Spanish and I have never lived in a Spanish speaking country...
I just feel latin. It is because I am too emotional and sometimes I think I need to make things more dramatic, so I would feel that I am really living. As I am a heroine of a Latin-american soap opera...
And all this love for the latin music I can never explain...
I remember Sandra(Columbian, former MCP of AIESEC in Slovenia) at IPM - presenting me to her fellows from the SSGN network - "She is latina, just that she doesn't know a word in Spanish".
I guess she was so right. And I should definitely spend a certain time living in a Spanish speaking country...

Just a glimpse of the beauty

I just had to post some pictures from the Ice show...
Ain't it amazing?!

New AIESEC generation is coming

Previous night at two a.m. one of the leaders I admire most in AIESEC in Bulgaria - the MCP in term 2001-2002 Pavel Panov (Pafo) became a father for the first time.
His sweet wife Dony gave birth to a daughter - Gabriela.
I really wish her to have a very happy and sunny childhood and ...who knows...maybe when she grows up she will become an AIESECer as well:)

Babel or...the lack of communication

On saturday night I watched Babel - a wonderful movie that made me cry (like 21 grams from the same amazing director did).
There were some very real , absurdly real situations in which the social and political restrictions didn't allow people to interact with each other.
It was so absurdly real - people walking around, pretending to be communicating and understanding each other. Even caring...But then, in crisis situations it showed that indeed everyone was living in their egoistic little world, everything was so false and superficial.
Often, it is really like that - maybe more than fifty percent of the people I meet I know -do not care much for me.Nor do I care for them, anyway. From a humane point of view - I am quite empathic though. The paradox exists - i may despise someone as a person, because he is lacking some qualities, but from the humane point of view - I might be empathic to this person because of the situation he is in, or simply because he lacks some good qualities...
I just cannot loose that side of me. Start hating people just because of their pdark side. I just like them by default and I guess it will take some time and lots of disappointments for me to start hating the human nature. Even then, I believe I will be able to forgive:)

One amazing week in one post

Well, I have been a bit lazy this week in blogging.But I will try to sum it up in one post.
It has been quite a strange week for me - without a proper desire to work- i guess there are times like that that you can heardly concentrate. Yet, seems it was good in terms of my job - as I understood from my boss my salary is rising (just a bit:P) and this - in a way - means they are satisfied with my work. I also understood that in future I will have to write extensively in the i-net isssue and keep a real estate blog. Seems like a great challenge to me, so I am gonna give it a try. I was a bit disappointed with some stuff happening in the office, but, as I talked to friends they all told me that it is like that everywhere...
But, my word was not for work though.

Social life:) This week seems to be quite full, compared to previous one. And really nice.

On tuesday, I went to a very pleasant Cuban night in one new place - Tea house. It was like a dream come true - Cuban music (not only salsa),Cuban food ( i ate ham with caramel and pineapple:) ) and ...of course RUM! No pics of course, I was too busy to enjoy!Just one, made by my collegue - to give u an idea of what the place feels like.
Then, to skip the working week ...friday night was an experience - we went with a friends to eat Chineese. I once again thought how much I love the Chineese people for that wonderful food:)After, we moved to a place that I cannot call exactly a bar, as it is a bit too underground. It is called "Hambara" (something like a "Barn)and it lit only by candles. I met some people I haven't seen for a long time.And we had a few nice drinks and talks.


Later, we moved to a disco - "Alcohol". It was cool, though crowded and the music was strange - too much techno.However - we really had a good time there as well.
Saturday was tres legere - again walking around, shopping, eating sweet stuf ...mmm:)
And today - a wonderful ending of the week. I went to drink coffee at one of my favourate places - ONDA. Met a friend there,whom I thought gone abroad.
The evening was full of beauty, as we went to watch the Bulgarian ice-skating champions - Albena Denkova and Maxim Stavisky. They were marvelous!So much beauty and grace...it was as if I was in another world. Besides them there were some other couples - an Italian one (these guys, I can bet, were born on ice!), a Russsian one (he was swinging the girl in such a dangerous way...I couldn't watch), an Ukrainian one ( they did amazing acrobatics, I have never imagined that someone can balance on ice like that). There were also some other Bulgarian skater - they were also pretty talented. And two funny French guys. One of them danced pretending to be a 3-year old girl.He had this pink ballet skirt - so funny:)
Of course, my camer was not good enough to make proper pictures, but soon I hope to receive some from friends I was with. But just if you have some time...and to give you a very little idea of the experience I had - see Albena and Maxim perform their free dance at the 2006 olympics. Enjoy!
And have an inspired week, full of beauty:)