Alaskan Bulgarian

Hey! It's an entry!

It seems like every weekend I go out of town a new horror is visited on my TV or the area around it. Nobody is responsible for these tragedies, they just seem to happen. One time the Cartoon Network on my cable service went entirely French. Another time, the cable was gone completely until the next day. Sometimes there's an odd blue spot in the upper-right corner of the screen that tints the area around it. This time, I arrived home around midnight, turned on the TV to see how the Lakers had done (Although I'd strangely predicted the historic loss in a dream the night before. Sometimes I'm like that SNL Christopher Walken character who grabs people and gives them trivial predictions about their lives. I can see the future, but what I see means very, very little to the world as a whole and me in particluar), and discovered that the TV wasn't working at all. Not a thing, not a sound, not a little red "power" light, not a glimmer of hope.

I know of two possible ways to fix this problem and tried both. Experimenting with the plug and various sockets had no effect. And whacking the TV with the palm of my hand at various angles and strengths didn't do much either. So it sits there now, a paperweight with a blank screen collecting dust. It never gave me one hint of its sudden demise before I left. Now I'm left with the frustating choice of trying to get the thing repaired, buying a new TV, or devoting myself to a healthy life of writing, reading, and watching the occasional movie on my DVD player. I'm leaning very heavily toward being one of those guys who doesn't have a TV. Those guys are pretty cool, and seem to get a lot of reading done. I'll have a TV, of course--since the paperweight belongs to the school, but it will just sit blankly in the corner staring at me while I lay on the couch reading, ignoring it.

Anyway, it's been a good solid week since my last post, and much of varying interest has happened. I picked up a new sitemate who will arrive permanently in July. He visited Silistra for a few days last week and seemed to enjoy himself, although, like me a year ago, he has no apartment at the moment to speak of. He does, however, have a very nice school to work at whose devotion to him (their first volunteer) is so obsessive it's cute.

They doted after him all week and seemed especially curious about how familiar I was with Bulgarian, the city, and the country. They wanted to make sure that he would have an American he could rely on in the city. It was vaguely adorable. I had things to do last week myself, of course. I went to my second book-launching party in Silistra. Book-launching parties are a lot like weddings celebrating only one person. Everyone of importance gets to make a speech, cheesy music is played, and people drink champagne. As in weddings, poems are often incorporated into the speeches, only these poems are the ones written by the author whose book is being launched. Usually, a good half of the book gets read aloud by the time the bulk of the party is over.

Fortunately, I have yet to see any dancing at a book-launching. There's always one guy who gives a good, funny speech and whose material is used over again by each person making a succeeding speech. All of this in Bulgarian. It's all worth it, of course. I get to congratulate the author on a book well-published, I have a couple of laughs, and there's always snacks and drinks. But as the whole affair is always in Bulgarian it leaves me exhausted by the end of the party. I met the new sitemate for the first time shortly after the book-launching and he, Jody (the present sitemate), and I shared a few drinks. That was Wednesday, Thursday we bumped into each other and I met his new school director, and Friday we both had to leave the city.

Since I needed to go to Sofia for the weekend, we both took the same bus to the big city so I could show him the way home to Batak, where he's living during training. On the bus, about a half hour into the ride, his counterpart called my mobile phone (the emegency number they requested he give them) and asked to be handed over to him. I gave him the phone and his counterpart asked him if he had remembered to pick up his passport at the hotel. He said he had. He told them he'd see them in July and hung up.

"I'm not a kid," he told me. "I wish they'd realize that..."

After a moment's pause, he dove into his bag to make sure he had remembered to pick up his passport and, after finding it, leaned back into his chair with a sigh. He's a pretty darn good guy.

While in Sofia, I gave him and a couple of other B-15s (The new volunteers) a scattered tour of the city and had a sport-filled weekend. Saturday, I played in a flag football tournament organized by a couple of highly football-dedicated volunteers. The tournament was on a field turned concrete by a lack of grass and rain. The dry dirt left just about everyone with skinned knees and one of the organizers, Alex, with more red on his body than white. Two volunteers hurt their knees badly and one will have to go home a month before completion of service because he landed wrong. I was submarined on a pass that was thrown too high and whapped the back of my head on the ground before hopping up and giving my head a good rub. That was the worst of it for me and it earned a good, loud "ooh" from the spectators and a pass interference call that put us in the red zone before Jeff threw an interception to give the other team the ball in the end zone. So I got off pretty lucky, even though our team lost both games we played.

I went into the weekend believing that the main event would be basketball on Sunday. After a poll of the basketball-playing regulars (The Peace Corps CD and AO, a few volunteers, and a couple of embassy guys and marines) I got the impression that we'd have a huge game with about 20 guys playing alternating games of full-court ball. After Saturday, all that hype turned into five guys playing two-on-two, with one guy sitting in a chair. It was great two-on-two, but everyone who didn't play because of football soreness should be ashamed of themselves.

So I leave a healthy weekend to come upon a lazy week spent celebrating the graduating class of Language School-Peyo Yavarov and teaching only two days of classes. Today is the day of Cyrril and Methodius, where it's the custom of most, if not all, Slavic countries to celebrate the alphabet made possible by the work of those two brothers. Most of the time is spent celebrating schools in general and graduating classes in particular. I went to the show at Silistra's theater this morning to watch the graduating class receive their awards and give a final bow before their teachers, parents, and friends. Most schools here, near as I can tell, don't do the cap and gown thing, so most of the students were dressed in their homecoming best.

The program ran like something scarily similar to the Oscars. It started with a couple of songs played over the speakers and a few opening words from some of the students. Then, on a big screen on the right side of the stage, each award was shown in order with photos of the five or six nominees superimposed tastefully over a changing picture of flowers. The presenters were the teachers of each of the disciplines for which awards were given. The girl, Anna, whose book had been launched the week before won several awards. I think everybody expects big things out of Anna.

Between the awards some of the other students of the school sang and danced. One girl sang "I Will Survive," which seems to have become a mandatory hymn at all celebratory gatherings. For better or worse, I suppose. Later, the classes were each presented and gave a final group bow to Evanescence's "My Immortal." Outside, I congratulated as many of the students as possible in the drizzling rain before rushing home to eat lunch from the haul I'd brought back from Sofia.

From Anchorage many weeks ago, Dad sent me a package containing some very special things. Most valuable among these were a couple of bags of "Honey Bunches of Oats" cereal and Alaskan smoked salmon. It took several packets of the cookies that were also in the package to keep me from diving into the salmon when I arrived home on a full stomach last night. I fortunately waited until lunch today and ate about 6 sandwiches of the only great fish I've had in over a year. I poured the remaining half of the salmon from its airtight bag into my best container, put it in the fridge, then cut the bag open and licked the inside clean. I really, really, really, very much missed Alaskan salmon.

Tomorrow, relaxation followed by my requested presence at the graduating class's prom. I'll have to wear a suit, something I haven't done in over a year, although, by my Peace Corps definition, a suit is my general teaching uniform of a button-down shirt and khakis with the necessary addition of a sport coat, tie, and loafers. We'll see how all that goes.

Posted by Rob at May 24, 2004 06:40 PM