Alaskan Bulgarian

The Bulgarian Crib-ouse and the Iz-ouse and All That

So yeah, wassup, welcome to my crib. I’m gonna’ take ya’all up in heah, show ya what happens in the casa de Rob. We gonna’ have a good time, yo. And now I’ll stop the lingo since I'm bad at it and I get the idea it might get a bit old after a paragraph or two.

Anyway, here we have the entryway. On the left is my coat and towel rack. I call it that because it’s where, you know, I keep my coat and towels. My shoes also hang out around there and I keep some emergency stuff in the drawers under the rack. There’s also a mirror right next to the door. It’s pretty handy for those last minute check-ups. At the end of the hall is the closet:

I’ve got some small mattresses in there, a communist era vacuum cleaner, and a broken radiator. Nothing really too useful, but that’s what a closet is for, I suppose. Let’s just move on and take a right into the living room.

This is where all the magic happens. We have a Greek flag on the wall from the trip to Athens and Crete, and next to that is a map of Silistra and a little painting Kate gave me Christmas. In terms of furniture, we have four chairs, two ottomans, and the couch under the flag and map. The couch folds out into a bed that I hear is kinda’ sorta’ comfortable.

Here’s a better view. On the right is an incredibly old radio that would probably work if I put some effort into fixing it. For now it just sits there and acts as a nice end table. You can also see my UCLA slippers, the two ottomans, and a copy of John Kennedy Toole’s The Neon Bible, which I’ll talk about tomorrow. The lamp on the radio/end table is the only working light fixture in the room at the moment, but it does a remarkable and cheap job of keeping the room lit at night. The glass doors you see on the right open up on the terrace and reveal a view of Simeon Veliki Boulevard down below.

Opposite the couch, I have my big bookshelf.

This is where the books stay until I’ve read them and given them to the school. On the left are Simpsons and Dilbert desk calendars my Grandma sent me for Christmas. And below all that is the tiny chessboard, again from Greece, the Santa hat from the Christmas trip to the orphanage, and my rotary phone that now only receives calls since the line is pretty much useless for anything else.

And moving past all that, this is where the magic happens, as they say. My bedroom. Complete with bed, bedside table, and closets:

Not much to see here, really. There are a couple of GRE books next to the bed for some light bedtime reading. You can see the closet has my usual supply of t-shirts, button-down shirts, and Lakers shorts. Coming out of the bedroom, we see the famous Carnaval ’99 poster left by one of the Spanish guys who leaved here before my stay. It’s just a promotional thing, but it has stayed because I really don’t have that much of a problem with it.

If we go back into the entryway, we see the ultra-secure two-lock door:

Moving beyond that, we have the room where the magic happens, baby!

The all-tiled bathroom, the toilet’s in the back, the sink’s on the right, and the showerhead is behind the door. All the heated water in the apartment comes from the little canister you see in the back of the room. But that’s a Bulgarian bathroom for you. The kitchen’s next-door, come on, follow me.

This is where “the magic,” you know, happens. We have the washer and sink, both attached to the bathroom’s hot water supply, and the distiller that keeps me clear of kidney stones, bacterial diseases, and all the other goodies the medical staff warned us against. That door on the right leads to a view of the Danube River:

And the obligatory fridge shot. Not a whole lot of food, but we have some ham, cheese, eggs, milk, chicken, and some leftover chicken and rice in the pot at the bottom. Everything a growing man needs.

And that’s it. That’s my place. Thanks for coming, but now you got to go! Go on, get out. Go!

Just kidding, you can stick around if you want. It’s just that they always finish every Cribs segment with one of those pissy rants, and I thought I’d try it too. Yeah, anyway, that’s my place, Bulgaria-style. Hope you enjoyed the tour. Later folks.

Comments and the Site in General

Things have been a little quiet here on my end because, well, I've been lazy. I spent the whole week getting over the last bits of a cold and devoted most of my creative energy to classes. All is better now and the temperature around here could be called warm. What was generally chilly weather over the week has turned into clear skies and temperatures in the mid-fifties. Gotta' love it.

I spent most of my day off today with all the windows open, alternately watching MTV Cribs and cleaning my own crib or doing laundry. What's amazing about that show is that I can't really identify a favorite episode or house. They're all pretty much the same: Big house, big pool, bathroom, flat screen TVs, pool tables, and SUVs with rims ranging from 22 to 27 inches. I think I'll start a new Peace Corps Cribs section tomorrow, beginning with my clean apartment. I've been meaning to show off the place, and this will be the perfect opportunity. I'll let you folks all up in dere. Solid times, yo.

