3 Things I'll Have to Get Used To in the States

Soo... I'm finally here. I won't say that the journey was easy, but all was well and I'm finally here, safe and sound, at least for now. I've been adjusting to things these last couple of days and let me tell you, that's not as easy as it sounds. I live on the other side of the world, so it was natural that I would come across certain things that are different around these parts. Of course, people warned me about the customs and the traditions, as well as the different laws and rules, so I won't say that it was all unexpected, but some differences caught me by surprise. Some things like...

SQUIRRELS

Let's talk about the squirrels, people. The squirrels… are everywhere. Are they meant to be like the pigeons of Penn's campus - in that there are a lot of them, they're not at all scared of you and you don't pay any attention to them? How is it that no one cares that a squirrel is sitting there and eating its food like a boss right next to him? Am I just supposed to believe you don't consider those furry bastards a big deal? That would never happen in my country. My home town has a huge park in it and I think we have, like, two squirrels at the most. Two. If you notice a group of people standing in one place and looking up a tree, chances are someone probably saw a squirrel and strangers passing by wanted to see it as well.

Awkward Social Interactions with Strangers

In the past couple of days I've been walking around campus a lot, which meant that I came across a lot of people - in stores and restaurants, asking for directions or simply passing by them on the streets. In this time, I've found out something interesting about Americans - almost all of them will say hello to you, and almost all of those will ask you how you are. Now, when I was leaving, I was warned about this - should they ask you, don't bother answering because they don't really care, they're just being polite. But here I am now, feeling like a jerk for not answering this poor woman who wants to know how I'm feeling, stuck in this awkward smile that probably creeps her out. On top of that, this social interaction makes me nervous and my already unintelligible English gets worse.

- Hello, how are you?

- Hello, I'm… gh.

- Um.. Just let me know if you need any help, alright?

- Agheet, I leel et y oh.

- …

Coins with no numbers on them

Seriously, America? Y u no have coins that tell you how much they're worth? I know you can tell them apart by size and color at this point, but I've never seen one before, so I have to stare at the fine print in the bottom and remind myself of how much a dime or a quarter is every time I go to pay. I now have a wallet full of at least $5 worth of coins just because I feel uncomfortable rummaging through my money and getting the quantity right. I feel like I will have to spend an hour at home one day, just looking at those coins and doing exercises on paying with them. This shouldn't be this hard, people!

So Long And Thanks For All The Fish

So there it is, folks - my last Bulgarian post for the year.

I'm off for the US in 5 hours and I thought that now is the perfect time to pour my heart out, I guess.

God, saying goodbye is a bitch. I hate saying goodbye to people - those whom you don't know that well get overly emotional and those who you truly care about are so sad that it makes you reconsider going whereever you're going. I'm feeling fine now but, my God, was I a wreck today - and I didn't, didn't, didn't want to leave. The best strategy was to constantly keep myself busy so that I wouldn't have to stay alone with my own thoughts and emotions. It seems to be working for now, but then again, maybe I'll break down in the middle of my flight. I guess we'll see.

I'm also terrified of flying for 12 hours, but that, too, is something easily fixable by constant distractions and maybe just a couple of sedatives. I'm not the most outgoing person when it comes to communicating with strangers so I guess small talk with the passangers nearby will be limited to a short and awkward exchange about our home countries.

"Oh, you're from Bulgaria? Such an exotic country"

"It really isn't."

"Well, you have you own sea, right? That has to be interesting."

"Not in the way you think of it."

I think I'll just stick to eating and drinking on that plane, thank you.

The good news is, I did manage to pack my suitcase, so for those of you who held your breath for that, you can all relax now. Fitting all of my shit into 23kg was apparently possible, who knew.

The Rise of (Female) Nerds

So I saw this video a while ago:

I have to say, I feel rather irritated by it.

I don't know why this is, maybe because I personally am very careful how I use the word "nerd" and which things I refer to as "nerdy". Maybe it's because I see what most of these ladies are doing and am offended by how little effort they're putting into it. Because let me tell you something, girls - if you want to draw in the nerd crowd, you're going to have to do better than saying you like Star Wars.

Seriously, who thinks that movie is nerdy anymore? In the words of the great Adam Scott of Parks and Recreation: "Everyone's seen it!"

You know who is nerdy? Alison Haislip. And also she is amazingly hot, but that's not the point. She is the living proof that girl nerds do exist on this earth. She has a huge video game collection, watches Doctor Who, knows her comic book superheroes and the lyrics to at least one Animaniacs song. I can't even remember it all. But listen to this interview with her and you will be convinced. She has the right to call herself a nerd because of all those things she likes and feels passionate about.

Alison is a rarity, though, because as the aforementioned girls show us, the popular belief about nerds is that you need to only say you are interested or know about one single thing that is currently considered nerdy to call yourself one. You know who Batman is? Nerd. You have touched an action figure at some point in your life? Nerd. You have watched you little brother play Call of Duty? Nerd (by proxy).

I think the reason behind such behavior can be explained with the growing popularity that nerds have gained among their peers nowadays. It's become cool to be a nerd. ComicCon has more and more visitors every year, every blockbuster now seems to be based on a comic book superhero, even TV Shows seem to have caught on - we have vampires and aliens and The Big Bang Theory (which I doubt any true nerds follow regularly, though). It's a strange social phenomenon that is bizzare, but not inexplicable. In the words of Patton Oswalt:

"You get old enough to know that every single thing - punk rock, hip hop - everything becomes mainstream. It has to, so that something else could react to it. Staying underground and staying edgy is just as stagnating as staying mainstream and bloated."

