Alaskan Bulgarian

The Storm, the Cat, and the Essay

Came into Silistra last night in a storm. Rain, wind, and lightning flashing all over the place every few seconds. There wasn't much thunder though, just a quiet growl every now and then. That weather has mostly calmed down into a steady downpour today that almost kept me from hiking over to the internet club. But trouper that I am, you get to read this silliness.

For all those worried about the cat over this last week, she was happy to see me and hasn't stopped purring while I'm around, and she seemed to have done very well over the week. That's why I love cats. You leave them food and water and a clean litterbox and they're good for a week. Big dogs have the obvious playing bonus, since you can run with them and throw things, etc, but I really do love the whole self-reliance thing. It's awfully convenient.

Last Tuesday, while I was still in Pleven, Peace Corps asked a few of us volunteers to write a short essay about our experience to be translated into Bulgarian and put into a booklet that will go out to prospective communities around the country. Although I admit it's a bit cheesy in its shortness, I'm closing today with the essay I wrote, fit to be one of those gooey essays you can read on the Peace Corps homepage:

Coming to Silistra, I didn’t know how I would make myself a great, or even good, Peace Corps Volunteer. Peace Corps had trained me well and taught me how to live and teach in Bulgaria, but I had no idea how to make an impact in a town of 30,000 people. After a few months of helping move the town’s language school to a new building and a brief summer course in English, I found that the best way to be a volunteer was to live my own life.

A typical school day in my Bulgarian life begins with teaching at the language school. Although I’ve had experience teaching in America, the distractions for students in Bulgaria are all new and each day often turns into a lesson for me as I find new ways to handle each new series of interruptions. I finish most days with lessons taught and kids satisfied, but when I have time, I usually need to relax at the end of the day.

I relax best when I play sports. I usually try to introduce new sports to the kids in town, showing them the basics of baseball or how to play basketball well. Of course, I often let them teach me how to play football, although that usually ends with my being beaten.

Working with my students and other members of the community, I’ve gotten to understand Bulgarians and Bulgaria and see what things I can do with my life to make things better here in Silistra and the country. Through summer camps, classes, and community projects I live my life in Bulgaria as well as I can. And the thanks I get from my students and the people I work with is always the best reward I can get.

Wrapping Things Up at the Camp

Not much to report, the camp is going smoothly with one day left. I'm running sports while Kate takes walks with the girls and/or plays games like Uno with those who want to play. Uno, by the way, gets instantly popular as soon as it's introduced here in Bulgaria. I'm guessing it's because it's simple and easy to figure out. There absolutely no language problem involved once you pass "reverse" or "draw 4." Anyway, it's always a great icebreaker.

I'll be heading back to Silistra tomorrow afternoon to see how the cat did with me away and whether the apartment is still in one piece. Expect a post sometime Saturday, most likely.

The Week Ahead

This week I'm in Pleven, helping out with a much easier, more relaxing 3 hour-a-day day camp. The volunteer here in Pleven, Kate, set this thing up before the schoolyear ended and managed to draw in around fifteen or twenty kids. She wanted me around to help out with the sports aspects of the camp. Today, we taught them baseball. My baseball skills leave a little to be desired, but I know all the rules, all of the little details, and I can whack a good pitch, so we had a good time. The kids, none of whom had played baseball before, picked it all up surprisingly quickly. They even got the idea behind force-outs, which I've always found hard to explain here in Bulgaria.

So that's the week then, this daily bit of camp and hanging out in Pleven. The ride down, as always, was interesting. It was a packed bus and no air conditioning on a day that wasn't exactly the hottest of August, but could've been a lot cooler. It also would have been nice if there hadn't been people waiting for the bus in every village and next to every cow patch in Northeast Bulgaria. The driver stopped about 10 times during the five hour trip. It got a bit dull.

So yeah, we'll have updates whenever I come into the internet club here in Pleven. That about covers the news for now. Oh yeah, U.S. basketball...They own Angola, baby. Taught those guys a few lessons.

The Cat and Basketball

We start today with, by popular demand, cat pictures:

This is Yuli's version of wrestling. As the relatives have properly warned, a cat that attacks hands, limbs. etc. is liable to keep attacking said limbs throughout his or her life, but hand wrestling has become pretty ritualized.

