Alaskan Bulgarian

What's On Bulgarian TV?

Curious? I thought so, and we'll talk about what's on in a second. But first, school hasn't been "discuss it on the site" interesting these last couple of days. We've been starting on the textbooks, figuring out where everybody in the classes is, and generally not making revelations in the field of human thought. It should be noted, however, that Wednesday has become a very hard, but very gratifying milestone in the week.

I work 20 hours every week, and if that seems like part time to you, well, you haven't been teaching. 2 of those hours come on Monday, and I work 6 on Tuesday and 6 on Wednesday. I have one class period off on each of those days. I come to school with the kids at 7:30 and leave with them at 2. It's a lot like being in high school again. I'm not completely sure about whether that's a good or bad thing at this point. Anyway, I only have two hours on Thursday and four on Friday, so things kind of coast after the middle of the week. You can expect fresh, creative things Monday, nothing as I take a nap on Tuesdays and quirky, jovial things Wednesday.

So what's on TV? Well, for the last three months, the movie channels my cable service provides have had a noticable rotation of movies, with three notable classics. Most prominent has been 1986's Child's Cry. A TV movie, it throws aside the need for an article while telling the story of a 6 year-old little leaguer who has been sexually abused. It's not terrible, and the actors do their bit well, especially Peter Coyote, but it's just entertaining in that cheesy way all TV movies are. You forget the tragedy of the story in the melodrama that supports it, and when the coach walk around with this autistic grin on his face most of the time, it just draws a chuckle. Also, it has a lovely little "solving the mystery" finish and a meaningful epilogue. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be available on DVD, so to my knowledge you can only look for it on Alexandra TV, although it pops up occasionally on some of the other movie channels.

Also showing a lot recently has been the slightly more famous School Ties. Brendan Fraser plays a jewish private high school quarterback who tries to keep his race and religion a secret from asshole Matt Damon and slightly less of a jerk, but still Damon's crony, Ben Affleck. The rest of the rich kids in the high school, upon learning the secret, take sides with or against Fraser as befits there stereotypical type already established in the movie. Interestingly, the nerd is the biggest racist, if you don't count Damon, who's more or less just an avaricious idiot.

Outside of the race "plot," a subplot sees an evil French teacher actually require his students to speak French in class. So high are his expectations for his students' education that he drives one he doesn't particularly like to near-suicide (Oh! If only I had the power!). The subplot of the evil French teacher is suddenly wrapped up when the gang plays a prank on him and his car.

It's an okay movie. Again, not great, and bad enough to be entertaining. Solid football scenes too, I suppose. However, it pales in comparison to another great high school football movie: The Keanu Reeves, Keifer Sutherland, Billy Zane classic, The Brotherhood of Justice.

If you were a big TV viewer then, 1986 was a huge year for you. Child's Cry and then Brotherhood. Brotherhood follows the adventures of a high school vigilante gang spurred on by a stirring address from "that guy" principal Bob "The Groot" Grootemat. The school is in trouble, you see, what with the drugs and the vandalism and the Mexicans hanging around. The Groot sees his seniors as the best hope to turn back the tide and tells them they must "set the example" for the rest of the school to follow.

After the stirring speech, the senior class gives him a standing ovation that The Groot seems to take seriously. Then the top of the class, led by quarterback Reeves ("Johnny Utah, baby! It's Johnny Utah!"), discuss ways to interpret The Groot's meaning. They decide that he wants a vigilante group and in the school weightroom and an abandoned carousel they establish the Brotherhood of Justice, which comes complete with the researching nerd, two brainless jocks, and a crazy Billy Zane. Reeves is supposed to be the noble leader.

In order to make the school a safer place, the gang throws stink bombs around and shoves students into a pool at a late night party that may have alcohol involved. They also beat up a drug dealer, stab a "sleazeball" in the ass, make a perilous journey into the heart of the Mexican part of town, and try to blow up innocent waiter Keifer Sutherland's car before they're all hauled off by the police thanks to a guilty-feeling Reeves. It's the kind of movie that leaves you breathless, and it even comes with "PLACE COMMERCIAL HERE" cards between certain scenes when shown in Bulgaria. Apparently you can get it on DVD.

