If you’re a regular reader of the blog you’ve also noticed a few changes here and there. Most importantly, the top navigation went all the way down – in the Navigate section which used to be called Links in the past. It didn’t get much use anyhow.

I’ve been working hard on producing new images in the past month-month and a half, and that already on top of the crazy schedule. Thus, the lack of updates. The idea is to start again with somewhat regular reflections, articles, updates. Both about myself and Petra, and about photography. At one point however I even considered discontinuing the blog… I haven’t completely made up my mind about it yet. The blog started as a place for keeping in touch and unloading thoughts. So far it has proved to be of little use as a communication tool (at least not a bi-directional one), and I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep the content coming, so that it will be of interest for those of you who are far away. No matter what happens, this which is currently posted will remain online… for a while… unless I change my mind. If the photography picks up well, I might launch a blog about that and keep this one for random personal updates and sharing family photos. Time will tell.

Not much has changed in our lives – work is work, sleep (at least for me) is hard to find… We’re both busy witch church things every week. I, at least can’t wait till the summer comes so we can take two weeks off. Like, for real.

Hope things are fine with you. As always, we both would appreciate hearing from you.

Please, use the comments option below and let me know why you stop by to read and what you’d like to see more of in the future. What annoys you and what do you not care at all about from my posts? Anything else you feel like sharing about the blog is also welcome. I’ll be extremely thankful as it will help me go in a direction which will benefit not just me but hopefully also you.

It opens a whole new world before the camera, plus I have always been a fan of details. Additionally, the lens can work as a standard 100mm telephoto and thanks to the wide aperture of 2.8 I should be enjoying more of those as well.

Too bad that it’s a working day today (lens just got delivered ~2hrs ago), but I’m sure you’ll be seeing more of its capabilities as times passes. For now – only two more shots below.

 

p.s. More updates on how Petra and I are doing, the church’s work in Sofia and life in its other generalities will be coming soon…

Sorry for the delayed (by much) update! Our time in Sofia so far has been exciting but also extremely busy. With work, church tasks and the need to sleep there’s very little time left for chatting with you all. I hope that after the holidays, soon after the new year begins things will finally settle and I’ll be able to get back in touch with you on regular basis.

What’s happened so far?

Petra has a full-time substitute job at an Anglo-American school in Sofia. All is in English and she works with children. It’s a blessing for us, and she’s enjoying it a lot.

Still no progress has been reported onthe situation with our apartment. It’s become a frustration as now we need to work hard to pay off the loan for it but are unable to actually use it. We hope and pray that God will resolve this and give us the necessary patience and peace until this happens. Please, do pray for us in this respect.

The Sofia church has gone through a successful restart. Many have expressed their joy and gladness about the new format of our services, the discipleship lessons, as well as the fellowship time. It’s just too much to describe in a single message. I’ll provide you with some photos and more details about all of this after the Christmas service on Dec 25th (won’t be until after New Year’s though). Bottom line, however, God has already answered a lot of prayers for the Sofia church. We praise Him for this.

My photography work has been on suspend ever since we arrived in Sofia. In an attempt to change this, as well as help out at a wedding on December 3 I left for Barcelona, Spain on a weekend trip to photograph a wedding, meet old friends (thank you for the warm welcome Litzy and Nacho!) and take a bit of a break from the everyday stress in Sofia. Petra couldn’t come because of her work… but that only gives us a reason to plan another trip there in the near future.

At the bottom of this post you’ll see some photos of what impressed me about Barcelona and Spain. I wish I could write some comments on each photo, but my time is scarce. I hope they’ll speak for themselves.

I think this will also be the last post for this calendar year. We would like to take the opportunity to wish you all a blessed celebration of the birth of our Savior Jesus, a pleasant time with your families when you visit them, as well as a unique way of starting the new year 2010.

As always, we would like to hear more from you. How you’re doing, what we could pray for specifically, as well as any opportunities to meet with you (within our tight budgets).