In other, only vaguely interesting, news: I watched "The Return of the King" for the second time last night. For once, the theater here in Silistra didn't have an intermission and I've never felt the length of a movie more. By the time it got to the fourth point where the movie could have ended but didn't, I was just about up and out of my seat. In fact, I was pretty much ready to leave after Legolas took down the giant elephant thing. No other real reason to stick around, I thought, and I was pretty much right. "The Return of the King" just doesn't click with me as much as the first two movies did. It finishes things well enough, but among the other Best Picture flicks, I think "Master and Commander" was a more complete movie, and I still desperately want to see "Lost in Translation." It hasn't made its way to Bulgaria yet in film form. There are a few CDs of it floating around though.

Anyway, that's where we stand now. Life is calm, peaceful, and aimed for Spring. Oh, and as for those comments. Well, I have to trim them, if only to keep people who want to see short people in strange positions out of the site. Despite having interesting last names, the two Ivanas actually have poignant things to say about what happens to a site left unupdated and go so far as to praise the site. As for the spammers and others, I appreciate the comedic effort, but no thanks, you lovable sickos!

Citizenship/Nationality In Vivo

Since we have a few comments under "It's a Generational Thing" that should be addressed, it was an astonshing coincidence that I chanced upon a returned Bulgarian on the bus home from Sofia this Sunday.

Her name was Maggie and she lives in Chicago with her parents and brother. She works at a department store and has learned to speak nigh perfect English since her family moved to America four or five years ago. Jeff, another volunteer, and I were sharing a bus on the way home to Bulgaria's frozen, isolated Northeast and we met her in that time honored tradition of being American. Even for Americans, Jeff and I have loud voices, and we were talking about a subject we both love: how much our lovable students can piss us off from time to time. The bus was almost empty and we assumed that no one else on it spoke English.

We'd reached a pause when a girl in her early twenties, turned around in her seat, looked at us, and asked "What are you guy's doing here?" I looked at Jeff, then back at the girl, and replied "huh?"

"I mean, you're Americans, right?" she followed. "What are you doing in Bulgaria?"

I assumed, at this point, that she was a Bulgarian who could speak English. So I lunged right into my usual explanation routine: "Well, we're teachers. I teach at a language school in Silistra. I'm from Alaska, in America, and we're just here helping out."

"But why'd you come to Bulgaria?" She responded. "I mean, it's terrible here. My family left and I can't imagine why anyone else would want to come here if they didn't have to."

After that came the standard Peace Corps volunteers speech. We asked where her family lived and she said they'd moved to Chicago, and that she was here on a two week vacation and would be getting back as soon as possible. The people she'd be staying with live in Silistra. After getting our histories all settled, we moved quickly into deeper conversation. She asked us about Bulgarians and our students in particular, and brought up the whole sterotyping/racism issue.

Maggie, of course, considers herself a Bulgarian even though she has no immediate plans on returning for a good length of time. And, she said, she had just recently started feeling American. She told us that when she started working at the department store, she didn't speak a lick of English and got by with nodding and grunts. As her language skills improved, she made friends, began taking ESL classes, and is now a properly integrated part of American society.

Her parents still don't speak English very well, but her brother has, apparently, gone quickly over the edge. "He doesn't call himself a Bulgarian much anymore," she told us. He goes to a university on the east coast, has no Bulgarian friends, and apparently speaks English without an accent. There wasn't a whole lot of pride in her voice about these developments. Her brother was succeeding, but she seemed to be worrying about the cultural cost.

"There's a lot about America I don't like," she told us. "I think the food is terrible. I hate American food." As well-adapted Peace Corps volunteers, Jeff and I have ready-made arguments against this little fumble. "Well, everybody hates McDonalds. But it offers fast food, and you can always count on the same mediocre stuff. It'll never make you sick, probably."

"And don't you like Chinese food?" Jeff jumped in. "And Italian food? What about pies? Don't you like pies? Apple? Cherry?"

Maggie collapsed under this assault and acknowledged that food in America is pretty good. Her problem, she told us, was with the fat and preservatives. She told us that she gained fifteen pounds in her first months in America and had only recently lost them again. We agreed that there were probably too many preservatives in things, but that's better than getting sick on half the food you eat.

After ten minutes of chat about American food, Jeff made an observation. "See. You've lived in America for four years and you're already American. You're not even a citizen yet but you could go to any part of the world, speak English, tell people you live in America, and be American. As far as anyone is concerned, you're one of us."

Maggie nodded, smiled graciously, and agreed that this was probably true. "But," Jeff went on. "I could live my whole life in Bulgaria. I could marry a Bulgarian, get a Bulgarian passport, pay Bulgarian taxes, and I would still never be a Bulgarian."

"Yes," she said. "That's true."

I brought up the thing I'd written, and we talked about the Turks in Bulgaria, who Maggie said should probably be considered Bulgarian, too. John Atanasoff, she told us, was a Bulgarian, end of discussion.