So that's what's on the movie channels here. It's really very entertaining stuff.

The Present Perfect Mothers

Two interesting lessons taught today, with entirely different subjects and meanings, but we'll see what we can do with them. The first lesson came out while I was teaching my morning class the finer points of the present perfect simple (PPS. eg "I have been to Bulgaria") and the present perfect continuous (PPC. eg "I have been teaching for a year") with a focus on the latter. It occured to me that, like most grammar, there's a yin and yang thing going on between the two.

It's not just that the PPS is all about the past and finished events, that's obvious and part of the rule (that is, unless it's negative and the word "still" is involved. Then it's about future intentions. But I digress). What's more important is the activity implied by the two when they're used as statements.

I came upon this while trying to think outside the box and add value to the lesson (Sorry about the management jargon, I've been fond of Dilbert lately and have been taking the wrong lessons out of it). I always like to put in a little social aspect to the lessons to make the grammar more meaningful than the textbook allows. While it's all well and good that the textbook talks about films and culture and various cities where speaking English would be nice, very little in it actually relates to students' lives. Common problem, I know, but work with me. For the PPC and PPS comparison, I came upon the idea of implied activity and inactivity.

PPS is a relatively slothy tense. It's all in the past. "Has been" is PPS. It may say great or terrible things about the mists of time, but it says nothing about where a person stands now. If I tell you "I have been to Bulgaria," you know something about the 23 years preceding that moment but nothing about who I am or what I do now. PPC, on the other hand, is active as all get out. If I say "I've been teaching in Bulgaria for a year," that implies activity. I may not necessarily still be teaching in Bulgaria, as the PPC "recent past" rule may mean that I stopped this past week, but I was an active little teacher right up until that point. For that reason, the class and I decided, PPC is the tense of job interviews and first dates.

If a candidate walks into a job interview and gives a grocery list like "I've studied at UCLA," "I've lived and worked in Alaska and call it home," and "I've spent time working in Bulgaria" the potential employer may think the kid is a bit of a nostalgic fool. It may still be a grocery list, but if a person says "I've been working in English since studying at UCLA," "Although I call Alaska home, I've been working and studying in different cultures and locations since I graduated high school," and "I've been working in Bulgaria for a year," he tends to come off as more active. Fascinating, right? Well, the same thing works in first dates, we decided, and although the students were more inclined to work with the job interview angle in their post-discussion dialogues, we decided that PPC was better when a person's trying to convey to a potential steady what a dynamic and interesting fellow/lady he/she is.

Breathless after these revelations, I took some time at the apartment before heading off to the teachers' meeting where no lessons were taught but we all got a good talking at about bringing our collective iron fist down on the more poorly-disciplined students. Then I went to my Bulgarian lesson where my tutor and I explored the the rarity of stories involving motherly love.

The discussion came up after reading "A Mother's Tear" by Angel Karalichev. Nutshell: A swallow, despite his mother's best efforts, is forced to stay behind through the fall and winter after getting his wing nearly burned off in a fire. Over some great, unspecified ocean, Mother Swallow asks The Wind to deliver a tear to her little swallowche under the more than reasonable assumption that the tear, symbolizing love, would keep the baby swallow warm. So The Wind travels nine days, finds the grapey garden described by Mommy, complains about the trip to Baby, and gives Baby the tear. Baby, overwhelmed, puts the tear under his wing and is able to relax in the nest.

After I'd read the story that was slightly longer than the nutshell version, my tutor asked me to retell a story about motherly love. I searched the story library in my head for mother stories and had a good bit of trouble. Fairy tales: Sleeping Beauty has an irrelevant mother. Snow White has a wicked step. Cindy has a wicked step. I can't remember if the L'il Mermaid had a mother but the family was certainly patriarchal. Hansel and Gretel depend on their father. Mama Bear is a supporting character in Goldilocks. Disney: Bambi's mother famously gets shot. Simba has an irrelevant mother. Belle has a kooky widower. The mother dies early in the only Pixar movie really about true parenting, "Finding Nemo." There's a queen in "A Bug's Life" but she's more of a ditz than anything. There really is a dearth of good tales about mothers.