It isn't a sudden attack anymore, but a procedure. Yuli hops up on a chair or ottoman while I'm sitting on the couch and stares at me for a little while. When I realize that she wants to play, I lift my hand into what I guess seems to represent something she'd hunt if she weren't restricted to the horrid confines of a Whiskas diet and the occasional unlucky housefly. Then she rears up on her hind legs, gives a "meow" if my hand's too far away (She'll also "meow" if I bring up both hands, I guess out of confusion), and lunges at the gap between my index finger and thumb. The way I play, she wins if she gets her mouth on the gap, I win if I push her back onto the chair or ottoman. This was a win for Yuli, pretty much because I wanted to get the picture. She never really sinks her teeth in, she only gives enough of a bite to ensure her "victory" over the hand.

Yuli likes to nest in plastic bags. It's cute. Awwww.

Yuli went through a phase where she wanted to end the fan. It's mostly ended as she's realized the fan's benifits and seen that defeating it would mean far too much trouble from the the fan. She's still absolutely scared to death of hair dryers, so my hair dryer has been my primary form of discipline. If she does something wrong, the dryer blows. This is only a long range solution, of course, if I do it while she's on me or in my hands, I leave with many more scratches than when I started.

So, that out of the way, we move on to the U.S. basketball team. Halfway through the "win" over Greece Tuesday night, I had an epiphany. A realization that can only come from watching Tim Duncan foul out in an international game. Many people, including Bill Simmons, and earlier, myself, have credited the horrible selection process to general laziness and stupidity on the part of USA Basketball's selection. Watching Greece almost win caused the light to break through for me, though: this is all by design.

USA Basketball is linked as closely as any organization can be with the NBA. This isn't like Bush and the Saudi Royal family, there's no room for manipulation here, there are daily memos being sent around between both groups. You'd think then, that the NBA would have some incentive in seeing our guys win and win well. However, with a big comma, the NBA really wants to avoid the big bully idea.

In 1992, the US dominated like no other basketball team ever will. Michael Jordan, Magic, Bird, Barkley, they all knew how to play and play as a team. There were even some people on the team, and you won't believe this, but there were people on that team who could shoot. I know, it's hard taking that in when Greece actually plays off Jason Richardson, watching him miss 3 after 3 after 3. And when the two British Eurosport announcers, two guys who sounded like they were trying to figure out this silly little sport as they went, were saying every two minutes that the US needed to shoot themselves out of the Greek zone, it was difficult to remember a US team that had a guy like Chris Mullin on top of Bird, Stockton, Drexler, and, of course, Jordan, who--in the NBA--usually made fadeaways from the international 3-point line. But such was the case. In 1992, the US team did more than throw weak alley-oops straight to the Greeks.

In '96 there was Shaq. I think some other guys played with him. The '96 team had a hard time against the college kids (led by Duncan, fascinatingly enough), falling 17 back in the third quarter before the win, but they really didn't have too much trouble in the Games. That, too, was planned by the NBA as international exposure was still, obviously, needed. I think Luke Longley was the best international player back then. So, America once again taught the rest of the world how the game was played.

Then, in Sidney, the zipper started showing on the monster costume. Vince Carter had a nifty dunk on the French quelle horror!, and they did win every game, but there were a few close calls. They started showing all of the weaknesses and laziness we've come to associate with USA Basketball. The players were still probably USA Basketball's choices, but it was obvious something needed to be done.

Because by that time basketball was huge internationally and people knew how to play. International players were coming from every country and each team had at least a star, if not a full-fledged superstar like Dirk Nowitski. At the World Championships in 2002 the US got whomped. And although every major American player swore revenge, it was usually only if the coach were someone they wanted to be coached by. So now we have a team “led” by Allen Iverson.

This isn’t to say bigger and better players weren’t invited, but they weren’t exactly forced and this is all about marketing anyway…so USAB really doesn’t care. After all, British Eurosport is showing two games of basketball a day, and as many of the “dream” team games as possible, and the British announcers are really starting to put the sardonic twist on “dream.” By my estimation, a British cable network showing two games of basketball a day during the Olympics is roughly equivalent to ESPN showing a cricket match on a Saturday during college football season. (And as an aside, with every day that slips by without a British gold medal—and they still don’t have one yet—the announcers are getting more ironic, more sarcastic, and more desperate whenever a British athlete comes up to bat. I have a feeling the two absolutely brilliant swimming guys are going to beat some members of the British swim team to death after these games. They sound just that disappointed.)

England may not be the world’s largest market, but markets outside the US is what the NBA cares about right now. It’s why Del Harris is coaching the Chinese team. By the time the Olympics get to Beijing, that team is going to be good. Maybe not gold good, but better than the Yao vs. 5 guys situation they’re in now. The NBA hopes to own China by 2008 and that’s just what they’re doing. The entire nation of Greece was drooling at the chance their team had against America’s team. Thursday night, Australia saw their chances for beating America go beyond Ian Thorpe, if only for a couple of hours.