We went on like that for a while, alternately complaining about and praising both America and Bulgaria. Maggie had the fewest good things to say about Bulgaria.

Near the end of the trip, the conversation in a lull, I fell asleep and only woke up in Silistra. Maggie and I parted ways and we each went to our corners of the city.

But what we had talked about stuck well. She considered herself an American, and Jeff and I were more than willing to go along with that idea, probably because, as "chap" pointed out in the comments, we now share a common index of ideas and ideals. We were able to talk on the same level about things, and Jeff and I never felt a need to pull our punches about Bulgaria, as we would have with native Bulgarians. Maggie had American complaints and American dreams. She also had traces of Bulgarian culture obviously present, but that's more than acceptable in America.

Bulgaria isn't an irretrievably racist, prejudiced, or nationalistic country, but it is--at times--too exclusive. It often welcomes the money and prestige and praise of the outside world, but sees the outside world as a means to its own ends, not as collective it's willing to embrace. Of course, I write this next to kids playing Counter-Strike on American computers. Kids who will go home and watch MTV and a French feed of Cartoon Network. Something will click eventually, I'm sure, and I hope it doesn't click at the expense of all Bulgarian culture and language, but a general turn toward a universal acceptance of outside nationalities seems inevitable. One day Bulgarians will learn to accept the Turks, Greeks, Macedonians, etc. that live here as Bulgarians and not the "others," but it may be a long while off.

Hatred and the Black Eyed Peas

My students seem to pick up on musical trends pretty easily. They spend a lot of their time watching MTV when they aren't in class or doing homework. They'll play the more recent Bulgarian stuff--Usually a mix of pop-folk with the occasional chalga which is a strange Turkish-sounding form of overly annoying pop. They all insist they hate chalga. HATE IT! they say. Yet they still play it...strange. But most of the time, when I come into a classroom, the students are playing Sean Paul, Beyonce, or--shudder--the Black Eyed Peas.

I used to like the Black Eyed Peas. I even, God forgive me, liked "Where is the Love?" the first few times I heard it. But here in Bulgaria, they're inescapable. If a cafe isn't playing "Where is the Love?" the restaurant next door is playing "Shut Up!" and "Shut Up!" is what has become the bane of my classroom existence. "Where is the Love?" was a little like "Ice, Ice, Baby." I'd heard it just about 1,345,657 times too many. Not a bad song. Maybe even a good song, but without a doubt it got overplayed, at least here in Bulgaria. "Shut Up!" has the same problem, but the students have taken it as a new anthem, and that, I cannot accept.

It always goes down the same way. The students get a bit noisy while I'm trying to talk. I get annoyed. I start out with your basic "shh!" then move on to a very calm "quieeeet." That used to calm everybody down. These days, that same "quieeeet." is, without fail, followed by a student in the front of the room saying "Shut up!" This, of course, prompts a student in the back of the room to start singing that horrid chorus: "Shut up! Just shut up! Shut up!--Shut it up! Just shut up! Shut up!" and some other student in the front of the room starts singing along. This strange disease infects even the best of my students.

Tomorrow the words "shut up" will be outlawed in class. I let it go as long as I did because some of the other English teachers in my school seem to get a little pleasure out of telling their kids to shut up, and I didn't want to give the kids some kind of a complex. But the whole thing has gone too far, and it must end. Short of offing the Black Eyed Peas themselves, something I don't really think would stop the music anyway, I think this is the best option.

Just a Quiz...Busy Weekend Coming Up

You are water. You're not really organic; you're
neither acidic nor basic, yet you're an acid
and a base at the same time. You're strong
willed and opinionated, but relaxed and ready
to flow. So while you often seem worthless,
without you, everything would just not work.
People should definitely drink more of you
every day.


Which Biological Molecule Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Owen's found another good 'un through his sources. I'm not sure a quiz response has ever seemed complimentary for all the right reasons. I like it. I feel like water, in all the right ways. Or maybe because I have to pee. One never knows about these things.

I'll be out of town all weekend, so you mightn't expect anything until Monday. Just providing fair warning.

Geeky Grammar Corner

Hey Kids! You ready to learn about a fascinating minute detail of grammar?

[YOU BET!!]

Well, giddyup! Today's topic is Gradable and Non-gradable Adjectives, or whatever you want to call them!

[WHAT THE HELL ARE THOSE!?]

Good thing you asked grammaroos! Gradable and...well, those words above mean that there's a difference between an adjective that can be modified, like "tall" and one that can't, like "unique." I can say "I'm very tall" but I can't say "I'm very unique."

[WHY NOT?]

Good thing you asked, grammaroos. I don't really know. "Very unique" sounds kind of clumsy and silly, but there really doesn't seem to be a rule about these things. Of course, that doesn't prevent textbooks from trying to teach it to advanced TEFL students. And their poor teachers are left holding the bag when some student wants to know why you can't say "more wonderful." Can you say "Because it just sounds wrong. That's why!" kids?