One could blame this on the patriarchy and I might agree up until the 20th century. Then we get into avoiding severe melodrama. The way I see it, stories involving motherly love have a tendency to get weepy. Mostly because we all expect motherly love to the point of taking it for granted. In stories where that love is strained or threatened, the reconciliation is often under straining circumstances strong enough to whip the relationship back to the motherly norm. Usually this involves a deathbed.

So when mothers and their love are involved we get either tear-jerkers or sraight-up Hallmark classics. Not wanting to retell "Stepmom" or "Terms of Endearment," I fell back on the old warhorse and we talked about Gertrude's love for Hamlet. Interesting love, that. At the most strained, she sees her son as a murdering lunatic, but an act later she's cheering him on in a fencing match against Laertes. Powerful stuff, motherly love.

They all die in the end, but that's certainly not Gertrude's fault. It's that damnable patriarchy and Claudius' need to take over that role that does everybody in. "Hamlet" was probably written in 1602, anticipating Queen Elizabeth(and the rising British matriarchy?)'s death the following year.

And with the sudden realization that this is teetering horribly close to literary analysis, almost certainly going over the edge with the word "anticipating," I'll drop the subject and leave you with pleasant memories of mother swallows leaving their young behind but sending tears back home. We'll leave the whole "abandonment" versus "heroically staying behind" issue for later.

(I mean, seriously, did she have to leave? If the kid was supposed to survive the winter with her tear as a radiator, couldn't she have hacked it? Sigh.)

Cat Photos

Well, I didn't make it to the internet club yesterday. It was a full day at school, one that I probably started off on the wrong foot by playing basketball with my eleventh and ninth graders during their gym hour. Not that playing basketball wasn't fun, it actually turned out to be the best part of the day, but through experience I've learned that exhausting yourself a little before 4 hours of teaching doesn't really do wonders.

The rest of the day went pretty well regardless. Tenth and eleventh grades, and we're still doing review, so it isn't too strenuous for teacher or student. They grumble about writing, and they'll continue to, but writing sentences in the past tense is just part of the horrible trial that is being being a high school student and they'll just have to get used to it at some point or another.

After the school day ended I trotted home and flopped down on the couch, pretty much content with doing absolutely nothing until the faculty dinner later that night. So I didn't hit the internet club. But I'm here today, so I have that going for me, and you have cat photos.

Yuli tends to use the back of my desk chair as a catapult (no pun intended. Wokka. Wokka.) to the desk or curtains depending on her mood. Here, she's just climbing up to see what that clicking, flashing thing I'm pointing at her is all about.

Yuli at home. A recent delivery from a caring aunt has left Yuli with a nice little hideaway under the desk. It isn't well-furnished because I've found that as soon as I give her a blanket or towel she just moves to a new cave. She seems to like it enough. She takes her naps there and keeps digging out the styrofoam bits that came in the box in her continuing effort to poison herself by chewing on everything that could possibly be bad for her. If you wonder why I hadn't picked up all the styrofoam bits that might be bad for her, well, I did after I took the pictures. So there.

And finally, Yuli playing with a present generously donated by Grams. This mouse has lasted twice as long as the first one I gave her. Yuli can be awfully dog-like in her need to destroy toys instead of playing with them.

So that's the show for the day. If the mood strikes I'll haul myself out here again for another entry tomorrow, but the apartment, and silence, and the lack of kids feels awfully good on the weekends. So we'll see.

Hi Ho

One long, full busy week nearly finished. Fortunately, it was interrupted Wednesday by a national holiday here. I spent the entire day reading, watching the tube, and writing at home. No internet club trip needed, I told myself. And it was more or less true.

The classes so far are reasonable. I'm teaching 16 hours of students taking English as a second foreign language and 4 where English is the first foreign language. The 4 hours of first is, most of the time, a breath of fresh air. A completely different experience. I feel like I can say or talk about anything with them. Then, when the classes get a bit noisy, I see what's happening, that they're still kids, and the iron boot comes down a little bit.