Basketball, at least for the next two Olympics, won’t be about who wins or loses. It’ll be about the Americans pulling their punches until somebody comes around who can legitimately challenge them. Like a bigger friend keeping his buddy in the game just so he’ll come back and play tomorrow, America is keeping the rest of the world hooked on basketball. Football, American style, may still be the number one sport in America, but our best exporters are still the guys running basketball, and these Olympics are showing why.

And one more cat picture, you know, for the road.

A Way To Relax

I don't think I've mentioned on the site that I really miss televised golf. Not because I got all tense and anxious whenever Tiger Woods was trying to make a putt, but because watching golf always made for a great afternoon nap. You have a couple of guys whispering quietly about a golfer's chances on any given hole, and behind that the sounds of nature, or at least a golf course's version of nature. I could flip on golf, lay on the couch with a magazine, and if, at some point, I decided that the day had started getting too heavy, take a nap. Golf was always a great laziness aid.

Coming to Bulgaria, I had to find Sunday afternoon entertainment, and find it fast. Fortunately, there's Eurosport. Eurosport, while not huge on golf coverage, provides a wide range of sports perfect for afternoon naps. Yesterday, for example, there was coverage of the Olympic cycling time trials all afternoon. In the men's event alone there were about 40 racers taking off at minute-and-a-half intervals in a race that lasted about an hour for each rider. However, it was not perfect for naptime use since an American, Tyler Hamilton, was dominating and required a little attention here or there. In fact, I worked out during the race. Still, productive in its own way, I suppose.

But Eurosport's greatness doesn't stop at Olympic cycling, or cycling at all. They show every stage of the Tour de France every July, and during the Olympics, get this, they've been showing each and every match in the boxing preliminaries in the afternoon. Now this is legendary stuff. There are 32 fighters in each of the 11 divisions, and each fight lasts about twenty minutes. There are times when the announcer, placed perilously alone, stops talking for the course of an entire lightweight bout between, say, Albania and Slovenia. The judges behind the ring look they're about to fall out of their chairs. If you close your eyes and lay back on the couch, you only have the occasional chear from the Slovenians present and the odd comment from the announcer about how terrible the judging has been in this whole bloody tournament.

When it isn't boxing in the afternoons, I can count on whitewater preliminaries, equestrian, or even weightlifting. All great stuff, all making me love this last, lazy month of summer. And for those that say I'm not doing enough when I'm not killing myself here 24 hours a day, well, teaching in the fall will do enough killing for every season.

Cat pictures and comments about the US Basketball team tomorrow. Ciao.

Olympic Joys

I haven't been hanging around the internet club where I do my updating much over the last few days because, in the surprises of all surprises, the Olympics coverage here in Silistra--Silistra, Bulgaria mind you--is absolutely stellar. Yesterday I was able to feel every ounce of the frustration of one of America's, well, not so nice days at the games. Looks like I had my TV fixed at just about the right time (Incidentally, getting a TV fixed in Bulgaria is cheap, easy, and effective. Where a good-sized new TV would run me around 300 leva, I paid 30 leva to get my TV repaired at a shop just outside my building. And the guy got it done in a day. Impressive stuff.)

Many reasons for the great coverage. The first being that it's all live, and for the first time in my life since LA in '84, in my time zone. This prevents the horrors of knowing the scores and results before actually watching the events. And there really is great event coverage here, too. Miraculously, Silistra gets British Eurosport, which is offering 24 hours a day coverage. Live during the day, taped at night.

Despite a penchant for not really showing team sports much at all, British Eurosport has been doing a top-notch job picking the events to show. I suppose this could be credited to the British not being in the thick of any particular event. If they win an upset here or there it's great stuff, but outside of the upsets, I don't think England will be sitting on the edge of its collective seat until, I don't know, Equestrian? So all that losing from the British makes for some great money events coverage. I got to see every second of America's wretched time in the pool last night. I was fascinated by every stroke as we fell two lengths behind South Africa in the 4 x 100 relay. Sad, sad times. At least Eurosport's preference against team events kept me from watching Puerto Rico's "miraculous" upset/blowout win over the team some people still insist on prefixing "dream." I'll tell you, I've dreamt some pretty good basketball teams, and Shawn Marion, Dwanye Wade, and Alaska's own Carlos Boozer were never on those teams. Sigh.

