Alaskan Bulgarian

One Surreal Week Ends, Another Shorter One Begins

So, The family has left. They boarded a plane Saturday afternoon and hopped on out of Bulgaria. They've all reached their respective homes. Things are suddenly much more quiet around here. I don't have to order four things at meals, I can spend as much time as common sense allows in the internet club, and I don't have a nagging feeling that I need to provide everyone a good time. There's a certain sense of freedom in that, but I still sort of wish they were all around.

The week of hosting began last Sunday, when I visited the Silistra orphange 12 hours before boarding a midnight bus to Sofia. The kids there were great and insisted on doing everything, as usual. The spring weather has been great, and Debbie and I visited the kids on a particularly great day. We started down on the basketball court, where I participated in about fifteen different games that only sometimes resembled basketball. Most of the time the games involved running around the middle of the court chasing a kid dribbling the ball or being chased while dribbling. Then there were the standard groups of kids who wanted to be lifted up for a dunk. And of course there was the "me against the orphanage game," but I've found the kids get bored of anything official or score-based, so that game ended quickly.

After the time on court was deemed finished, the kids dragged me up the hill to their playset, where they all showed me the tricks they've learned to do on the chin-up bars. They also requested that I do chin-ups on the high bar. I obliged, but found the winter had been pretty rough on the ol' upper body and I couldn't do nearly as many as I could last year. I've started a new morning workout routine to get myself back into orphange shape for future trips. After, the show of strength, the kids jumped up and down on their giant tractor tire, then took me around the back to the lawn.

There, we played a little rugby, which is what the orphanage kids think American football is. Playing rugby at the orphanage involves running back and forth with a ball and avoiding the players on the other team, or in my case, letting the other team jump on me and attempting to cross the field while they try everything in their power to drag me down. Both parts are fun, but it also carried on the day's newest activity: fake crying to mess with Batko Robert's head. One kid would tackle another kid on or near a rock, and the tackler would run up to me and say that the other kid was crying and needed help. Worried, I would trot over and the kid on the ground would shout "just kidding!" in Bulgarian and run off. Good times for all involved, although I got tired of after the tenth or eleventh time it happened.

With the kids hopping along the fence and shouting goodbye, Debbie and I walked off and I returned to my apartment to take a shower and watch a DVD. Twelve hours later I was on a bus to Sofia to pick up Mom, Dad, and my sister, Tricia. I took a bus out to the airport with Linda, another volunteer, who was going to the airport to pick up her visiting son. Her son came in from Milan, we shook hands, they left, and a huge mob formed as five international flights arrived at the arrivals terminal in the space of fifteen minutes. Somehow, my family made it through customs and the horde of people waiting in something approaching good time. They made all necessary pit stops, we talked about what would happen with money, then we made it out to the cab area.

There, four independent drivers suggested we try their fifteen leva rides when I knew a fair cost would be something around five or six leva. We finally managed to grab a cab from O.K. taxis, a company which has never attempted to cheat me in Bulgaria and runs a perfectly fair meter. We got to the city center for exactly six leva and ate a vegetarian lunch (For Mom and Tricia) at the Dream House. We stopped in at Peace Corps Headquarters for an e-mail check, then it was off to the bus terminal to catch a ride back to Silistra.

Five minutes into the walk, Tricia had her cell phone removed, unwillingly, from its home in her backpack. She didn't see exactly who did it, but suspected a member of a group of three women. I confronted the woman, hoping for a confession out of surprise, and she opened her purse and showed me all of her pockets. I sighed, the family called it a good effort with unfortunate results, and we carried on toward the bus station.

Seven hours later, round midnight, we arrived in Silistra. I checked the family into the city's central hotel, the Zlatna Dobrudja, and stumbled my way home after a long day. My first class would began in ten hours, and the family would be coming along. Things of interest were bound to happen. And you'll learn all about them when you read tomorrow's entry.

This week will only see me teaching three days of class. On Thursday, the country's spring holiday begins, and I have no immediate plans but to sit back and enjoy Silistra and Bulgaria. Expect plenty of entries as long as there's something worth writing about, and maybe even if there isn't.

One last thing: Comments are now re-opened. Praise, mock, and discuss at will. Also, please ignore the poor, depressed little kid named Tom or Anita or something if you see the name in the comments. Don't let his cursing scare you, he's just craving attention and all his little indiscretions will be deleted as soon as I get around to them. I can't ignore his stuff, but that shouldn't stop you from doing it.

Posted by Rob at March 29, 2004 04:00 PM