"Made a Funny"

So, I am gonna start out by saying I'm not the funniest person in the world. I have my moments. Around certain people I am funnier than when I am around others. Other times people are the ones who bring out the funny side in me. Most of my humor is a conglomeration of wittyness, sarcasm, stupidity, and the occasional actual joke. I laugh from all sorts of things, jokes, sarcasm, silly actions, and situational humor. A very wise person I know (Christina Bakke) told me before I left for Bulgaria that it was going to be hard to adjust simply because I would not have the humor aspect of my language. Granted, compared to Americans, Bulgarians are probably not as funny. But boy was she right...

In Bulgaria I find myself getting my laughs from the oddities of Bulgarian life, or something I said wrong and everyone except me is laughing (That doesn't count as humor). I also love hanging with other Americans because we laugh together sooooo fricken much, and I love that. I can't remember more times in my life than in Bulgaria that I have been brought to tears because of laughter. It is always nice to have that outlet. Until today I have been rendered humorless except for the American gatherings. Now I will tell you why.

A bit of background...The national park I work for held an art contest a couple months back and received the art earlier this week that kids from all over Bulgaria sent in for the contest. The theme for the contest was "One Planet One Future". In total we got 22 entries that we judged today. We hung up the artwork around the room and began to talk about which ones we liked and didn't. It was a real jury deliberation. In true Bulgarian fashion we spent over an hour just contimplating which pictures were better than others. Things were really going well until we came to this picture below.


Now remember that the theme is "One Planet One Future" and it was keying on biodiversity. My counterpart and the other female in the jury really loved this picture because it was "well done" and "technical"....sure. Now, I am not knocking the artist but my argument was...how does this represent biodiversity? My colleagues argued that cats are wildlife and that the picture represented this girls connection to nature through being a cat-lover...Well that is swell...I suppose

Now this is where I got become my true humorous sarcastic self and critique my colleagues opinion. I pointed out to them the squirrel in the background and said, "Look at the squirrel he is alone and lonely, that is a bad future!" Ahahahahaha my colleagues loved it and then I pointed out, "There are too many stray cats in Bansko anyways." Oh man did it feel good actually make someone laugh without being an idiot for saying something wrong. I know what I said was not perfect but it came across as funny and that is what makes me happy to know that I finally made a funny in Bulgaria. There was more to the conversation that was funny but I finally feel like I arrived in Bulgaria...all of me. I feel like they don't know the true me...the funny me. But now they do and I hope that it will continue.

Oh man you shoulda been there!!!!