When I'm not crying over the score reviews at the end of the night, or chuckling at the British announcers' bitter comments about how terrible the laurels look on the male swimmers (they both agree that they look much better on the women), or enjoying the fact that the camera likes to show each playcall in women's beach volleyball, but would rather not show any of it in men's, I can usually jump to Bulgaria's national coverage of the games, which shows events Eurosport sometimes misses. It's in Bulgarian, but that's certainly managable. Teaches me some new vocabulary.

Oh, and one last thing before I run off to not miss the opening swimming finals...Eurosport refuses--simply refuses--to show one sob/success/horror story about any of the athletes participating. I've learned that two of the damned South Africans trained in Arizona (TRAITORS!) and some other interesting tidbits about training and coaching, but not a single word about overcoming an aunt's devastating bout with motion sickness. Nothing but the sport. I like that.

Jeopardy!

Just a quick request at the end of another happily relaxing, slowish week. While there are many things I know I won't miss about American pop culture during my time here in Bulgaria, this story looks like it might be one of those things worth hearing more about.

Does anybody know about this "Jeopardy Guy?" Are there any other great stories about him that Simmons doesn't mention in the story? Is he still going strong or has he been booted? Watching Jeopardy while some cocky guy was running off an invicibility streak was always one of my great, guilty joys in life. I need info.

Your Standard Bulgarian Town

When I was bouncing around the south back in June, I wrote a few entries on the road and had to jot off some lazy stuff about the things I saw. Since it's gotten to me that a temporary resident of Stamboliiski had a problem with my description of it as a "standard Bulgarian town," and since I have nothing else really to write, let me amend the brief and then describe what my idea of a standard Bulgarian town might be.

Stamboliiski is a smallish, homey 'burb a little bit outside of Plovdiv in Southern Bulgaria. Interestingly, it's divided right down the middle by train tracks, causing most of the population to cross the tracks through holes in the fence or take a grafitti-filled tunnel under the train station. Its central plaza has a mid-sized fountain, drained while I was there, and a good number of benches a person could actually sit on going around the edge. There were also, if I remember correctly, a couple of flagpoles.

Dominating one side of the central plaza is the town's chitalishte, or children's center. It's a two-level maroonish building with a columned facade and a mostly green, dark interior with pretty nice bathrooms for a public building in Bulgaria, and a room very suitable for studying Bulgarian. Outside of the plaza are a couple of shops, large grassy fields, and two-level houses wherever there aren't immense, gray apartment blocks.

On the side of the tracks opposite the plaza and chitalishte, there's a small market and a pretty nice internet club for a town of Stamboliiski's size. My time on the other side of the tracks was pretty short, so I didn't get to see too much.

Finally, Stamboliiski is said to have a city-wide cabbagey funk whenever the town's factory puts off a puff or two of chemicals. I never smelled it, fortunately.

So there you go: Stamboliiski, in my experience. If someone who has lived there wants to comment a bit more, they're more than welcome.

Now, the standard town in Bulgaria (STB) runs a bit like this:

In the center of the STB is a plaza. It could be square, trapezoidal, a rhombus, but it's always there. Sometimes there's a fountain, sometimes there's a statue, usually there's both. Somewhere along the center's lines there is always at least one governmental building. In the case of Stamboliiski, it's the chitalishte. In other cases it's the municipality, post office, or other gray, imposing communist monstrosity. In the case of Ruse, it's a giant gray obshtina in the shape of a battleship.

Expanding out from the central plaza, we usually come face to face with the STB's "historical section" where, depending on the town's age, you can find building's from the town's glory age(s). Silistra's historical section is dominated by buildings from the Romanian occupation and ruins from the Roman Empire. Stamboliiski has, again from what I saw, a collection of the gray stucco, two-level houses from the post-communist era.

Extending along, through, or around the STB's center is one of the STB's main streets. It's always the commercial street if there are multiple main streets. Along the main street, you can find most of the clothing, cell phone, and bakery shops the STB has to offer. There's usually a restaurant nearby if you look carefully. Somewhere along that street you'll often find the STB's market.

Expanding out of this main street are the smaller streets holding the STB's cafes, general goods stores, pet shops, and internet clubs. If the STB has a landmark that makes it a tourist attraction (eg. the Danube in Silistra), the street along that landmark will usually be one of the nicer streets in the city. Between the nicer streets and the main streets are the small byways and alleyways that make up the STB's apartment block complexes which inevitably make up the STB's heart.