With the seconds, it's a little bit rougher. They suffer because, when I'm not teaching them, second foreign language classes are often a bit of a joke after the 9th grade. Then I come in, this gift of language, and most of them realize it would be horrid to waste me, so they straighten up a little. But they still need a lot more reminding and a lot more Bulgarian than the other classes. It lets me sympathize a little with the volunteers who work with non-language school students. The situation, while still having those nuggets of reward, is just a wee bit tougher.

Anyway, it's all going well enough. I'm alive, the students are still in a post-summer honeymoon, and the weather isn't frigid or boiling hot. Just the way fall is supposed to be. The only "ugh" moments have come in the mornings, when the alarm is consistently waking me up for the first time since July. If there's one thing I can't handle with grace, it's waking up to an alarm. I do it better than some, I imagine, but it still takes me a lot of effort. If it's still dark out, I have to sit on the edge of the bed for two or three minutes filling myself in on the situation two or three times before I finally slog off to the shower.

Since classes start at 7:30 this year, this situation happens about 4 times a week. Fridays I get to sleep in until 8, when it's usually kind of sunny out. I blame farmers for this discomfot, as I've blamed them for setting the standard workday to about two hours out of my zone of perfect comfort. I regularly tell myself that if bankers hadn't had farmers unrealistic expectations for a workday in their head, they'd have made the working day 10 to 6. I still think that if the change were made the world would adjust pretty easily. Unfortunately, early risers hold Laziness over the heads of late risers like a death sentence. Again, it's the farmers fault.

But until I get my worldwide campaign to change working hours off the ground, I'm stuck with the cursed beeping and opening my eyes to darkness. Sigh.

For those who have been concerned, there will be a Yuli report tomorrow (Preview: "She's doing well!").

And lastly, here's hoping Owen at Lex Libertas gets well and back to Russia quickly. That nasty cyst of his has already kept him from visiting Bulgaria this month. For that alone, it ought to be put down quietly and give the guy a good recovery. Get well, Owen.

The Routine

My "Introductions" class routine this year is stellar, if I do say so myself. I've done it four times now and will do it three more times before all this introducing is dead and in the ground. I have a lot of new students I have to get to know. The name memorization necessary boggles the mind at this point, but that's a matter for later consideration.

The routine itself starts slow. I introduce myself, giving them my name, my preference for "Mr. Young," and my assurance that I'll listen if they absolutely have to call me Robert. Then I write on the board my favorite movie, which has, for mood reasons I guess, changed 3 times in the last week (It was Godfather II this morning). I write that I like relaxing music, and then I drop the kicker. I am 201 cm tall and wear size 52 shoes(Bulgarian size system, of course). "Ooh"s and "Aah"s all over the classroom. Awed respect emanates from the desks as I turn to the board.

"Now," I say. "I need to get to know you guys." I ask them to write the same information for themselves on little stickies that I give them and then slap them on the board (the slapping on the board is optional, but it gets the little buggers moving around, so it's good for something). 10 minutes pass as they get their English neurons firing on 2 or 4 cylinders and when the trickling procession to the board ends, I read off the names one by one and then put the stickies in my notebook for future reference.

Getting through a classroom takes the full period length of 45 minutes working at a solid clip. Along the way I press them for more information to see just how well they converse and to show them that, if needed, I can explain to them the finer points of hip-hop, rock, etc. One student today said he "rapshits" occasionally. After some interrogation, we figured out that he was talking about a rapsheet and had gotten the whole idea confused. Teaching already! It's really a triumph of the art. So at the end of the half, they've written, they've spoken, the box score is looking good. Still plenty of time for the listening and reading, which gets covered in the second half.

After the ten minute break between classes the students file in, not quite blown away by the class, but at least interested. We then get into the lecture on the rules, which I organize into to columns on the board without ever mentioning the word "rules." On the left: "Things I like." On the right: "Things I don't like." I start by saying that I like talking fast, which any American will tell you is usually a patent lie (I may trail off into mumbling gibberish if I realize a thought isn't going anywhere, but I'm nothing if not plodding and deliberate in conversation), but the students at that point are always waiting for an opportunity to point out the fact that, in class, I probably speak about twice as fast as they're used to when I'm not thinking about it. I tell them that this is a problem and that if they don't understand what I'm saying, they ought to do everything they can to get my attention and slow me down.