[BECAUSE IT JUST JUST SOUNDS WRONG!]

Good work. And speaking of that, my fellow English teachers had a question about "right" and "wrong." "When can something be very, very wrong?" they wanted to know. I didn't know what to tell them. I guessed that it should only be used in spoken English, and even then only when you really, really want to exaggerate.

[THAT BITES!]

You bet kids, but it's all I could do. Making it even harder is the Bulgarian language, where there are rules, too, but they're different. Something in Bulgarian can, for example, be more or most first. I have no idea how, but my tutor tells it like it is.

[WIERD!]

So that's this week's confusion, geeky grammaroos. See you next time!

A Good Day, If There Ever Was One

They may moan and groan and act generally pissy when I announce the day's activities, but something in my heart tells me that my students absolutely love making and performing little plays. They work the entire hour without problems, complaints, or too many requests to go to the bathroom; they produce alarmingly good stuff that is creative and usually always gives the rest of the class something to discuss; and they spend most of the class creating things in English. As an added bonus, I spend the day wandering around the room checking work and answering questions about vocabulary and grammar. Everybody wins really. I'd do it more often, but I have a feeling it's one of those things that the students would think gets old after a while.

Today, I did something play-related in all three of my classes. The eights worked on short dialogues that they'll perform tomorrow. The topic is being polite in English, which I think could apply a little to the culture here as well...although I'm torn about that, actually. It could just be a language thing. Any time I walk up to a counter, or service person who speaks only Bulgarian, I get, at best, Kazhete! or "speak!" I have a feeling I'm not to take that literally, that it's not a command like you'd give a dog, but a semi-polite way of saying "yes?" The rest of the time I get silence and head nods or shakes.

However---When the service person recognizes me as a non-Bulgarian, knows English, and uses it (a rarity, but it happens), I get "May I help you?" or something along those lines. It seems that once they know the rules of the politeness game, people here are inclined to play be them to the letter. Although I'm still not sure about all this, it has made me feel a bit better about the service people I once thought were rude.

ANYWAY--they seemed to get the polite thing down right away. And I expect good, dull, dialogues tomorrow full of "would you like"s, "please"s, and "thank you"s. Although I'm sure at least one group will have scene that seems straight out of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David's show on HBO. The customer will get angry, the service person will get angry, and both will engage in overly polite, but pissed behavior. I can't wait for that scene.

In my twelfth class, we began our play unit, where they'll write, produce, and perform a play, in English in the coming months. I have two 12th classes and I'm pitting them against each other in a deathmatch to produce the best play. In today's class, the first I've introduced the idea to, I gave them the basic points of a play, a couple of examples, and let them go to work.

So far, for ideas, one group has (And I'm completely serious here) "Captain Sirosis" where the five combined powers of Vodka, Rum, Mystika, Rakia, and Beer create an unstoppable force for good. I can't wait to see their first scene and plot outline next week. And as for subject matter, I couldn't expect much better out of the six guys that came up with that brilliant idea. As long as they're creative and not obscene, I'll let eighteen-year-olds run wherever they want.

Another group, all girls this time, has "Love for Rent" and they seemed only slightly embarrassed when they told me that I was correct about the title coming from Dido's new single. It's about, apparently, a man who takes a terminally ill woman out of her hospice in the Alps to give her one last go at fun in Paris. They already told me the ending...he dies in a car accident, and she goes back to the hospice to die alone with her last love already gone. I have no idea how or if they'll keep this play out of the melodrama range, but you have to love the effort. It'll be a fun couple of months with the twelves. I almost can't wait for next week's classes.

Hair and the Bathroom

I’ve never really had a problem with the bald of this world. Some people have hair, some people don’t, what’s the deal? Of course, I’ve never lived in an apartment occupied by a bald person, or one once occupied by one, as the case is now. The Spanish guy, who lived in my apartment last year and who I met only once, was going bald in his tenure here. He seemed like an okay guy in our one meeting. I probably would have liked to know him better. But now I have something against him. Something unforgivable. When he left, I guess he kinda, sorta forgot to clean the bathroom.

I’ve given the bathroom occasional cleanings every now and then, the usual steps needed to keep it respectable. But I’d hesitated until now to give it another full makeover after what happened on the first attempt. It was a couple of months ago and the bathroom was looking grungy. In a typical Bulgarian bathroom, the shower is in the middle of the room and dumps water on the sink, mirrors, and toilet paper if you aren’t careful with it. Until the first full cleaning, I had wavered on clearing out the drain, so it was a bit slow. Every shower left a thin film on the tiles that got thicker every day.

