In the supermarket the regular yogurt is located right next to the vanilla yogurt. The regular yogurt, which I like, also looks exactly like the vanilla yogurt, which I don't like.

If you don't pay close attention, you end up with the wrong yogurt in your shopping basket.

By the way, vanilla yogurt is different than Dutch vla.

With one week to go to the elections the amount of political ads on TV is getting spectacular.

Not only are Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama on air all the time (Obama had a special 30 minute add on 7 networks last night), but there are lots of other political races as well.

There's Ms. Dole versus Ms. Hagan, running for the Senate, in a race that is seeing increasingly nasty ads, for example about "godless" Ms. Hagan.

There will be more than 25 votes to cast next Tuesday, for President and Governor of course, but also for Commissioner of Agriculture and Commissioner of Insurance, among others.

Here's a nice movie about the Presidential debates:
Synchronised presidential debating.

My passport is about to expire and I went to the Dutch Consulate to renew it. There is a honorary consul for the Netherlands in Raleigh, a friendly Dutch business man who provides consular services. I'm glad he's here, otherwise I'd have had to go to Washington D.C., a 5 hour drive from here.

The Dutch, American and North Carolinian flag stood next to each other in the hallway, and the office had pictures of Dutch landscapes and of Queen Beatrix.

This year's bureaucratic experiences have made me cautious but it looks like this passport renewal will be fairly quick and efficient; it should be about 3 weeks.

Sign on the building.

The Consulate of the Netherlands.

It's busy at work; there's a release coming up and that always brings long hours with it. It's a fun release though; the first one after 1.0 so there's finally some time to put in features that I had to postpone in 1.0 release a couple of months ago.

This Friday it's Halloween, this weekend I'm running a half marathon, next Tuesday are the elections and then it's my birthday.

Two weeks ago in Bulgaria I decided I want to pick up Bulgarian language lessons again. I can read and understand Bulgarian reasonably well, but I want to work on my grammar and conversation skills in a more formal way.

I found a good teacher and once a week I'll have a private lesson. We're using "Bulgarian for Foreigners", an book that is very good on grammar explanations and has nice exercises. Tonight was the first lesson and it was fun and useful.

This morning I heard on the radio that John McCain will be in North Carolina near Charlotte this Saturday, and I was considering to attend.

However, when I read the announcement I saw that the system is more complicated than with Obama's rally. You have to get tickets in advance, and the only offices that have tickets are in the Charlotte area. Plus, the doors open at 8.00 am on Saturday and that would mean I would have to leave Durham before 5.00 am to get in.

I would have liked to attend a McCain or Palin rally after seeing Obama and Biden three weeks ago, but this one is not for me.

We're back home. I had a good day at work today, and we're quickly back into our regular daily routine.

We arrived home around 8.00 pm. The last flight was as always the worst, especially since we were waiting on the tarmac to depart for about an hour.

Tonight we had shopska salade with the Bulgarian cheese we brought with us yesterday; delicious. You can get it at Whole Foods here also but the type we brought is much more flavorful.

I slept from 9.00 pm to 7.00 am yesterday. It's 10.00 pm now and I'm ready to go to bed -- it's 5.00 am Bulgarian time.

We're on the final flight of our trip. We have a lot of hand luggage, but everything worked out well, and so did things when arriving at JFK.

This flight will be about 70 minutes, so not too bad.

Sasha and I are now in the Prague airport, in Czech Republic. We left Perushtitsa yesterday after lunch, and said goodbye to Milan and Nadia in Sofia.

We stayed a night in the Sofia Holiday Inn on a good recommendation by Irena. In Sofia we met first Milena, Svetla, Rado, Hristian of course, and then Svetlio and Tsetsa. It was very nice to see everybody in person again.

In the evening we went to see the камбините, or 'bells', a monument with bells from all over the world that was created in the UNESCO year of the child (see pictures).

Our next flight is in two hours, to New York JFK airport. There we'll take the last flight of our trip, back to Raleigh Durham.

Yesterday evening we saw Изстрели по никое време in the Plovdiv Drama Theater.

Nadia and Milan joined us around 6.30 pm on the Glavnata, the main street, and at 7.00 pm the show started.

This was the first time I saw a play in Bulgarian, and I could understand most of it. Not every word, but definitely the general story and dialogues -- pretty cool! The actors talked very clearly and not too fast.

The story was great, and very funny at times. The scene with the dancing couple was one of the highlights. The story was written by Gerald Moon.

Last night was also a celebration of the jubileum of Todor Genov (Тодор Генов), who has been an actor in Plovdiv for 30 years. At the end of the play he was congratulated by many dignitaries and friends, and received an incredible amount of flowers. His speech at the end was very nice too, very Bulgarian in style.