After that we run through the list, one by one, each "like" and "dislike" having its own bearing on how I want the class to be run. I don't like GSMs (cell phones), I don't like tests but this is how I do them..., I don't like homework but..., about halfway through we reach the routine's moment, where I write that I don't like the Black Eyed Peas. An eerie silence fills much of the room as a couple of students chuckle. Despite their infinite ability to annoy, the group is still popular among many Bulgarians, and Europeans, and Americans, I gather. I wait a beat, then explain why, exactly, I don't like the group.

I tell them that I can never say "shut up," which I never really say anyway but is kind of prevalent among their other English teachers (I never ask why), because if I say "shut up," then someone in the back of the room will start singing the song, others will join in and the seventh seal opens up and the class is irreparable. Anyway, this little bit never fails to amuse. The class laughs for a good minute or so, then falls back in line once the slower kids have had the gag explained to them in Bulgarian. It also gives me a chance to rip on The Black Eyed Peas, whose singles I could really do without hearing 2,000,000 times a week.

We move on from there. I explain the various punishments, rewards, and my assertion that unless they screw around with me, I won't be a jerk. Mild discipline with the threat of back-breaking discipline to come. We'll see how well that works.

I then have them add things they like or dislike about school, and when I pry there are always a couple of ideas I didn't list. Then the class ends, and we all move on. There's a little entertainment and a lot of information. It gets the honeymoon two weeks off on the right track. I've warned them all ahead of time about the things to come, now we'll see how they react when they learn there actually will be work involved. I hope the ganshing of teeth gets kept to a minimum. It's a horrible sound.

A Nice Weekend

Well, the first week went fine. There was a happy ceremony in the park Wednesday where all of the new teachers were introduced and the new students were welcomed. There was also some singing and a couple of skits.

Then, Thursday, the real work started and I had two new classes and one from last year by the end of Friday. They seem like good kids, but I'm pushing discipline a little bit more from the beginning than I did last year. Teaching was fine most of the time, don't get me wrong, but the noise and attention levels in the classes could certainly be improved. Thus, I'm devoting most of these first two weeks to talking about rules and expectations, and I don't think it's going overboard at all.

A night of relaxing and hanging out at some cafes last night has led to an even better Saturday, disturbed only by some pretty annoying people at the internet club. Somebody is playing every song their cell phone has and the rap music behind me has only recently stopped pounding at me. It's all well and good though, shows how great the rest of the day has been.

And it'll be more of the same tomorrow. It's all about recharging and getting myself back into teaching shape. It's coming along well.

Helping Out

Last night, I was leaving my tutor's building on my way home when I passed three men in their eighties trying to do something with a TV that looked as old as the three of them. One of them told me to help, and although I didn't hear a please in Bulgarian, I've gotten used to that and opted to give them a hand.

They were moving the TV from a pair of jeans (I'm not exactly sure what it was doing there) onto a thick blanket. It was a big TV and they'd already struggled enough to get the TV onto to the blanket by the time I'd figured out what was going on. They all grabbed corners of the blanket, I grabbed my corner, and we walked across the parking lot to the apartment block on the other side. We took the TV down to the basement and one of the guys unlocked a storage room loaded up with all the canned goods and bottled wine you usually see in a pensioner's basement in Bulgaria. The man who had opened the door thanked me and asked me if I wanted some wine. They all looked very thankful and hopeful, so I said sure.

"Are you Bulgarian?" One of the guys asked. We'd gotten all the way down to the basement. I'd spoken several times, counting on the lifts and asking what was wrong with the TV and it took about 5 minutes for one of them to see that I might not be Bulgarian. I was pretty proud of my language skills, if I do say so myself.

"No, I'm an American."

"American?! Ahhh! C'mon. We have to have a drink! American?!"

