GeorgiK

It's been almost a year since my last entry and a million things happened in between entries. I am unable to post all of them (or even all of the most important ones) here and having in mind that no one really reads or cares (I do the journal for my own records mostly) I decided not to add to the misery (my own writing the big thing and your if you decided to read it) and to provide a blank page for myself as a buffer. Now I can have a fresh start...maybe. In the mean time Merry Christmas to you all!

I guess I can never put out a short journal entry. A few months ago I said I was going to and I did not. So here's the big one about a big event. Remember how last time I was talking about going to Chicago for Valentine's Day? Well, I got Yana tickets to Chris Cornell for the holiday and we finally went this past Sunday. But let's get started from the beginning. This semester has been pretty good to me. Yana is in Chicago and we see each other every weekend, which is the most we have been together in a long time (not counting last summer - that was the most ever). It has been pretty cool, since I do to Chicago a lot and finally can see some of its sides I was always robbed of. Stuff like nightlife, concerts, actually living close to downtown and so on. Apart from that I have been doing alright in school even though I have the fullest program ever (with regular number of classes, assisting a professor in a class, two jobs and booked weekends). I never had a minute to stop and look around cause I was also applying for summer internships like crazy. While all the people around me applied to 2-3 programs I applied to 40+. I got a few which is a break through my bad luck and I will be interning at the American Museum of Natural History in New York this summer. As proud as I am of this achievement, I have no idea how I will manage financially, as the position is unpaid and as my savings do not amount to more than two month's rent (I guess I do not need to eat for a couple of months and I can also walk to NYC...). Yana also got a good internship in San Francisco where she always wanted to work, so it all has been working out better than ever. And here comes the Chris Cornell concert. The new album (Scream) is pretty bad and I have not even listened to it all, because I could not stand it. His second solo album was bad, but comparatively listenable and his first one seems great now, but I never liked it much. But it's Chris Cornell...probably my favourite person in music. I only expected him to play one Soundgarden song and I was going to be happy. There was even the scare of Cornell playing the whole Scream album all the way through, but that turned out to be a rumour...luckily. So last weekend was a wonderful warm couple of days in Chicago until Sunday came and it became dark and wet. It literally rained all day and tried to ruin the concert, which it could not. The show was supposed to start at 7:30PM and since all concerts I have been to were either in Bulgaria (meaning started a few hours later than listed) or had specified time of opening doors, I thought 7:30 was the door opening time and wanted to go even later. It is good that we ended up going at 7:30, as the doors probably opened around 5 and when we went the Riviera Theater was packed. It was pretty much impossible to get a good spot on the floor, so we had to go on the balcony. This kinda sucked, having in mind the playlist and how good the show was, but at the time we did not know that and wanted to be securely sitting down with a bored expression on our faces. No really, there was no chance for a good floor spot, so at least we got to see things very well. The opening band was pretty decent. Not anything special, but nice and appropriate. Cornell started about 8:40 and played for full two hours if not more. He not only played more than one Soundgarden song, but played a few of every band he has been to, including my favourite superband Temple of the Dog. I have heard doubts over Cornell's real voice and how he was not as good live, but this is all rubbish - he sounded very well and his voice was great even after two hours of singing. Pretty impressive stuff for the 44-year-old Chris, who really looks much younger (or we were far enough). In the middle of the setlist there was an acoustic guitar solo medley that lasted about 7-8 minutes and included four songs including a Bob Marley's Redemption Song cover. The show ended with Like Suicide as encore, which I believe is probably the best song to end a concert with (from Cornell's discography) so I was more than pleased. I know there were two songs that were cut from the setlist due to the location of the Riviera Theater (residential zone - concerts need to be done by 11) and sadly they were Spoonman and Black Hole Sun. I think I saw what the oversaturated big American city audience is. I always thought concerts in places like Bulgaria were far better because people are much more excited to see their favourites as it usually is the only chance to do so. Filter's concert in Buffalo definitely had good crowd dynamics, but I can finally confirm that Chicago, New York and so on concerts don't. People go too much for the "show" and not for the music. But I might be wrong...I was sitting with the oldies and they were too tired to be excited... The one part that looked like a real concert was Hunger Strike, when the whole crowd sang the Eddie Vedder part. Quite awesome... So that's it - I saw Chris Cornell - one of the last grunge heroes who are still in business. Here's the playlist:

1. Part of Me
2. Time
3. No Such Thing
4. You Know My Name
5. Can't Change Me
6. Burden in my Hand
7. Pretty Noose
8. Hunger Strike
9. Preaching the End of the World
10. Outshined
11. Show Me How to Live
12. Ground Zero
13. Never Far Away
14. Be Yourself
15. Billy Jean
16. Gasoline
17. Rusty Cage
18. Acoustic Solo Medley (including Like a Stone, Dandelion, Fell on Black Days and Redemption Song)
19. Cochise
20. Watch Out
21. Scream
22. Like Suicide (Encore)

Apart from the concert, this weekend was Easter (yes, I am Eastern Orthodox and Easter was this weekend not the previous one) and Yana and I dyed eggs and bought panettone which is an Italian Christmas bread, but it is really close to kozunak, which is the Bulgarian Easter bread. It was a very good, quiet Easter and the first one that we, together, had to organize. We could not go to church, unfortunately, because of the lack of appropriate transportation, but it was really nice. I am not gonna promise more journal entries now, as I know the next one will be months from now, when I get to NYC. So expect one then...

Since I left for college, I had been home only once the summer of 2007, so I decided it was time to go back to Bulgaria this winter. It is always nice be home for the holidays and I also happened to have a bigger winter break, so it all worked out fine. I finished school as early as December 17th and was really relieved to be done after arguably the hardest semester in my college career. I am not too concerned, though, as it was also the most successful one...and the current one is even harder... Going home was great, except the weather refused to co-operate. It was about 20C in December before I went back and then as soon as I went there it started snowing and then dropped down to -10C. As soon as I left, it became over 0C and now it is like 15C, while I have a regular January temperature of -20C in Wisconsin. The weather did not prevent me from having fun, though. Plovdiv is as pretty as usual and I really love the city. I even took long walks by myself several times, just to be with the city. Of course, I once again became a steady regular at my favourite pubs and bars - Pojarnata (The Fire Brigade) and Bezistena (The Bazaar) where I went almost every night. I had many a mugs of Stolichno which might not be the best of beers ever, but it is the best Bulgarian beer and it is very close to my heart. My main companions were Yana and Nikolai, who were also back from Rome and Tampere, Finland respectively, as well as the newly wed Gergana. Yana took on the task of organizing New Year's Eve party and did a great job with assembling a good group of people, finding the venue (Nikolai's mountain cabin/villa) and everything. Everything went smoothly and we had a great time mixing classics like Hypodil with other type of classics like Mr. President's Coco Jambo. Even though it was cold in the beginning, rum and vodka as well as the sauna and our enthusiasm helped us warm up pretty quickly and we had a great 2008 send off. In the first days of the new year I went on the regular trip to visit relatives and then we went to Sofia, which was surprisingly not too pretty and not as shiny as I hoped to see it. We saw some other friends, though, which was good. As I might have mentioned in a previous journal, Yana got me hooked up on sushi and so we went to a sushi bar in Plovdiv, which was kinda expensive, but good nonetheless and Bulgarianized...which was an interesting turn. I took my mum and dad out for their first sushi, but they were not too keen on it...what do they know... During my whole time back home, I was amazed with the quality of the sports channels. I miss watching sports so much (American sports don't count) that I watched everything - alpine skiing, ski jumping, biathlon, snooker, lots of football, volleyball and even darts. I already miss that once again... Yana and I left Bulgaria on January 13th, flying together for the first time. We even got the emergency exit seats with a lot of leg space, even though we had to sacrifice a beer in Munchen, as United had an awfully stupid check-in policy. Yana visited me for about a month during which she was looking for a job in Chicago. She got one and she just started work today in Built Form Architects. This means I will be going to Chicago almost every weekend...how cool is that? I am going this weekend for Valentine's Day and if goes well, there might be another journal entry (finally a shorter one). My life seems to be getting better even though I have no free time whatsoever, as I got a job as a Museum Assistant and work on an archaeological materials rehousing project in the Logan Museum and also got to be a TA in an introductory archaeology course. It's a lot of work, but it's all interesting and good, so I am happy. Now I just need to secure a job for the summer and I will be all set. Cross your fingers!

