Alaskan Bulgarian

Photos

So here, today, are some of the photos from the camp I was working at over the past couple of weeks.

These are the "Big Catz," the group I led, hard at work on something or other during the week. The room you see here is where we spent our mornings, listening and discussing, discussing and listening. Amazingly enough, it never got very slow. There always guys across the room willing to be devil's advocates for just about any cause. They made it interesting. The guy in the shades, incidentally, is the universally well-loved Goran.

Here, Big Cat Galin is falling backwards during our second team-building exercise. Every morning before sessions we pulled the guys out on the lawn and had them do some team-building. There was the immortal human knot, trust falling, but once we got to capture the flag using the entire camp site, all was lost, they really didn't want to do anything else. It made no difference that no one ever won a game of capture the flag in thirty minutes on such a large scale. They wanted to play it anyway.

Here's the group in Nessebur, a small, historic town not far down the coast from where we had our camp. It's been a fortress for just about every civilization known to man. Right on down to the Greeks, I guess. Anyway, the excursion happened about halfway through the week, and gave everyone a chance to get out and see something new. I, for one, saw more fake Oakleys in a single town than I imagine I'll ever see again. I also saw a DVD of Farenheit 9/11 going for 20 leva. I passed.

On one of the last nights, we held the annual Mr. Camp TO BE contest to decide who among our campers could best make a fool of themselves in swimwear, answer silly questions (Would rather have a foot forever attached to your forehead, or a hand coming out of your chin? And more importantly...Why?), and perform a talent of their very own. We had some pretty good acts this year, but the best act came out of the Helios Beach Hotel, whose pool deck is seen here. The nicest hotel in Obzor, they let us use their pool deck for the contest, they loaned us two DJs who regularly told us what a wonderful thing we were doing, and they gave us a mic. The only problem was that the mic ran out of batteries two minutes into the show. Since I was host, this led, in no small part, to my presently sore throat.

Still, it was a great show, the guys all had fun, and the hotel was pleased. Stay there if you're in Bulgaria. They're great people.

And when all was said and done, all of the counselors and instructors gathered for a group photo to show we were all still standing. That's us, and that was the camp. Now, a month of relaxing back home, and life goes on.

Time's Short

Hey all. Just realized I have 17 minutes left on my account for the day at the internet club. In my need to post something, let me say that the camp, in its last and final days went very well. The whole camp was wrapped in a tight bow and handed off to the Bulgarian Red Cross, who will, if all is right in the world, run it as a two week English camp, run by Bulgarians, with American guests, instead of a camp run by Americans with Bulgarians as guests.

That was really the accomplishment this year, I think. The switch. Sure, some of us will help plan for next year, and the new volunteers will be the guest instructors, but the camp is closer than ever to being out of Peace Corps' hands and into the hands of Bulgarians. It's all well and good to run camps and train counselors, but when PC is gone, somebody is going to need to step in, and the Red Cross has done just that. They had a few observers/instrucotrs come by and see how the camp operates and were pleased.

So that's all that. Right now I'm relaxing in Silistra, recovering from a very sore throat, a massively scraped knee, and the general fatigue of being away from home, working for two weeks. I also get to spend time with Yuli, the cat, who showed great displeasure at being left behind for two weeks, but has spent the last day showing me how great life can be when she's attached to me 24 hours a day. Walking around the apartment has gotten a bit difficult as she won't stop rubbing my ankles as I walk. I've developed a shuffle to keep myself from kicking her across the room with every step.

So that's the news. Pictures of camp will come tomorrow and all will be pleased.

T...i...r...e...d

Well, the camp's over, and I made a quick stop at home before catching a night bus to Sofia for the day to get all of my Mid-service medical stuff taken care of. Fit as a fiddle, right on down to all the usual problem areas. Joy! Anyway, pictures will be coming later in the week when I have more than half a brain and can keep my eyes open for minutes at a stretch.

Bones

Since I was once, in a time long ago, a certified EMT, the other Americans running the camp decided that it'd be a good idea to make me the camp's "doctor" for all the minor injuries that usually accompany these things. When I learned that our camp would have a nurse on-duty all the time, I was understandably overjoyed. What I didn't see coming was that the other camp members would still reference me in the manual as the guy to see for medical things. Also, I did not anticipate that the nurse would be gone most of the camp and give me the keys to a mostly empty medical room.