So we went upstairs to an apartment, and one of the guys opened a bottle of wine and filled four glasses, watering them down a bit afterward. We went through the standard conversation: I'm from Alaska, Here teaching English in the language school, I've been here for a year, No I don't have a gadzhe.

"Oh!" The more over-excited octogenarian said. "I know a girl perfect for you. How old are you?"

"23 years."

"Oh." He seemed a bit disappointed. "She's 25. But I'm sure she would be perfect. You need a Bulgarka."

"I need a Bulgarka, huh?"

"I'll introduce you sometime."

After that the standard conversation continued on: I get enough money to get by, but I'm not rich, Pensioners get varying amounts of money in America but it's usually more than Bulgarian pensioners get (These guys were getting 100 leva a month from the government, about 70 dollars or so. It isn't much, and they often depend heavily on their families and village gardens.), I'll be here for another year.

Then the one of the three that hadn't been talking very much said something to the more over-excited one, and they talked very quickly about the over-excited one's girlfriend. He turned to me.

"I have a gadzhe." He was smiling.

"I'm sure she's beautiful." I said.

"She's 82. She's fine-looking and I'm happy."

"Well, happiness is important."

He looked at the quiet one who had asked about the girl then turned back to me. "It's hard to have sex, though," he said.

"I understand."

"But we try, right?" And the other guys nodded and we all laughed.

After about 20 minutes of chatting, I stood up with one of the guys who didn't live in the apartment and said I had to run since it looked like he was leaving, too. They all said goodbye and thanked me for the help and said that I had to come by again sometime. Maybe I will, I don't know.

I went home after that and read for awhile. It was an interesting way to spend an afternoon. They were a bunch of good ol' guys. Kind of reminded me of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in "Grumpy Old Men."

Must Post...Might as Well be About Food

If only life in Bulgaria weren't so dependent on whether or not I have readily avaliable cereal. If I have no cereal I'm left with two options, I could make myself French toast or pancakes, or I could grab something on the way to wherever I'm going. I could also eat yogurt, but that never does the job early in the morning, for whatever reason. So it's usually a good thing when I can pour myself a bowl of cereal and be out the door in ten minutes. French toast leaves me satisfied, but takes far too long, and banitza off the street is always iffy.

Fortunately, my family keeps me in good stead with the cereal and, in a pinch, corn flakes and Muslix are available (but kind of relatively expensive) here. Therefore, I try to start every full day with a good bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats or its ilk. That leaves me okay until 2 or 3 in the afternoon when I'm starved enough to want to buy a sandwich from one of Silistra's vendors. If I'm home, I'll make my own sandwich, often from fried eggs or grilled cheese--the old warhorses from the days in Alaska.

If it's a tutoring day, I'll usually have a snack of cookies at my tutors' in addition to the three or four cups of coffee she has me drink by custom. Then I'll go home and, later, have dinner based on how I feel any given day. Spaghetti and rice are regulars, as is bread pizza. If I have some kind of desert, I'll usually eat that around ten-ish. But nothing beats finishing the day with, well, a good bowl of cereal.

It's cyclical you see...heh.

Of course, all this changes if I eat out somewhere with someone. When I eat out I'll usually always play it safe with food unless we're at a pizza place or I really trust the Bulgarian place's cooking. This means it's usually Shopska or Ovcharska salads to start and grilled chicken for the main course. You can never go wrong with pileshka purzhola. Kavarma is usually dependable, and despite my initial fears, chicken hearts are not all that bad for someone craving reddish meat. As a side, french fries with sirene (a white cheese), is always good, although fries po celski can be great depending on the restaurant.

So why do bring all this up? Well, truth be told, I'm kind of hungry and really ought to be running along. Less food related talk to come later in the week.

Praznik

Before the school year officially starts, the "Days of Silistra" festival gives all of the local 14 and 15 year olds a chance to butt into lines and prevent good, older folk from buying beers. The beer festival coincides with the Days festival and the River festival fits right in too this weekend. It's a festival bonanza here in Silistra!

The weather, up until today's chill, has been perfect for an outdoor festival and the plaza behind the obshtina has been packed every night. Tuesday night saw the biggest mob I've seen in Silistra. There were people shoulder to shoulder and barely room to wriggle near the stage. All because Maria was in town.