On that first cleaning I procrastinated. I started on the walls and moved down to the floor around the drain. I worked the grouting, then the sink, then the toilet. I never looked behind the toilet, for there I feared there might be great terror. Finally, and with great trepidation, I sent the sponge behind the toilet. When it came back, it was covered in a sticky, heavy wad of guck and head hair that was not mine. I looked at my watch, noticed that I was late for dinner, even though I had made no plans. I washed up, and got out of the bathroom as soon as possible.

My failure to do anything then has come back to haunt me. Hair kept getting into the drain, and the bathroom was getting grungy. Something had to be done, and in a cold, poorly heated bathroom, I got down on the wet floor and sent the sponge one more time behind the toilet. This time it came back cleaner, but still full of hair. It took great effort, and a strong stomach, but I finally got the bathroom clean, and Manuel’s curse has been lifted. Now all I have is the “Carnaval ‘99” poster to remind me that a Spanish person once lived here. But the poster is pretty cool, and it looks like the tape might tear away the paint, so that’s going to have to stay. At least the bathroom is clean now, so I have that off my conscience.

The Winter Wind Came Blowin' In

I was just thinking to myself last night that what this winter needed was a really nasty cold snap to interrupt the beautiful weather we've been having. This cold snap, I thought, could even come right before the weekend. That would just about even everything out.

Last night, at around eleven, I looked outside to see nothing but wind-blown snow. It was whipping through the trees, piling on top of the occasional stray walker, and blanketing the city in general. Unfortunately, the storm only lasted an hour. Why is that unfortunate, you ask? Well, the storm left about an inch of snow, an inch being just enough to turn every sidewalk into a skating rink by nine the next morning. Suddenly, walking to and from school became a chore again. Two or three students sprained their ankles on the school steps, which were just about the most dangerous things I've ever walked down in life.

And the wind stayed. It made the ice glassy and it freezes the ears. I'm now looking forward to a weekend of reading and cleaning the apartment. Which is good, because this week hasn't exactly been a living, breathing joy.

It all hit a climax sometime yesterday morning when my 12th graders pretty much exploded. They somehow got on the subject of Swedish tables, a sticking point in their prom. The guys insist on having a lot of food, the girls want the money to be spent on other things. I normally let little scuffles sort themselves out (I won't do that anymore), but this time things got out of control too fast. One of the girls, after yelling something about the guys' mothers, stood up and starting screaming. I walked in between the two warring groups, and kept demanding that everbody quiet down. There was feet-stomping, yelling, and general hostility, but nobody crossed my line.

The whole thing ended when the girl who had stood up threw a mostly empty coffee cup at the group of guys and led her small camp storming out of the room. The guys and I spent the rest of the hour sorting things out. There were a few groups around the room who weren't involved, and they were actually doing the work I had asked them to. I made sure they understood my appreciation for not taking sides and doing what I wanted them to.

By the end of the hour, I'd made sure the guys understood how idiotic the whole argument was (apparently it was just the latest episode in a long history of animosity), that I wouldn't take sides even if I saw some sane reason to do so, and that--despite their protestations that it was bound to happen in any class--if it happened in mine again, they would feel it from my end to.

Anyway, it was only 10 and I already had a bit of a headache that would carry on through my eight hours of school that day. At least the eighth graders were civil, a pleasant surprise. They actually made the day easier, and continued doing so today.

I can't say the constant rising of new problems is fun, but like a change in the weather, it makes things interesting.

It's a Generational Thing

I hadn't really had the discussion with either of my eighth classes before yesterday. It's a difficult topic to bring up without one of the students mentioning it and yesterday it happened. Zhenya asked what she should call negra in English, and a hundred (mostly) stupid suggestions popped up around the room. I quieted them all down, and started a list of bad things to call black people and things that are okay, explaining why each one was good or bad. When I got to African-American, one of the students suggested African-Bulgarian and the classroom erupted in laughter. Someone in the back of the room, in a kind way of explaining it all to me, I suppose, shouted something about the stupidity of the person suggesting such a thing--what with the complete lack of black people in Bulgaria. I don't think the girl who screeched that really took a second to wonder why such a fact was true.

I wrapped up that digression quickly, and pushed on to what I had been trying to get to. That despite the presence of "good" things to call them, black people, as well as whites, Turks, Bulgarians, and--as far as I know--the general population of the world, like to be called by their names rather than their physical and ethnic notation. If you know a guy named Ivan, who happens to be black, it's probably smart and kind to call and think of him as Ivan once you've met him. The class seemed to grudgingly accept this.

Plamen wondered what my heritage was. Was I an American-American? I took this as a good question and drew up on the board the German, Italian, and Swedish lines that make up my family tree.

"YOU AREN'T AMERICAN AT ALL!" Half the class shouted at once.

Somehow I hadn't expected that and could only turn around and ask "why not?"