So I've been the one left to deal with (so far) a small cut by a fingernail, a jammed finger, two upset stomachs, a sore throat, and a scrape on a shin. It's kind of hard being the camp "doctor" and not getting to tell kids to suck it up and move on with life. They expect things out of me, especially after the nurse goops up a scrape with some strange brownish guck, puts gauze on it, and wraps it with a bandage. Not having trusty bacitracin or Neosporin at my disposal, I've been content to clean the little cuts thouroughly with soap and water and put on a band-aid. And it's vitamin C, water, and cough drops for the sore throat; And rest, a bit of soda, and water for the kids with upset stomachs. So far, everything's turned out well enough and everybody gives me satisfied reports about their "illnesses" the day after. Comfort and a few good pieces of advice work better than telling kids to get it together and push past the pain, but it's still not as fun.

Backstage is still mostly improvisational and good times as we're figuring things out as we go. But things onstage, in front of the kids, have turned into a real triumph. The sessions on life have gone very well. The guys are all very willing to discuss gender roles, race, nationalism,, and stereotypes, and do it all in English. After a light first day, we've supplemented the food to the point that I'm almost full after eating two of the meals and the extra stuff. I assume that this means the guys are getting by on what they get, too. They're enjoying the time on the beach, and every indication points to these guys having a great time.

The most interesting thing to come out of the sessions so far has been the incredibly solid view of gender roles these guys have. A man must, for example, take out the trash. He's bigger for one thing, and it's tradition for another. Also, only men must be police officers. It's a size thing again. They were all very open-minded about cooking, though. The most famous chefs in the world are men, so it must be okay for men to cook in the kitchen at home too.

We offered some reasons for being more open-minded about these roles, but we never tried to force them out of their mindset. It all came down to the general theme of the camp so far, or my group's them at least: You can have lots of stereotypes, it's hard to get rid of those things, but in the end it comes down to treating each person you meet as someone new and seeing everyone as an individual. It's all very lovey-dovey, but they seem to be getting the point.

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.

Cat Pics

A few pictures of Yuli:

And that's about it, really. I could tell a story about the bureaucracy I went through to reapply for my ID card this morning. But frankly, any public university in America would give you a bigger hassle than the passport/licha karta people. Nothing, but nothing, beats the stuff I had to go through on hot summer days in Murphy Hall at UCLA. Those memories make the red tape here a little easier and more enjoyable to cut through. Small comfort, I know, but it keeps me going.

More Cat News

--The left hand is moving...a good sign. The right hand is too worthy an adversary. Too quick to grab, too adept at avoiding claws. But the left hand seems a bit more slow. Almost stupid in the way it crawls around the floor and holds books and types things dumbly on the keyboard. It deserves to be attacked and toyed with. It needs to be taught a lesson.

From here under the ottoman it's just three feet away, dangling off the couch. Its fingers tapping merrily on the ground. The right hand is nowhere in sight. Excellent. Legs locked, eyes are focused. What? No! Where did that hand come from? Behind somewhere? It has me. I'm on the chest now. Pets. That vicous right hand is petting me and that dull left hand has me in its vile grasp. Struggle. Struggle. Pets. No! Not the chin scratching! Not the--prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Fine. That's a point for you, left hand. Prrrrrrrr. We'll meet again, though. We'll meet ag--Prrrrrrrr.

--Laziness prevailed today, but I promise more pictures tomorrow. As for a long awaited update on the cat, I've decided to dub her Yuli, Yuli being Bulgarian for July. She's doing beyond well and spends most of her time racing around the apartment, attacking any object that moves or confuses her (empty slippers standing next to each other occupied about five minutes of her time yesterday). Pens are a particular annoyance for her, although the fact that they seem to exist to be rolled and lifted up does seem to delight her a little.

I'm not planning on buying her toys at the moment, seeing as everything in the apartment is still a toy for her. All I need to do is crumple up an old receipt and toss it at her and she'll have hours of fun. Then of course, each of my appendages is also a little game system for her. My left hand, as implied earlier, is one of her favorite targets, although that doesn't mean she won't go after the elbow to try to take the whole monstrosity down at once. She grabs with her paws and puts her mouth around whatever her target is, then looks up at me to confirm a kill before I disappoint her by tapping her on the nose and telling her "No, Yuli."