Maria's a chalga singer, chalga being a fascinating little niche of Bulgarian pop music. The music could be quickly described as early Britney Spears-ish. It's not exactly "Hit Me Baby One More Time," but in some cases it has the general flow of that kind of crap. One of Maria's hits, for example, is "Obichai Me, Sega," or "Love Me, Now" in English. More interesting than the music though, are the videos, which combine the production values of low-quality videos from the eighties with writhing, wriggling dancers dressed in things that a person normally sees driving through West Hollywood. Some would have the indecency to call that kind of thing "bad" but it's incredibly entertaining in short doses. Some of the performers are legendary, Anelia actually puts out music that could be called good and respectable videos and Azzis (sp?) dresses in pseudo drag while singing at a very high pitch and performing in videos based on Satanic rituals.

I'd say 95% of chalga singers are singly named and, like I said, Maria was rocking Silistra Tuesday night. I'd guess there were around 6,000 people stuffef into the space of two football fields. Everybody was trying to get beer from the four booths that were selling it and the Silistra American squad was trying to get away from the mob near the stage since we'd been up there to watch the local cover band whose singer/guitarist is a friend of ours. Fortunately we were able to escape before Maria's third song ans certain suffocation. We then rode "The Viking," one of those swinging boat rides that's in the small fairground next to the main stage. All in all a great night.

Last night we say Akaga, a rhythm group from Sofia. They did a little samba, a little R and B, and some Turkish music. I loved every second of it, it's not often you hear that stuff played well, and live, in Bulgaria. There were far fewer people at the performance, and even with another chalga singer tonight, the chill will probably keep even more people away.

Saturday will be the day where silly folk try to swim the river. I won't be doing that this year. And after that the festival will go on through next week, and leave three days before school starts. It's a great way to end the summer.

Airplane! -- The Prequel

Had I never come to Bulgaria, I might well have lived my life without seeing Murder on Flight 502. i had the undeniable privilege of watching it on Bulgarian TV yesterday -- with subtitles instead of dubbing, no less. The IMDB page says it's available on DVD, and if it's your cup of tea, I strongly recommend picking it up.

It's a harrowing tale of murders in the poorly designed first class cabin of a 747 circa 1975. WATCH! Robert Stack as the pilot, warming up splendidly for his deadpan Captain Rex Kramer in Airplane!. MARVEL! at Sonny Bono as a "rock star" before his brilliant turn as the terrorist in Airplane II . It was a TV movie, so the scenes here in Bulgaria tended to fade to black and stay that way for a couple of seconds at the commercial breaks.

The plot begins when a young Danny Bonaduce (as "Millard") leaves a smoke bomb in the first class lounge as a practical joke. JFK security, in the form of a guy Robert Stack always calls "DAV-enport!" in his Robert Stack growl, doesn't find the package funny, but finds a letter in the mail that he should have only seen a day later. It says that there will be Murders on Flight 502! The rest of the movie involves Robert Stack playing detective/captain, trying to figure out who the murderer onboard might be.

If anything it's a brilliant portrayal of the caste system in 1975 airline travel. The first class passengers might as well be on another plane as the 180-odd coach travellers are only mentioned twice and never seen or heard from. Life and death is about the first class passengers in their bright yellow, plush chairs and Donny Bonaduce (a first classer) is the only kid Robert Stack invites to show "how this machine practically flies itself." Incidentally, Stack welches on this promise and poor Millard never gets to see the cockpit. And he looks so excited when Stack makes the promise...

Farrah Fawcett-Majors has a couple of lines as an incidentally insidious stewardess. And Ralph Bellamy foreshadows Leslie Neilson's doctor perfectly. It may not have any "Hostpital? What is it?" or "surely" jokes. And it may have been presented as a murder mystery. But Murder on Flight 502 shows why Airplane! was more than just funny one-liners. Great flick. Again, highly recommended for lovers of Ed Wood-style bad movies.