One at a time, and raising hands for once that day, various kids in the class took it upon themselves to explain to me how I may be German, Italian, or Swedish, but I certainly wasn't American. Nationality it seems, needs a long history. Plamen and the other guys in the back asked me if my Italian ancestors were gangsters, or had come from Sicily.

I explained to them that I was born in America, my parents had been born in America, and their parents had been born in America. In the mind of just about any American, that makes me American. In fact, if you're born in a country and live your life there, that pretty much makes you a member of that country. And that's where I went wrong for about five minutes. I confused nationality and citizenship, something I've gathered Americans do a lot more than people of other cultures around the world.

That definition gap took me to the biggest mistake of the day. I told the class that John Atanasoff, Bulgarian hero and inventor of the computer, was American. He had been born in Hamilton, New York, I said, and had never lived in Bulgaria.

We may someday be able to go into this particular subject and talk about it, but the class saw it as the low blow it was, and a couple of the students became visibly angry at the thought. They told me that both of his parents were Bulgarian, and so he too, must have been Bulgarian. Besides, there are statues of him here. That's evidence enough. I dropped that bit of evidence and made a slightly smaller mistake, I pointed out Guler.

Guler is, beyond any doubt, the best English-speaker in eighth class. I could argue that she hasn't quite improved as much as I would have liked her to since the beginning of the year, but she knows her stuff really well. She's also one of the more popular students in class, a fan of Linkin Park, and Turkish.

I asked the class if Guler was Bulgarian. "No!! She's Turkish." Guler also agreed that she was Turkish. This brought up the inescapable Turkish yoke. 500 years. Lack of history. Jannisaries. The entire tragedy. At that moment, I felt like I had brought a lot of stuff on Guler, and I realized that it was my responsibility to get it off.

I stopped them and picked on German because he speaks English well and had been one of the first to remind me of how bad the Turks had once been. I asked him if Guler, or any other Turks he knew, had ever made any attempt to enslave him or anyone else he knew. No, they hadn't. I asked him if Guler had ever shown anything but patriotic zeal for the country of Bulgaria. No, she seemed set to help the country. Then why, I asked, did it matter if she was Turkish? She's incredibly intelligent, I said, she wants nothing more than to help Bulgarians, and maybe someday she'll even go to Turkey and help out there. Why can't she be a Bulgarian, if only a citizen?

There was no answer. Guler raised her hand and asked "Mr. Young?" I nodded to her, and she said "Thank you," blushing and smiling. I smiled, told her she was welcome, and tried for one last influential push before the bell.

I implored them to remember the past, but focus on the future. This is a country of grudges, and at some point the grudges have to stop and productivity has to begin. Of course, I said it in a simpler way, and was getting nods. They understood what I was getting at, anyway. And then the class ended, and everybody went back to talking and playing cards.

I answered a few questions at my desk, told the class goodbye, and left the room. Usually I try to do little bits of discussion on heavy issues here and there to keep the discussion reasonable. Taking a big bite left me tired, but I think we got some issues that needed to be aired out in the open. I'm glad it happened.

I Need a Judgement Call Here

Okay. Here's the scene: Sunday morning I was with two other volunteers in Pernik (a dirty, polluted mining city near Sofia) when, with my hands full, a two leva bill fell out of my hands and into a nearby garbage bin. One of the volunteers I was with, Tom, pointed it out to me. Two leva has the value of about two dollars, depending on what you're buying. It'll get you four or five candy bars, for example.

Now, without a word and with the dexterity of a surgeon, I reached into the can, not touching anything else within the can, and pulled out the bill with my index and middle fingers. I put the bill back into my wallet where it belonged and went on with the day. Tom and Christen, however, used the whole scene as the story of the day. It was described in horrific detail at the lunch table and told later at Peace Corps Headquarters as if I had wiped my face with the money. Granted, they kept exaggerating the thing, using it as a joke, but was it even worth that? Sometimes we scrap and dig for things to talk about in Bulgaria, but can't a person reach into a garbage bin to get his money back? Is that not allowed?

In Seinfeld, George Costanza was once castigated for reaching into a garbage bin for a half-eaten eclair. That I can understand. It was food, it was in garbage, it was, for all intents and purposes, inedible and should have been avoided. But money should usually be seen as filthy anyway, shouldn't it? I mean, do you ever really know where that fiver has been? What if the last person to have that bill was disgusting and short a napkin, kleenex, or--God forbid--toilet paper? In my opinion, all money should be treated as if it were infected unless it came crisp from the bank. The garbage bin, it seems, is a bill's natural home and the only thing I should have been chided for would be taking it out of its natural environment. And I'll tell you right now that no particular cubic meter of air in Pernik was any cleaner than the air inside that garbage can. I might as well have been breathing garbage bin air the whole time in that city. My hand within the cylinder was in no greater danger there than it was anywhere else in the city.