Once you get into these block cities, everything about Bulgaria tends to look the same. The pattern on ground level is always grocery store, some kind of service shop, block entrance, repeat. People get attached to these blocks in that they know the people that live and work there, and that gives each block a unique, familial click. But to the outside observer, there isn't much there to see that's ever new.

The fascinating thing about STBs is that they each have one or two unique characteristics that set them apart from other STBs. And of course, the people living in each STB make them different. But to a guy passing through, once you know that, say, the tracks run right through the middle of town and that there's a cabbagey smell, the label gets slapped on pretty quickly.

Attrition

By the end of the month we'll have lost, to one cause or another, 10 of the 42 volunteers that came here last April. None have been killed or had something gruesome happen to them, they've all left because they think the world outside of Bulgaria offers something the world inside Bulgaria doesn't. Good for them, I say. No reason to stay where you don't feel comfortable. What's odd is the way most of them leave. A few tell the right people that this just isn't right for them at this time in their lives, and let Peace Corps's gossip pony express do the rest. There's a certain nobility to that method.

For others, it's a little more under the table. The word "slinking" comes to mind, also "disappearing without a trace." You can be inviting them to a birthday party, be pleasantly turned down, then realize at the party that the reason you were turned down was that they were using that day to get out of Bulgaria. It's just that simple. Meh. Their life, they can do what they want with it, but it's always nice to go without leaving a nasty aftertaste in people's mouths. Just common decency, I suppose.

And common decency, then, is what brings me to the fundamental problem anybody really has with leaving the Peace Corps: that whole "promise" thing. No matter how much you rationalize around it, the Peace Corps, from the very beginning, makes it clear that they don't train people for three months, locate sites, provide medical, program, psychological, and administrative help for people who want to come for a year or less, find themselves, and then decide whether or not this whole "volunteer" thing is right for them. Two years is mentioned quite a bit in the information we get before coming. "Commitment" is thrown around a bit too.

It's that commitment that keeps a lot of volunteers here. I'm not trying to pat myself on the back here, although it's obviously coming out that way. I love being here. I have an incredible city to live in, a great apartment to relax in, and a Bulgarian cat. Life is keeping me here, not the Peace Corps.

I'd like to think that if I lived in a village where there was only one communal shower in the center of town, and the kids I was teaching were all on some international list for troubled teens needing aid, and I woke up covered in bedbug bites and went to sleep coughing up the black ash I'd been breathing all day, I'd like to think that if I were in that village, I'd stick it out for two years. This is the Peace Corps after all. I get the idea folks in Africa have it a damn bit worse than I ever would in Bulgaria. But one never knows, does one? I'd like to think that if I were on a bus that crashed into a freezing river, I'd make sure I got as many passengers needing help off that bus before I got off. But I've never been in that situation, few people have, so it's difficult to say how any given person would act.

Silly hypotheticals aside, about a quarter of the people that came a year ago aren't working with the Peace Corps in Bulgaria. I think that's a number that could be improved. We'll just have to see how this year's group does.

Doldrums

Perfectly still warm weather, no breezes at all, pretty dry, puffy white clouds in the distance...August is here in Northeast Bulgaria. 31 whole days of waiting, reading, and playing with the cat. I'll admit, life is pretty good when there's little to do. I like relaxing. I get a kick out of it, and it gives me the energy for those times when I really have to do something.

Unfortunately, it doesn't make for exciting journal writing. So, basically, um, that's what we have for the day. Today's book recommendations are The Tortilla Curtain, by TC Boyle and The Corrections, if you still haven't gotten around to it, by Jonathon Franzen. The first is a clever, entertaining, tale of the struggle between classes in Los Angeles. It's not really the newest ground to cover, and it wasn't when the book was written, but for being so heavy, it was a real breezer. 400 pages in a weekend. It also has pretty solid moments of levity.

The Corrections, a honeymoon #2 on my all-time favorites list, is a well-told story that if poorly told, would be incredibly boring. Basically, a mother wants all of her adult children home for "one last Christmas." It's the characters that really do it for this book, each new family member adds something new to the story of the family's dysfunction.

One of the Peace Corps Bulgaria memes rolling around these days is that "men may be children, but women are nuts," and I think Franzen subscribes to that theory pretty closely. The female characters seem to be, at times, entirely irrational (except, notably, for the lesbian), while the men seem completely incapable of running their lives without outside help. Again, great book.

Read 'em. If you already have, and these have been out for a while, talk about 'em. I'll be around.