interesting sights: Kukeri Festival and SecState

Well, it's that time of the year again. Or it was, in January. Time for the Kukeri Festival!

If you don't recall from last year's post, the Kukeri Festivals date back to the ancient Thracian times when young men would dress in animal skins with tall headresses and wooden masks, and hang big bells around their waists to scare away evil spirits and help pave the way for health and fertility in the coming year.

We got there earlier in the day this year, and man! It was FREEZING! We did not stay long.... just long enough to watch a bit and eat some kebabche, cotton candy, and donuts. Then we booked it home. We didn't see some of the wackier stuff from last year, like an entire goat on someone's headdress, but hey, we remember it from last year! And have pictures.

This person does NOT have an entire goat on his/her head. Just the head of the goat. Underachiever.

Cute, cold boys.

Mmmm... kebabche! Sausage-shaped meatballs. As I was ordering, I knocked over the whole container of plastic forks into the snow. Bulgarians can be lovely and friendly, and they can be grumpy. This lady was grumpy. Luckily I was holding Maeve, so I could tell she was swallowing the majority of her grumpiness. I did pick them up. And apologized. In Bulgarian.

Donuts! Or "doneechkee." I like that better. The cotton candy was as huge as last year, and this time we only bought one. It was horrible, because everyone was eating it and licking their sticky fingers and it was below freezing out. There was unhappiness.

A village on the drive home.

At the beginning of February, the Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, came to visit us. We figured we should go. We were waiting for about 2 hours, but the kiddos ran around and played with their friends, so we all survived.

Posing at the podium.

Maeve and her friend, Emily.

Maeve, Emily, and Emily's twin brother, Jakob. They're a fun little bunch. Here they were trying to all jump off together, but it didn't turn out well because, as you can see, Jakob is not on the same step as the girls. Maeve didn't let go of his hand and ended up face-planting at the bottom. The Maeve-Emily link snapped, luckily for Emily!

Then Secretary Clinton arrived and shooed the kids off the stand. Okay, not really. The Secret Service guys did. All right, all right! Really someone saw that they were coming and we all just grabbed them. It sounds way better if the Secretary of State kicked them off, though... However it happened, they were contained and Maeve was not impressed.

Secretary Clinton gave a fine little speech, though I was too busy grabbing kids and arranging them to pay too much attention. Haha. No, I listened.

Then she came to shake hands. She shook all the kids' hands by us, but my camera is annoying and won't always obey me when I push the button. Here is Maeve shaking hands. Quite seriously. Secretary Clinton said to Zac, "You have beautiful children!" And since we all know politicians NEVER say what the people want to hear, only the bare-naked truth, our suspicions have been confirmed. We do, indeed, have beautiful children.