Marta and I have been here almost a week and time flies. Already we’ve had several dinners with her parents, coffee at countless sidewalk cafes, and enjoyed the lovely May weather. We’ve also had our friend Plamena from FSU visiting Burgas while she does her fieldwork (in ethnomusicology) south of the city. (She is from Plovdiv.) Tomorrow we will join her on a trip into the mountains to visit a village that has it’s annual spring celebration scheduled for Sunday. We are hoping to catch some fire-walking and just soak up the “folk culture” in general. I’m sure that the trip will generate some commentary, so I’m looking forward to sharing with anyone who bothers to read.

I commented to Marta the other day about the fact that when you travel abroad, you see both the good and bad things about American so much more clearly. I’m afraid I don’t have my thoughts formulated to the extent that I’m ready to publish my opinion for just anyone to read, but it is certainly a theme that comes up every summer when I’m abroad. All I will say at this point is that the general attitude towards America is so much worse than it was just 5 years ago and that if you hear the propagandists from Fox News claim that it’s not because of “Dubble-U” you should take a moment to let out a hearty belly laugh.

This picture is one of the more humorous moments I’ve seen from our apartment window this past week. This man was using this yellow tape to warn pedestrians that there was work going on in an apartment above street level, and that there was falling glass. As each person passed, he would try to convince them to walk around the area, and some would actually listen. Others were convinced only when another piece of glass crashed to the sidewalk at their feet. No one was hurt, and no one was really in any serious danger, aside from this guy of course.

So Marta and I have arrived in Burgas, Bulgaria to visit her family and spend some much needed time relaxing on the Black Sea. We left the States with at least one, perhaps two days of unpacking remaining and struggled to organize ourselves for the trip but now that we are here the stress of the past couple of weeks seems miles and miles away.

Aside from a couple of rude Lufthansa flight attendants (Apparently the fact that I mixed up the dinner tray offended their Teutonic sense of order!) the flights to Europe were pretty smooth. We first took a flight from St. Louis to Chicago and then from there flew to Frankfurt and finally Budapest. We only missed one flight, and had to end up waiting an extra two hours in the Frankfurt airport for a later flight. I will say that the Lufthansa folks in the airport were exceedingly helpful, which was nice after the rather unpleasant experience on the long flight. Anyway, upon arriving in Budapest, we spent the night with Kevin (my brother), Regina (my sister-in-law) and Corey and Kristen. They are doing very well and their house is finally finished. After spending the night in Budapest, Marta and I flew directly to Burgas, which means that we had no long train ride across the country and could immediately be “home” in our apartment. We’ll be here for the next 20 days before returning to Budapest for a brief stay there before returning to St. Louis on June 19th.

Just a quick note that we are at the tail end of our packing and the rental truck and movers arrive tomorrow morning. I was “tagged” by Brian Uri on his blog, and I do intend to reply at some point, but at the moment, I don’t really have the time to spare. I will try to get something worked up the next time I have access to the internet and am not surrounded by boxes.

I will be picking Marta up at the Asheville airport this evening, marking the end of our voluntary separation. When we first made the decision last summer, we were basically hedging our bets that one of us would be able to land that elusive first tenure-track job. Though it was good for us professionally, all year long we only had one thing in mind: Make it through the year and then never be apart again! Now that it’s over I can say that we achieved our goal and both had the types of experiences and success that we had been lacking before holding our first time university faculty positions. In the long run, we don’t know where we’ll ultimately end up or where life will take us, but we will do it together.

The picture is the winter view from the house we’ve been renting in North Carolina. It will be tough to leave such a beautiful setting, but moving to a major metropolitan area has it’s obvious advantages for a pair of musicians.

The exams are finished and the grades are done so now I can turn my attention to cleaning out my office and packing my house for our move on May 13th. Marta is flying in late Friday night and we can really get down to the business of moving.

One of my key finals yesterday was the bi-annual sight singing marathon. It’s always fun to listen to 3 straight hours of sight singers and to try to keep the standards straight for all the students. At some point in the process, as the patience begins to wear thin, the students begin to start sounding the same and that Schubert melody with the cool Neapolitan that seemed so perfect at the beginning of the day is now the most hateful thing imaginable.

Final faculty meeting tomorrow, a few last composition lessons to teach and then I can start picking up around the house, paying the bills, and relaxing for a few hours.