Alaskan Bulgarian

Random Stuff. Do With it What You Will.

Just noticed something. The internet club here has a bathroom. Not exactly the cleanest place in the world, but it's passable. Anyway, the bathroom has a drain in the floor. It's filthy, clogged, and I doubt it works anymore, but it's there. Which makes me wonder about that bathroom. Did it have a shower once? Why would it have a shower? What was the internet club before it was an internet club and why would that place need a shower? These are questions with answers maybe only one person knows, but he isn't here right now and speaks nearly incomprehensible Bulgarian, so the club's past will have to remain a mystery, another hazy section of Bulgaria's past.

Which reminds me: I learned another Baba Marta legend today, this one from my tutor. It seems the whole thing may have started with Han Omurtag, a Bulgarian king, who was going to have a kid. If the kid came out a boy, the birth would be marked by the wearing of white thread and if it came out a girl, everyone would have to wear red thread. Soon after the passing of this...um...law, his wife gave birth to twins, one boy and one girl. Omurtag then passed an amendment dictating that on his kids' birthday every year (March 1st, as it happened) everybody should twist the two colors together and wear the strings until spring officially began in accordance with the rules for the beginning of spring already listed on this site. My tutor's story has it that the people thought this new law was all kinds of fun and invented Baba Marta to spice it up. So if you came here for Baba Marta stories, you now have your daily fix.

Today has been one of those lazy holidays where I have no school to teach and consider doing laundry, grading, a little cleaning, and writing a post a rousing success. Tomorrow will be one of those lazy working days where getting the kids to spend the entire period speaking English will be a rousing success. Over half the school's faculty has left for a ski vacation/seminar in Borovets and most classes will be cancelled tomorrow. Come to think of it, I'll be lucky if any students come at all. Not out of disrespect for me, but for the understandable argument that it would be a waste of valuable free time to come all the way to school for only one class.

I didn't go to Borovets for several reasons, one being that I don't ski. Actually, I've never gone skiing. I wear size 17 shoes, and ski places never have boots my size. I actually love the look I get from people when I give them this reason. Their first question is usually, "Why don't you get them custom made?" Now, I ask you, would you fork over God knows how much money to buy a pair of boots for a sport you're not even sure you'd like? What would be the point of that? It'll have to happen some day, I'm sure. And for the rest of my life I'll have a pair of enormous ski boots in my closet that never get used. But that day hasn't come yet, and probably won't come while I'm in Bulgaria. That would mean I'd have to spend most of the trip in a cafe, breathing the second-hand smoke from a dozen German and French teachers complaining about their kids. Call me asocial, but I'd rather teach unattentive students, thank you very much.

So I'm here in Silistra, analyzing internet club restrooms and national holidays. Hmmm. Oh, and that "Faith" song is playing on the radio. It's been playing solid since my arrival here last April. I think I have most of it memorized, and I don't think I've ever intentionally listened to the lyrics. That's the crazy kind of life in Bulgaria. And about all I think needs to be written today.