An alternative title to this journal entry might be something about being reborn or woken. Fall Break came too quick this semester and I had a lot of work for school, but I kinda wanted to travel some and not just stay at home and do work. I also forgot to sign up for work in the cafeteria, even though I kinda needed the money. Alternatively, I decided that I need to refresh and took a trip to St. Louis. A friend of mine invited me to go stay at his place in Kentucky, but then told me he was going to St. Louis first and that I needed to find a place to stay there...that sucked, but it changed my place in a positive way. I got to travel alone on my own terms and I got to finally try couchsurfing. And it was great. I contacted a bunch of people and I got a positive response from a guy named Tim, who was one of the most amazing people I have seen. He lives with four other guys in a house in University City and I stayed for two nights in his basement. I never got to see too much of the other guys, but Tim was a lot of fun. I was in St. Louis for two full days and saw the city pretty well. I am a sightseeing maniac and I could see almost everything there is for just those two days. I went on the Arch which is amazing and is the city's best landmark. I checked the strange City Museum, which is a huge playground made of scrap metal from the city, hence the name. I was especially charmed by the city zoo, which like everything in Forest Park, probably the biggest city park in the states, was free. St. Louis city museum's dedication to free entrance is great and they are really doing a great job. The zoo was one of the best zoos I have seen and for a free ride...it was definitely the best. I also checked the historic district by the Mississippi Laclede's Landing. I spent a whole lotta money there for food, but it was all pretty good. The first place I went was a brewpub - I guess now I can spot those from kilometres. But the best thing just generally was that I was doing something... And not just anything - travelling. I felt so great to be on the road again that I felt much younger, more eager to live and happier. It was a really refreshing trip even though I lasted only a couple of days and that it was pretty inconvenient in terms of the bus rides. The rest of the break was productive and not fun at all, but at least I have some motivation now. Actually I have another motivation - I am going home for Christmas. So this is the new target that I am looking for and that is making me do all my school work...

This journal entry will be dark and ugly, so if you don't want to read shit like that, just skip it. From the last journal entry I have quite a long time again. This time it is because nothing that much happened. The end of the summer was great. I never found a job, so I became a full-time house wife, which was pretty sweet. I prepared Yana lunch in a box almost every day, I cooked and watched TV all day and felt useless. Yet, it was easy and nice. The weekends were even better - we had plans made up for every weekend and went out a lot. Just generally living together was great. We had never been together for so long and there's always the doubt that two people will be able to share a space as much as they love each other, but it worked great for us. We also met some really nice people from Yana's work. It was so great to communicate with real people for a change. I am tired of the college students and their uncertainties and playing cool games. Then my birthday came and Yana organized me the best birthday morning of my life - she had a lot of presents, a birthday cake and a football balloon for me. It was great. I learnt to eat Japanese food in Buffalo and now I am obsessed with it, so we went to a sushi place for lunch and then to our favourite place in Buffalo - Pearl St. Brewpub with some friends for dinner. We also went bowling after that. I also played my first game of bowling in Buffalo, doing quite well (169 is still my record from my first game). The day after my birthday we went to Darien Lake - the biggest theme park in NY state. It was also my first theme park experience (a lot of firsts in Buffalo) and it was a lot of fun. And then the summer ended on 8th August. I went back to Beloit and the fun was gone. I now realise how amazing was my summer and everything in Buffalo. RA training was OK, it looked to have passed quicker than last year, so that's good. I couldn't really watch the Olympics, though, but NBC were only showing the Americans and it wouldn't be that interesting anyway. Bulgaria did pretty badly too, so whatever.
And then the semester came and half of it is gone and I don't know where it went. It's been a really lonely time. I live in a different place from all my friends who are all trying to fix their academic careers and don't go out at all, so I rarely see anyone. As I am out of the meal plan I never eat with anyone any more so a major meeting point is also lost. I am also really struggling with women...I love them, but the environment in the states is so awful for being friends with them. Back home I used to have more friends that were girls than guys. Now I have now female friends at all. I tried once again with one that was very close to my heart and I really wanted i to happen, but then it all worked out like a fallen through relationship. We had "a friendship break up", as she got all I did wrong and now we barely see each other. So now I just sit in my room and do stuff for school. And strangely school is going great for me. I am acing almost everything and I have a very busy schedule this semester. So I guess it should all even out, but it doesn't. I feel pretty unhappy all the time and now fall break is coming and I will try to cheer myself up somehow even though I have no plans and no real chances of doing it. It's really fucked up when everything is going against you (me in this occasion), but the worst is when you get accustomed to it. That's why I still try to feel unhappy, just so that I have a reason to make an effort for a change. I know complaining will get me nowhere, but I need some help too. I guess I should give it myself after all...