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On 1 January each year in our village of Krupnik, locals don imaginative costumes, parade through the village accompanied by drummers, and then assemble at the town center for a competition called the “kukeri”. Here we are enjoying the event with friends who were visiting. Afterwards our neighbors came over and “Chicho Pesho” entertained us with his traditional bagpipe.
Later in January, Emi and Mina accompanied Joyce to St. Petersburg, where she and two of her ballet classmates won a first prize in a ballet competition. Click here to view the prize-winning performance on YouTube.
In March, Greg was in Istanbul for a meeting of a the Regional Board of Ḥuqúqu’lláh, a Bahá’í institution on which he was serving. Then he and Mina accompanied Joyce to Paris where she was in a ballet competition. Towards the end of the month there was a Bahá’í conference in Sofia.
At the end of March, Mina celebrated her birthday (a little late) by inviting her friends to a party in a Sofia restaurant. With Greg’s brother Arthur visiting, we also made a trip to the Bulgarian town of Hisarya, famous for it’s healing waters.
In April, we were back in Krupnik with Arthur enjoying a visit from Emi’s niece Dimana and her little Blashko, as well as our usual walks in the mountain with our dog Liska. Then back to Sofia, where our kids’ youth group did a gardening project in front of our apartment block and studied some materials from the “spiritual empowerment program” Emi is also shown with Bahá’í friends in Varna and Sofia.
In late April and early May, Greg attended the International Bahá’í Convention in Haifa, Israel, as a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Bulgaria. Delegates attended from all over the world.
In May, we were in Sofia and Krupnik, and attended the National Bahá’í Convention at the Bahá’í Center in Sofia. In June, the Russian Lycee where the Joyce and Mina had been studying had its end-year show with Joyce dancing and Mina narrating. The next day the graduating 7th graders had a ceremony and celebration.
On 5 July, after we had arrived in California on holiday, Emi’s father Simeon (our Diado) passed away in Bulgaria. The funeral was held in Krupnik on 9 July.
In July and August, we spent four weeks in California, including a lovely visit to Yosemite with Arthur.
In August, Joyce and Gregory attended a Bahá’í youth conference in Tirana, Albania – one of 114 held around the world. Greg went along as a photographer/videographer. Click here to view Greg’s 32-minute video of highlights of the conference.
Later in August, we went to our apartment in Vlas on the Black Sea with Emi’s cousin Milen, and joined some Bahá’í friends on a beach in Varna. In September, while Greg and Gregory were in California for Gregory to have an operation on his knee, the girls were at the wedding in Sofia of our friend Boyan. Then school started, with Joyce continuing at the Russian Lycee and Gregory and Mina now both at the American College of Sofia. And we enjoyed fall colors on walks in Vitosha park near Sofia.
In early November we were all at a youth retreat in Stara Zagorski Mineralni Bani. In early December we were celebrating the twins’ birthday in Blagoevgrad and then Sofia. Joyce performed in the Christmas show of her school, and on Christmas day we enjoyed the snow in the mountains above Blagoevgrad, with dinner at home in Krupnik the following day.
