Fire Alarm.

I had a post prepared to tell you how exciting it is that Nathan and I passed our Bulgarian midterms, how we might die from the red dye we are copiously consuming in the form of Boston Baked Beans or how much we love the gelato stands that are everywhere now that it is warm but something else much, much, much more blogworthy happened.

Set the scene: I left for class at 8:15 this morning. I set the alarm for Nathan to wake up in time to go to Bulgarian class. It's about 9:45 and he is still asleep in typical boy sleeping attire. There is a sheet draped over him and all is well in the world.

The account: At approximately 9:45 am, Nathan hears a strange yell from outside the door. (According to Nathan it sounded like German) Suddenly, a man in full firefighter gear is IN OUR ROOM with a giant stick poking at our ceiling. Nathan wakes up, is incredibly startled, the man leaves, and the fire alarm starts going off. Nathan rushes outside and isn't let back into the building for an hour and, thus, misses Bulgarian class (you can't go in your pajamas).

That's right, folks, a firefighter entered our room this morning to set off the fire alarm to make sure that they were working.

Now, in all fairness, we received an email earlier this week that our building's fire alarm day was today. We had no idea of the specifics, however, and we (naively) assumed that it would be a typical sort of fire drill--alarms go off, everyone walks outside and talks to each other and we're all back in our rooms in 15 minutes.

No, siree. This was a whole new goal.

NB: To add to this, there is no Bulgarian word for "smoke detector." Not enough people (ie: no one) own them for it to enter into the vocabulary. We have smoke detectors because we go to the American University.

So if you are feeling down for whatever reason, please picture my sleepy husband waking up to a firefighter poking a giant stick at our ceiling. The image certainly provided me with at least an hour of laughter.