Then come the guerilla strikes at night. She'll hop up on the bed at my feet and bounce off every bend in my body until she gets a paw at my mouth. Then, after I set her on the floor a couple of times, she'll give up and ball up under my armpit or any other available warm spot. When I read, she'll attack the book with all her fury until she gets tired and settles under my chin. If I'm using the computer, she'll usually just settle for the keyboard, which is plenty warm as long as the computer's running.

She makes life in the apartment more interesting certainly, but that also means things take longer. Shoe-tying, for example, is largely left up to how eager she is to attack the laces that dangle in the process. But somehow, life goes on, and things are happier now that she's around.

I just hope she phases out of this attacking thing before her claws get nasty. Only time will tell, I suppose.

The Cat and the Hike

Thanks to the mostly indirect efforts of three women, I now have a cat. First, another volunteer, Leslie, showed me that having a cat could be a feasible and perhaps even enjoyable experience in the Peace Corps. Next, our medical officer and I talked about my blood pressure being borderline high again, and even though she didn't mention animals as possible stress relievers, it clicked. Finally, another volunteer, Florinda, pointed out a tiny four-week-old kitten that looked disease-free, but otherwise mostly dead, on the sidewalks of Sofia.

I've been thinking about getting a cat for a while now, but always managed to put it off as wholly impractical. Litter boxes, food, travelling, it all made the whole thing seem far-fetched. But then came this series of events in the course of less than 24 hours, and well, now it all seems to make sense. So there we go. Now, the rest of the story...

I came into Sofia Friday morning planning to hop in, hop out, and get on with my life. As it turned out though, Spider-Man 2 was playing at nine PM at Sofia's Staples Center-like Arena theater. With that important fact in mind, I accomplished my first task of the day by watching the B-15s (The new volunteers) graduate, talking to them, and seeing all the PC staff members that I hadn't seen in a while. I had some conversation time with the ambassador. So I'd call that morning a success.

After that The New Sitemate and I got his boatload of things to a hostel near the mosque. After resting and changing soaked shirts (the day was scorching, muggy, and incredibly uncomfortable) we had lunch at the vegetarian place with some other B-15s. Then I left to go grab a ticket for the show under the assumption that it might be in some danger of selling out. To get to the Arena, I took Sofia's metro, a shnazzy looking subway system that carts people from the city center along one particular line to some outer block complexes. This time, in a fit of self-sustaining tiredness stemming from an overnight busride, I took the wrong road after leaving the metro and wound up having to walk an extra ten blocks or so. But I finally found the right road, got to the theater, and as I was buying my ticket, noticed on the teller's monitor that ten or fifteen seats were gone, tops. I'd overestimated Bulgaria's desire to see Alfred Molina in cool shades. But I had a ticket, so I was okay with the extra trip and made my way back to the hostel.

Now, the hostel I usually stay at in Sofia is a quiet, comfortable place. Not a hostel at all really, more of a cheap hotel with shared baths on each floor. So I settled in as The New Sitemate was leaving to go do something or other and I decided to take a nap, it being the fine naptime of 5 PM. I woke up at 1 AM, having not, of course, set my alarm.

I rolled around for a bit, gnashing my teeth and bemoaning the loss of the eight leva I'd payed for the ticket. Then I shrugged it off and went to go brush my teeth. The New Sitemate got in around this time, I told him my sad tale, he said something consoling, and we both went to sleep. We woke up at seven, and I had gotten about 13 hours of sleep which I had apparently needed.

First step of the day was helping him get his stuff to the bus station so he could properly move in to Silistra. On the street with a ton of baggage, he decided to go for a cab that wasn't either 'OK' or 'Yes!' the two companies in Sofia that consistently give people a fair meter. I warned him against it, but he said he'd cover the ride, so I shrugged and got in. Cost of ride for travelling about ten blocks by cab: 5 leva, about twice as much as it should have been. Lesson learned. He bought his ticket, I helped him get his stuff to the right section of the terminal, then I took off to go to a cafe and quietly wake up while reading The Corrections.