I think saving the bill was a particularly heroic effort to prevent money from falling out of circulation. Christen and Tom thought differently. In my opinion, they're just fancy. But I could be wrong.

The weather was gorgeous today, as it was all weekend. Highs in the fifties, a little wind, and lots of sun. Phil might as well still be looking for his shadow. In Bulgaria, it's spring. My tutor tells me that this is bad news. Good weather in February probably means that there will be a late frost in March or April and the harvest will be horrible as a result. As a means for cheering me up after this bad news, and to celebrate her son's birthday, she gave me another bottle of homemade wine. That's three bottles I have sitting in my rapidly expanging liquor cabinet back home. I've probably talked about Hemingway way too much during my lessons. It's really the only explanation.

Finally, today I got an e-mail for Peace Corps that ran like this:

This is to remind you that the office will be closed for Presidents'
day,
Monday, Feb. 16th.

Have a nice week!

The names of the ET'd ("ET" is PC for "Early Termination") ran after their job descriptions. They're all people who I won't be seeing anymore in Bulgaria, and probably, for the the rest of my life. Four of them I hadn't met before they left, not much to think on there. But the Jan. 29th TEFL was my roommate in Chicago and Strelcha and a good friend. I take it he just didn't think he had that much to do in Bulgaria anymore.

In a way, it takes a lot of courage to leave early, and most do so silently. People I talked to this weekend had seen him the day before he left and he hadn't said a word. A person leaving early has to have a lot of faith in their life back home and probably wants to avoid all counsel but their best friends'. A casual friend tends to treat a possible ET as a suicidal ideation, since their knowledge of the guy's life is limited to the months since that time when we born into Bulgaria, screaming and crying, by Lufthansa Air.

The B-13s, my group of 42 volunteers, has now reached the Bulgaria average of 10% attrition. Winter has taken its toll, and it really hasn't been all that bad if you look back on it the right way. If we move along at this pace, we'll lose about 5 more by the real end of service. I doubt that many will go, but the 10% already gone are missed enough already. Every ET is one less person on whom to vent the bad times and share the good. But, in a way, it's pretty selfish to miss them, isn't it? I mean, it's their life after all, and if it can be improved in America, more power to them. It's just that Peace Corps, in a strange and small way, seems to be two years of life within a life, and ending that small life early seems such a waste sometimes.

Oh well, have a nice week! I'll be back with more tomorrow. I've been awfully lazy lately and have to get back on the wagon.

That Weekend I Was Talking About

So, the weekend. The…weekend. Well, I went down to Burgas for the first time to check out a sanitarium for the summer. I stayed with one of the new B-14s who was, coincidentally, throwing a weekend-long birthday party for two other volunteers. In the Peace Corps there’s always room on the floor for someone willing to chip in on supplies. Jeff and I, who are the logistics people for this camp, got into Burgas on Friday night with Jeff’s new sitemate, Oliver. I had met him before, but I got to know Oliver well this weekend, and we had a whole lot of fun with what seems to be Peace Corps Bulgaria’s height policy. Jeff, Oliver, and I are all over 6’4 and we’ve all been stuffed into the northeast corner of the country.

In fact, there was a little bit of jealousy and hostility flowing when we were all together for so long. As B-14 #5,786,494 asked me how tall I was and how big my shoes are, Jeff grumpily and loudly went through the whole list of tall person questions with me. We make fun of it all the time, but when we don’t get the questions and see someone else getting them, well, tall people can get pissy. Just because he only wears size 12s, Jeff thinks he has a right to get snippy when people ignore him. Bastard.

Saturday, after a good night of conversation and floor sleeping, Jeff and I hopped on a bus out to Sunny Beach, where we found the sanitarium, and Sunny Beach was an experience. I’ve lived in a tourist town and gotten used to the influx of summer people and the emptiness of winter. Sunny Beach, as all the maps call it, doesn’t seem to have any permanent residents, and there’s nothing more like a graveyard than a resort town in the off season. Hotel towers soared over the beach, the water splashed up on shore, the sky was crystal clear, and you could walk a mile down the main road on not see a soul.

Everything was empty. The town had McDonaldses, Happy Bar & Grills, Irish pubs, and only one or two of them were opened. The rest of the city was closed and sealed tight. The only sign of life were the construction workers building new hotels every mile or so. It was great seeing a lot of construction happening in Bulgaria, but the rest of the city felt like a graveyard. We saw the sanitarium, communist-like but good enough for a camp, and went back to Burgas after lunch.