Much love from Bulgaria,

Petar (and Petra)

Here come the photos from Spain…

 

As promised earlier on, here’s the brief story of our trip to Sofia… We left the Netherlands on October 2nd and headed to our friends Ali and Sonja in the Stuttgart area of Germany. We ate lots of big (and quite fat, I must admit) American food (Friday evening), had a good laugh at 10 Drugs You Shouldn’t Use While Driving… took a walk in the area around their home and slept well (!). Saturday was ice cream day – a super treat in itself. All in all – we had a great time in Germany. Thank you Ali and Sonja for having us over! We’re already looking forward to coming ’round again. On Sunday morning we hit the road. Around noon the German traffic police decided we’re an interesting case with out handmade transit license plates, so they pulled us over for the traditional (for me at least) 40min. check. At least this time the car was so packed, they didn’t seem to have any interest in checking our luggage. After that the travel was quite smooth.

For some reason, driving our car at speeds over 120km/h seems to have also saved us fuel – we ended up spending less than on the previous trip. Skipping the boring highways and national roads (passing through lots of villages in Romania!), on Monday morning we were at the Calafat/Vidin ferry crossing. It turns out the ferry only comes and goes when there’s enough cars/trucks/people to fill it up, so we had to wait for~2hrs till we disembark on the Bulgarian shore. From then on we were occupied with making sure the Bulgarian police doesn’t pull us over. Thankfully (and surprisingly, mind you), there were none.

After arriving in Sofia it took us a day and a half to buy a new rear bumper for our car, paint it and mount it. That was an entire ordeal in itself… Bottom line, God privided in His own time and my pastor and dear friend Galin and I put it together. On Wednesday around noon we headed to the main traffic police office to register the car and get the BG license plates. This afternoon will remain as a testimony of God’s faithfulness and provision. We got the car registered in just under 3hrs. Normally it takes around a full day, if not two. On top of that, we didn’t have the proper Bulgarian certification on the LPG system in the car and it was a miracle that they let the car pass. The police guy that checked my car wasn’t even rude (quite unusual for Bulgaria). He just told me I’ll need to get this paperwork done and let me through. Galin and I were looking amazed at how quickly and smoothly everything went, realizing that yet again, our prayers have been heard and answered in ways better than we could have wished for. Even more amazing – in under 30min. after the new license plates were mounted we already had the necessary papers for the LPG system. It simply leaves you in awe and wonder.

Currently, there’s still some paperwork we need to do for insurances, residence registration, social secutiry, etc. but seeing how things went with the most stressful of all (the car) there’s no room for worrying.

And now, before I leave you with the photos from the trip, I would like to thank to all of you for your continuous support, help and encouragement. I know we wouldn’t be where we are if it weren’t for God’s grace and your intercession.

Here come the photos. Click on the thumbnails to see them large and with descriptions (under each enlarged photo). Most of the photos are in chronological order, except for the last ones. The car packing is at the start in Holland, and the nasty lookin’ toilets are at the Calafat/Vidin ferry crossing.

 

Oh, I almost forgot to mention… I’ve planned on turning this trip to Sofia into a photo trip. I’ll try to capture the fun, strange, characteristic or beautiful sights that we’ll encounter on our journey through six countries and well over 2000km. I hope you can become a part of it this way and share in our excitement, that quickly turns into road-trip  boredom, and successfully takes us to previously unknown levels of tiredness. Stay tuned!

 

As we met people and we told them our plan, only few of them seemed to understand it. Why go to Bulgaria when you live in Holland. You have all the financial needs covered here, why take the risk and go to Bulgaria. But the truth is, that we never doubted that we would go to Bulgaria, and never consider otherwise. We felt this was the right thing to do. As Petar had made a promise, and as we felt also led by God to follow Him. God was leading us to Bulgaria.
It really sounds so simple, and well, on the one hand it is very simple, but on the other hand when I start to think about it, it’s not anymore. We leave behind our security that we have in Holland. And now that my education in Holland is finished, and I work during the summer, it’s strikes me, that I might never use this education again. And I have no idea what I will be doing in Bulgaria.  But we trust in God that he will show us what He has planned for us.

Today it’s less than a month from now, that we will move to Bulgaria. To be exact. We will leave on the 1st of October. So we are coming towards the end of our time here. And we are living towards this moment we’ve been waiting for, to go to Bulgaria.