The Corrections is one of the few great contemporary books I've read that doesn't sell out in its ending. Franzen stays honest, realistic, and faithful to the characters and plot and the ending works better than most because of it. When I finished it, I had goose bumps and bleary eyes. It's a good, strong ending. Also, one key in a book about a family of entirely unhappy adults: Not one of them has a pet, nor are pets ever mentioned. Something to think about if you're planning on reading or have read the book.

So I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon reading and using the internet at Peace Corps headquarters. Finally sufficiently bored around 6, I hopped a bus to Dupnitsa to meet up with the rest of the group that would be hiking up to Seven Lakes for the fourth of July. We had dinner at a traditional Bulgarian restaurant and talked about things like Spider-Man 2, which most of the group had despicably watched earlier that day in Blagoevgrad. We also talked about our towns and the town we were in. Dupnitsa is a clone of Silistra with the attractive natural feature being mountains instead of the river. This makes the weather in summer a little more platable, but could have its disadvantages too, I suppose. I spent most of my time there gazing up at the hills Silistra doesn't have and imagining myself walking among them.

The next morning the nine of us got up and got a ride on a minibus to a hizha at the foot of a trail leading up to the Seven Lakes. A hizha is best described as a small lodge up in the mountains here in Bulgaria. For a reasonable rate, we got to stay at a hizha between the fourth and fifth lakes and get triple and double rooms for everybody with our reservations. They seem to fit in well with nature wherever they are and are well worth staying at if you're ever hiking in the area.

The beginning of the trail we took to our hizha was a gradually inclining, narrow dirt road among pines and spruce. As we went up the mountain, we kept running into crossroads and used the trail markers. The trail system in the Rila mountians, at least in my brief two days of experience, is incredibly well-marked. It's color coded based on the hizha you're headed for. There are signs and spray-painted rocks all the way up the hill. It's almost impossible to feel lost, even if you're on the wrong trail, as were several times that day.

As we approached our hizha, we began crossing fields that were almost muskeg after a recent rain, and had to make a few decisions about the best way to go around smaller ridges and hills.

The person who had made the last good call usually wound up leading the pack and this meritocratic system seemed to work out well enough to get us where we were going in plenty of time. We checked into our rooms, had some soup in the hizha's restaurant, then split into two packs: those who would stay and play more than one game of Uno and those who would go up the nearby ridge without packs and try to see all seven lakes before sunset.

I went with the latter group and was happy and sore for it the next day. The lakes, the ridges, the gorges, the fields, everything around lakes 5-7 is brilliantly beautiful. The lakes are a deep blue and cold, the last two were still partially frozen over. What left me sore was the incline as the trails along the ridges, though still meticulously marked, seemed to go straight up. It was a brilliant game of concentration getting down without falling backwards, but I managed to pull it off.

We got in that night, tired and happy on the Fourth, and watched the first half of the Euro Cup final between Portugal and Greece before realizing that it was an incredibly boring game and heading off to bed instead. The Greek fans downstairs cheered for their team's goal as we were going to sleep.

The next day we went down a steep dirt road and met our minibus back to Dupnitsa. That night I met Alice, Leslie's big brown cat. Although I didn't fall in love or anything, it got me thinking that a cat might be a nice thing to have around. We also all played an odd card/board game called Sequence. A little like a cross between bridge and Connect 4. Funky game.

The next day, yesterday in fact, I went to Sofia to get my blood pressure checked and use the internet at HQ. That's where I fully developed my plan. I'd kept the ticket for Spider-Man 2 in the hopes that I could someday use it, and I realized that last night was as good a night as any.

The date on the ticket is only marked once, the showtime was the same last night, and the only thing that could make the plan not work smoothly was a change in screen at the multiplex. I set about filling the hours between lunch and the show.

Florinda was in town, and we had a lunch at Subway and walked to the metro station so she could go see "Love, Actually" or whatever it was she had planned. On the way, next to a bingo parlor, we came across a black and white kitten sprawled on its side in the sun on the sidewalk.

Though bone-thin and not exactly breathing quickly, it did respond when poked. I agonized for a while, since I had been thinking about getting a cat for some time, and this one was kind of cute if it weren't diseased and could make it through the day. As Florinda--champion of cat-owning in Bulgaria--cheered me on and told me she had seen the poor thing in the same spot much earlier in the day, I inspected it for tiny sores, cuts, fleas, etc. and found the cat to be completely compliant in my hand. It was also completely clear of obvious, well, bad stuff. It was just street grimy and Florinda may have noted it didn't smell like a rose.