Getting back, we watched Kill Bill on our host’s computer, the only way we can see it in Bulgaria at this point. While it deserves to be seen in a theater, it was still obvious that Tarantino filmed exactly what he wanted to. His opinion that there is more blood than water in the world has now been fully fleshed out. I can’t wait for the character development that’s supposed to happen in the second part, although between the beheadings, stabbings, and necrophilia of the first half I saw quite a bit of growth. Can’t say the movie bored me, but it left me very tired at the end. I’ll watch the second part, and I’ll see the first again in a theater because I have an appreciation for Tarantino’s general style. I suppose that’s some kind of recommendation.
After the movie ended and we were all looking for a way to cheer up, we went to eat dinner. Reservations had been made and twenty Peace Corps volunteers ate at a Bulgarian tavern, it felt like a wedding reception. Oliver didn’t get his meal until the rest of us had gotten our checks, the salads were delivered with the main courses, it was chaos, but tova e Bulgaria, as the good Bulgarians say when things go kinda, sorta wrong. We all got a meal, Oliver ate his alone, with everybody watching, which is never a good way to eat. You have to say that you’re a fast eater, it’s required. You could be the slowest eater on the planet, but if yours is the last plate delivered, you have to tell everyone else that they won’t have to wait long. And you have to look apologetic, even when it isn’t your fault. Oliver followed through nicely and we all shuffled off to Burgas’ lovely karaoke club, and surrealism ensued.

The Bulgarians covered just about every song of the last decade that has come to be associated with drunken singing in clubs. It was all in English, and surprisingly, some of it was pretty good. A girl did “Cabaret” really well, and one of the regulars did Frank Sinatra twice to huge rounds of applause. There were some pitiful efforts, and the B-14s plucked their way through a couple of classics nicely. So basically it was your average night at a karaoke club, which means it was a whole lot of fun.

The next morning we woke up late, talked about ways we could watch the Superbowl, and I went home. That was the weekend. Nothing really to write home about, but that’s why it’s here, isn’t it?

Uggh

I'm having a bad Bulgaria week so far. Two days gone, it still has room to turn around, but it's not looking good. Sometimes I have bad Bulgarian days. Those are a bit different. They mean that for some reason, the foreign language part of my mind just doesn't click and my Bulgarian comes out garbled and I can't understand a word anybody says. No, this is a bad Bulgaria week, where all that seems to define Bulgaria for me shows its darkest face.

It started, as weeks often do, with Monday. I had promised the eighth class a movie day for being as reasonably good as they were over the last months of the semester. Since the school has no TV, movie day means hauling mine across town, which--unless I become insane--means I need to use a taxi. I carried the TV downstairs where there is, thankfully, a perpetual line of cabs outside my front door. I walked to the first one and he was waiting for someone, so I walked to the next one. He wasn't waiting, but he didn't want to carry the TV, so he pointed me to the cab behind him. This guy was finally willing to accept me and my television, but he looked nervous.

Halfway through the five minute ride, he turned to me while driving and asked with a suspicious look in his eye: "From where is that TV? Where did it come from?"

Maybe I shouldn't have been insulted by this, maybe he did expect me to define the TV's country of origin and produce customs records, but I took it as an insinuation that I had stolen the thing.

"It's my TV. I got it from my apartment and I'm taking it to the school."

This, fortunately, seemed to satisfy him and we drove the rest of the way in silence. When I gave him a lev, the standard price for a ride anywhere in Silistra, he looked as if I'd stiffed him. I sighed and carried the TV upstairs to one of the classrooms, where we watched Meet the Parents and I had to keep the class quiet. Of all the days where I thought I could take an hour off of babysitting, this was it, but the kids just wouldn't be quiet. And this was a movie they had seen, liked, and wanted to watch again.

The next class was quieter, but that was only because half of them had already gone home. They spend the first four periods of the day with one English teacher, she was sick, and there was no substitute. I'm sure calling me would have seemed like a breach of protocol to them, but I certainly could have come in early if they had asked. Instead I got a half empty class to watch the first half of the movie, and I'll have the other kids wondering what's going on when we watch the second half tomorrow.

I made up for it by summarizing what happened in the movie in class today, and that followed a discussion of my new rules. If I have to write their name up on the board, they get knocked down a grade for the week. Several students tested me and I gave them what they had coming. The first five minutes after class in both eighth classes were devoted to the pleas of the students who had only been "a little bad" or disobeyed me "just a little." I told them to put today behind them and just be good. They still felt abused. A couple of them were getting excited and I got a bit of a headache. I left class telling them to just be good students who help the class and listen. I hope they pay attention.

Of course, most of this is the students' fault and mine for not bringing firmer discipline sooner, but it just seems like all the little things have been building. Maybe the students will calm down tomorrow and everything will be okay. I dunno.

Another reason may be that all this is following a terrific weekend on the coast. I'd like to write about it now, but I have neither the photos nor the time. Expect something about all the fun tomorrow. I'll cheer myself by writing about it tonight.