Alaskan Bulgarian

The Camp

Well, it's been a week without an entry and I've been busy. Since Wednesday we've been preparing for this summer's camp for Bulgarian boys (There is a girls' camp, and a very successful one at that, but for next year we're thinking about integrating. Maybe.). Yesterday they arrived, and all the details have involved a fantastic combination of chaos and success.

For the last six months, I've been spending quite a few weekends hunting and pecking around Bulgaria for a site for this year's camp. We started looking in Sunny Beach, but the sanitarium we found there wasn't what a person would call "great-looking." While there were beds in every room and 1 bathroom a floor is okay for camp purposes, there was also the occasional pile of dog crap on the floor. So ultimately, and only after a few months of waiting for them to make it look presentable, we decided to switch locations.

Which brought us to the city I'm writing from, Obzor. It's a quiet, little tourist town halfway between Varna and Burgas on the Black Sea coast. The camp here has great rooms, with three beds to a room, and a bathroom on each floor. I was the one to check it out, two months ago, and I okayed it based on what I saw, our budget, and the need to have somewhere to hold our camp.

As these first days have shown us, there were probably some things I should have taken a closer look at. The portions of food, so far have been miniscule and not quite at the gourmet level one expects to come with small portions of food. Most of the time it's a cube of meat in a sea of reddish or gray broth. Accompanied by bread. And they don't serve drinks. So we've had to get our own. Also, only four or five showers work in our building, so it takes a bit of manipulation to get one, but it has certainly been possible.

As "logistics coordinator" I was also in charge of getting the boys to the camp from their drop-off points in Varna and Burgas. However, our director did the calling, scheduling, and spreadsheet-making that gave us the arrival schedules. Somewhere along the line, my facts, the director's facts, and the boys' parents travel ideas didn't exactly match up. I had to be in Varna the night before the boys came in because two boys were arriving sometime in the seven o'clock hour. One was supposed to be on a bus, the other was supposed to be on a train. As it happened, they were both on the train, both were with family members, and in mhy rush to get the kid I thought was on the train to the minibus station with buses to Obzor and then get to the big bus station, I didn't hang around and wait for the other kid that I thought was going to be on a bus to get off the train.

Back at the train station, I found the boy with his father. We chatted about the misunderstanding, and about how the kid was going to get home, then the kid and I went to the minibus station by cab. As we were pulling up, the father hopped out of a cab behind us and gave me his son't train ticket, which the kid would need to have the trip reimbursed. It also gave the kid, young for the camp at 14, to give his dad one last look.

At the minibus station, buses tend to leave on the half hours, or whenever they're full. The young kid had about a half hour to wait. He asked me if he could go on the bus after I'd talked to him for awhile. I said he could if he wanted to. Five minutes later I saw him on his cell phone. Two minutes later, he came out of the bus, said his father was coming to pick him up and take him home, and that he'd like his money. Not being able to force kids to stay, I gave the kid his money, asked the father if there were any particular reasons the kid was leaving, and let them go. He was the only camper I lost all day, and he went home with his dad. I'll call that an accomplishment.

The rest of the day was spent running around Varna, trying to find a bag one of the kids had left on his bus, and making sure everything was surviving in Burgas, where they seemed to be having more scheduling problems than we were.

However, we got through it. All the kids arrived at camp, and so far all they've noticed is a pretty solid Bulgarian camp-site, a chance to practice they're English, and an opportunity to make good friends with other Bulgarians and Americans. And we've had a couple complaints about the food portions, too. Unfortunately, we can't pay the camp we're using to make the food portions larger because they take their orders from a place in Sofia and that place in Sofia will not allow the camp to take more money for more food. It's against the rules to make more money, apparently. I don't know.

Anyway, I'm also a counselor, and my group, "The Big Cats" (We all like lions, or tigers, or cheetahs, we discovered) has been winning everything so far today. They're really a great crew and it's great seeing them enjoying everything. Right now, they're all down on the beach.

So I'll be here until Sunday. There will be entries Wednesday and Friday, so stick around. I'm still here.

Posted by Rob at July 19, 2004 02:32 PM