Oh, yes, my family is soo devastated about us leaving that they had to find a replacement for us..(just kiddin’) They got themselves a puppy You can see the puppy below. It’s the cutest thing ever!

 

July 2nd, 2009 – Petra became a nurse (see images below). A long awaited break from studies has come her way. It’s also a relief to have completed what she started. Currently, she’s working as a nurse almost full-time. She does home care for elderly people in our area – something that’s apparently making her happy. This will be her job till we hit the road for trip number two in October.

Road trip number one went rather well. We were stopped for drugs check on the car and ourselves only once (in Bucharest, RO), the car didn’t need to have a major service, for some reason there was very little back pain for the two of us, and I only fell asleep once on the road (almost drove straight through that 360-degree highway exit lane). We left for Bulgaria on July 9 and were back in Holland on July 19 – pretty much a week back from the time I’m writing this. We managed to get all the paperwork that needed to be done in time and this gave us a couple of days extra with friends and family in Sofia. On the way back we also stopped by at Dreamstime’s office in Bucharest – turns out my colleagues are real indeed. Encouraged by this fact, we ended up spending a day and a half in the Romanian countryside with two of them. Was so great to sleep well on a bed that doens’t break your back, eat some real (as in “really real”) tasty food, take a walk in the mountains (see images below – courtesy of my colleague Ioana Grecu) and spend some fun time with nice people. We enjoyed it so much, we’re planning on visiting again later this year.

The only not-so-exciting thing in the trip was the fact that not much progress has been done for the permit of use for our apartment in Sofia. The yard and outside of the building (little things only, though – major things were already done last year) is nearly finished, but what good is it when you’re not allowed to live there. We’ve passed through various fases of frustration, disappointment, indifference, etc… I don’t know what’s going to be next. Even more waiting, perhaps. Please, do pray that the Lord will give us endurance, patience, wisdom and eyes to see His plan in the midst of all this. In the meantime, we’re moving in with my mother and brother.

So, before I unleash the photos – road trip two is going to be in the first days of October this year. Boy, am I looking forward to another 2400km of driving… in a 13-yrs-old packed-to-the-brim Ford Escort… (yup, that exact one from the photo at the top) Amazing little car that is – it’s grown on me so much… I just wish it were much younger so it would have air-conditioning as standard.

So, that’s what’s been up with us lately. I’m still in the “catching-up” mode – lots of images to look at, lots of images to process, lots of other tasks to complete. I hope to find an extended weekend at some point this summer, so that Petra and I can have a proper vacation-style road trip. Got ideas? – Let us know!

Enjoy the photos now…

 

Disclaimer: I just couldn’t resist but share how happy I am with a photo-related purchase. So bear with me, you’ll get to learn some new stuff too maybe.

A 50mm lens (or it’s 35mm equivalent) is the one that best matches the perspective of the human eye. This is why such a lens is also called “normal” or “standard”. I’ve just recently become a happy owner of the mid-range 50mm (non-zoom or “prime”) lens by Canon. As a matter of fact, it’s precisely that lens pictured on the left of the text.

It’s a lens that has a very large aperture opening (f/1.4, the smaller the number, the larger the opening). This means that photographing in low-light conditions has just become even more fun for me.

But so I don’t bore you to death, I’ve attached a few shots of Petra (with her new haircut!), pretty much the first ones I took with the lens. Having a non-zoom 50mm lens is a definite creativity pusher and eye-opener at the same time. The amount of blur on the background (known as depth-of-field) is just mind-blowing. Anyhow, enjoy the photos below and keep reading after them for some more on me and my photography.

 

Now, about that “more” thing – if you haven’t received an e-mail from me asking if you’d like to be a model for my commercial shots… I’m looking for models for lifestyle photos who are willing to sign a Model Release document and are fine with their images being sold to a world-wide audience for web-sites, commercials, books, magazines, etc. You’ll get a copy of all good shots for your personal use. If you’re interested, drop me a message and we’ll figure the details. To those who have already said “yes” – thanks so much!