So I asked anyone in the immediate area if they knew who the cat's owner was and they all told me to keep it. So I shrugged and decided to keep it. I managed to get a shoebox from a sandal store and dropped my backpack off at the bus station, having missed the last bus out before 1 AM at this point. I bought a bottle of water and a cream-filled croissant and dropped drops of water into the kitten's mouth and let it lick the cream of the croissant since it was entirely against the idea of eating the bread part. At this point, the cat had let me know that it was, most certainly, alive by mewing from its box, from my arms, from anywhere it was. It was another hot day and the cat, by the time I'd gotten to the bus station, was panting.

After making sure it was healthy, I had nothing better to do before my bus. So I went ahead with "the plan." I got to the movie theater by metro, and since the cat was still mewing and obviously not enjoying the whole box experience, I let it out on the lawn near the movie theater. It explored a little bit, then realized it didn't quite like what was going on and hopped into my lap where it stayed on its own accord until it had to go back in the box for getting into the movie theater. I walked up to screen 13, the box tucked under my arm and handed the attendant my ticket, he looked at it for a second, tore the bit he needed, and gave it back to me--pointing out screen 13 down the hall. It was still the same screen. I was in.

As I was finding my seat, another attendant came up behind me and asked me if he could see something. I thought he wanted to argue about the ticket's date, so I gave that to him and prepared to discuss. He gave the ticket back to me and asked me if he could see what was in the box. I opened it up and told him there was a little cat inside. He chuckled, wide-eyed, and said everything was okay, I just wasn't allowed to have a camera. Nope, I said, not a camera, just a cat. He again told me that his was okay.

So I took an empty seat in a nearly empty row in the center (again, maybe 15 people in the theater) took the cat out, and kept it quiet the whole way through the perfectly enjoyable, great, superhero movie. Then we caught a cab to the bus station and waited an hour for the bus to Silistra.

On the bus, I confirmed my suspicions that the cat was indeed a girl, and let it sleep on my lap the whole way into Silistra. We got into town this morning, she got the wretched, hellish treatment of a bath, and is now sleeping on my leg as I type this on my laptop at home. She seems to love my lap, although my hands seem to be part of another, scarier entity out to get her.

She swats at my fingers, but doesn't hiss or anything, so it might just be kitten play. And, incidentally, she is, beyond all doubt of yesterday, alive. Between naps and light meals of milk and Whiskas, she dives, plays, swats, and generally makes a fool of herself.

And she still doesn't have a name. I tend to let pet names come to me rather than force them and hers hasn't come yet. She's just been "cat" recently,
although I've had quite a few suggestions already from interested parties.

GAH!

Picked the wrong computer at the internet club. The A: drive ain't working here...I'll try again later. So until then, this is just one more space filler in a long line of space fillers. But I keep coming up with excuses, so there.

Checking In

On the road home from Seven Lakes. I'm still an hour and half away from Sofia and about six or seven hours away from Silistra after that. Big, travel log type entry to come tomorrow. Later.

Bulgaria's Nature

Well, honestly, I can't say I've heard the question in the last few months. But last year, from April until August, hardly a day went by without a Bulgarian testing their English with "What do you think for our nature?" The preposition mix-up is understandable. Both "for" and "about" are usually covered by "za" here. But, despite group discussion sections with other volunteers, nobody could figure out what the curiosity was in regards to Bulgaria's nature or, in Bulgarian "priroda."

Over time, the Bulgarian definition of nature developed even as fewer Bulgarians were asking the question. Stray dogs and cats, for example, are often considered part of nature here, and any attempt to control them by neutering or impoundment is a strict violation of the nation's natural resources. City parks can be nature, trees along streets can be nature, a traffic island grown over with weeds is nearly the definition of nature here. Often, the more overgrown something is, the more natural it is. Fine, no real problems there.

But as far as my definition goes, I'm getting back to nature for really the first time in over a year. Sure I've taken walks through farmland and through a forest or two. But there hasn't been any immersion. This weekend I'll be hiking up to Seven Lakes with a group of volunteers for the big 4th. It's this group of, well, seven lakes south of Sofia. Should be a good time, pictures to come sometime next week. Until then, Happy 4th of July, people.