This doesn't mean that nerd culture is dead. Just that it's getting harder to prove that you are a true nerd because there are so many people now who claim the same by just saying they have watched an episode of Firefly.

But I guess the question for this particular post is: Why are girls doing it more often than guys? I guess it stems from the common (male) understanding that girls who like nerdy things are some sort of social unicorns - you've heard about them, but never actually seen one yourself. And you just know you wanna be a fucking unicorn, because that is awesome, man.

Who To Follow on Google+

Alright, so I already told you last week that I joined Google+ but I figured I should talk about it a little more today. Mainly, I wanted to share with you the people I follow on there.

I am just now starting to get how awesome Google+ is actually. Looks like Facebook, acts like Twitter, so we can follow whomever we want but they don't have to agree to it. Consent? That's a thing of the past, people, today's social networks should be modified for the stalker in all of us. It still sucks that not that many people have joined yet but by next month things will improve. After all, look at all the great guys who are already on board:

Kassem G - very funny guy, YouTube star

Charlie McDonnell - musician, YouTube star and British, so bonus points for that

Adam Pash - editor of LifeHacker, posts tech-related news

Soren Bowie - writer at one of my favorite sites, Cracked.com

Felicia Day - awesome actress, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and the amazing web series The Guild

Trey Ratcliff - photographer, posts really fantastic pictures regularly

Lady Gaga and Charlie Sheen - I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's a guilty pleasure

Thomas Hawk - another photographer to make my news feed beautiful

Natalie Villalobos - Community Manager for the Google+ project

Wil Wheaton - actor, comedian, awesome guy

Chuck Palahniuk - one of my favorite writers, so great that he's already a part of the

network. Follow him. You won't regret it.

So that's my list for now. If you have found other celebrities and/or awesome people who

post interesting things on G+, comment and share the knowledge!

Did you Need an Update?

So here I am again, the summer is finally here for me and I haven't a single care in the world. Life is looking pretty good these days - I'm with my family again, working on a project I feel passionately about, seeing my friends and the beach... I even lost a couple of pounds :)

The dates of my arrival and departure from America have been established - I'm leaving on the 21st of August and returning home on the 15th of May. I'm hoping that I can travel with a couple of guys also participating in the program, who are flying to Pennsylvania. Poor guys will probably have to arrive in Philadelphia and then spend another couple of hours getting to their cities. Thankfully my final destination IS Philadelphia, so my flight will only last... about 12-15 hours. Oh, God.

I'm not yet thinking about what I'm going to pack, in fact I'm dreading the thought of doing so, because I know how hard that will be. But that is coming for me and I'll probably tell you how that goes.

In other news, I joined Google+! I'm left with great impressions, but I don't use it that much yet, mainly because none of my friends has climbed aboard. I think joining the network still requires an invitation, so if anyone needs one, just say the word!

My God, I am epicly failing at being a regular blogger, aren't I? I looked over my blog account and I noticed there are at least 5 or 6 postings that I've started and not yet completed so I guess at one point I can submit them all at once, just to catch up.

I notice a tendency of me writing a post in this blog every time I have finals. It's just that this specific method of procrastination gives me the illusion that I'm actually doing something useful - because I'm producing something and not just mindlessly scrolling through Cracked or Memebase. It doesn't take away from the fact that I'm still not doing anything University-related but... whatever, I can slack off until the night before the exam. Yeah, they're gonna LOVE me at Penn.

The BYLP thing is going smoothly, though. I am going to my visa interview on the 17th and the 25-26th are the two days the BYLP team and I are spending in the mountains for something of a team-building thing, I guess. And don't get me wrong now, but I find this a little puzzling. I'm never going to see most of these people - we're all headed for different parts of the U.S. and it's not like we're even flying on the same date, so why the need for team-building? Nevertheless, I would never decline an invitation to a free party in a four-star hotel, so I told them to count me in.

I hope I can offer more substantial material the next time I check-in but looking over the tabs in my browser that would be a stupid promise to make.

Oh, and here's a song for you to listen, because I seem to think someone actually cares about the music I like.

[Insert Philadelphia joke here]

I was really tempted to make an It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia reference in the title of this post but I resisted the urge (read: got lazy) and am going to try to be serious for two minutes.

These past couple of days I've been desperately trying to get rid of my bad habit of falling asleep late at night. So last night I'm really optimistic about this new goal and go to close my laptop at 12 A.M. and start dreaming of YouTube stars when I notice that I have an email. It's the BYLP program again, telling me they've received an invitation for me... from UPenn. UPENN! Like, in University of Pennsylvania, the fifth best school in the nation and twelfth in the world?

I feel like I should include a disclaimer here. I am not bragging about my being accepted at UPenn, mainly because I find it really hard to believe that someone like me could be taken seriously as an applicant, let alone as a student there. I believe the BYLP team members are the ones responsible for that opportunity and I have little to do with the whole thing. I just think I got incredibly lucky and, upon arriving there, will just be begging everyone around to please, please let me enjoy this while I can.

Which is not exactly that much - it's only a year, after all. It's not like I'll have the opportunity to stay there. I'm simply a guest student - I won't get any credits, won't obtain a degree of any sort. I'm just going to be there for the experience. And because the BYLP Program is paying for everything. Seriously, those guys rock.