Monday 27th August 2018

I completely forgot to tell you last time that I passed the written exam! The list is published online a few days after the test and consists of a list of the candidate numbers who passed - no score, just a pass. You can then email them to request an actual certificate, which is required for citizenship, and I must confess, until that arrived I still had niggly doubts that maybe I'd got my number wrong and it wasn't me who had passed. But no, the Speedy delivery guy arrived the next day with my nice blue certificate which is now safely tucked away with all my other citizenship bumf. The next stage is to brush up (by that I mean learn from scratch) my knowledge of Bulgarian history and culture and of course to try and chat merrily about such things in Bulgarian ready for the interview. Ugh, plod on, Julie, plod on...

Last week I finally ventured up to the top of the village to see what the Summer Powwow festival was all about and boy did I wish I'd gone up sooner. It's set in a large field area with camping freely available, and there's an old single storey house which has been converted into a bar area with the big flat roof for the most amazing DJ and for some of the activities.

DJ Bo Young who lives in Gostilitsa

Some friends and I returned the next evening for a bbq, well, more specifically to play with the bbq. It's a big metal tripod with a circular grill grid suspended in the middle by a metal cable. The cable is winched up and down by an ingenious ratchet winder so you can have it as close to the fire below as you like. Anyone can use the bbq, and there are straw bales positioned around for sitting on.

Saturday morning I headed up there again to join in with the yoga session. We were all up on the flat roof area with a delicious cool early morning breeze blowing through, going through our warrior poses with gentle relaxing music playing in the background. I like yoga but very rarely do any, which explains why I couldn't fold myself up like a swiss army knife, unlike the instructor! It was strenuous but we all just did the bits we could. Afterwards I had a nice refreshing drink from the bar and a chunk of banitsa (just in case I'd lost a bit of weight from all that exercise).

What other yoga class has such a fantastic backdrop? (Thanks to Geoff for taking the photo)

Saturday night was the grand finale party, with reggae, hiphop and more excellent DJing. Click here for a little sample. The mind was willing to stay all night but the legs called for a halt at about 2am. The people who run the camp (and who incidentally have similar activities going on all year in Veliko Tarnovo) plan to make this the start of a regular summer event, with maybe some things at other times of the year. Along with their plans to sell their organic cheeses, honey and other products it's another fantastic bonus for the village.

On the home front the veggie production has slowed a little now meaning the rush to get food processed has also taken a breather. The courgettes are still producing, so some have been made into chutney along with plums a friend gave me, others have been grated into mince to make tasty burgers, and just now some are drying in the sun to be ground up into flour. Yes, flour! I saw a post on Facebook about it and decided to give it a go. Apparently the resultant flour is quite bland and so won't affect the flavour of what it gets used for, though some of mine might have a greenish tinge from the darker courgettes.