Other than that, the whole preparation process for school begions tomorrow. Which means getting back to work, but will also most likely mean more regular trips to the internet club to relax after work. So you can probably expect more regular posting.

Free At Last

Well, old news now I suppose, but Kobe's off. All charges dropped and all that. The case never even saw trial. This was only to be expected, I imagine, since OJ and Jayson Williams both managed to get off after a trial and everbody knows that they actually did what they were accused of. Frankly, I'm surprised a he-said/she-said celebrity case even made it through the hearing. So Kobe's free, and money still buys freedom in criminal court pretty easily, all the world is as it should be...

I didn't make it to the internet club yesterday because, for the second time in my life I can remember, I had a strange case of the shivers. The first time happened back in high school. I wake up in the morning feeling a bit weakish, but not really nauseated or anything. Then, sometime in the afternoon, in temperatures in the high seventies, I suddenly feel really cold and start shivering, getting weaker as the day goes on.

This time I went right to bed and kept a hairdryer on while I read a little and it wasn't nearly as bad as I remember the last "attack" being. I took a nap a little later on and woke up with a fever, sweating. I watched a replay of the MTV Video Awards. Good perfomances this year, although Outkast seemed counfused about being part of the whole VOTE! thing MTV always pulls at election time. And both of the Simpon sisters can just disappear anytime they like. The Newlyweds is funny, but not funny enough to justify Jessica's existence in the spotlight.

I went to sleep, slept about twelve hours, and woke up as good as new. Wouldn't even know I'd felt bad yesterday. Strange how these things work sometimes.

By the by, I finished reading Gone With the Wind while ill-ish, and having never read the book nor seen the movie, it was a fascinating read. I've seen bits of the film. I knew about Rhett's "frankly" line and Scarlett killing a yankee and tearing up some curtains and I remembered this bit where she shouts "Ashley!" a couple of times. But I was pretty much going in blind and loving it. My favorite quote isn't good ol' Rhett's "Frankly, my dear yada yada" but Grandma Fontaine's "Scarlett, you just aren't smart." I don't think any line properly summarizes the book or the character as well as that one. Every person she knows tells Scarlett that Ashley's a doofus, but she never listens, never sees. Never sees anything really. She really just isn't that smart a person, for all her independence. Great story about a very dim woman. Melanie's a great character though, you have to love Melanie.

Now I imagine I'll have to see the whole movie at some point. Should be fun.

Still No Fall

Last year, September first came in a big, chilly windstorm that lasted a week and basically introduced all of us new volunteers to a Bulgarian Autumn right off the bat. Today was clear, sunny, and hot, still great weather for hanging clothes up on the line and taking walks in short-sleeved shirts. It's appreciated.

Knowing that cold weather may hit on any day and without warning, I went to Sofia early Monday morning in a sweater. Turns out I didn't need it as the weather in Sofia cooperated perfectly for maybe the second time in my dozen weekend trips there. This time I was going to see a dermatologist for a yearly check-up. No worries there, I went back to Peace Corps HQ and Jeff, Kate, Ryan, and I--the Athens crew from Christmas--took a taxi to the center of town, then a windy, uncertain walk that started out for Machu Pichu (a vaguely acceptable place for Mexican food, I'm told) and wound up at Pizza Hut for dinner. It was technically Jeff's last supper in Bulgaria, since he left Bulgaria the day after and we'd all known he'd be leaving for quite a while, but there wasn't so much talking about bread and blood and all that as there was making fun of him for being a quitter. Good-natured fun of course.

By the by, Pizza Hut--and Bulgarian fast food restaurants in general--have to be talked about. The Pizza Hut we ate at was just as beautifual and well-appointed as any other Pizza Hut I've been to in Bulgaria or Greece. Meaning that the place was, by all American pizza restaurant standards, gorgeous. Wood beams streched across the ceiling and the tables and cushions were all something you'd find at a trendy franchise in America. Instead of Pizza Hut, you get the experience of the Marina Del Ray Cheesecake Factory. I'm used to Pizza Huts with sawdust on the floor and Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat making all kinds of noise off in the corner. Maybe I've just been to the wrong Pizza Huts in America.

Mickry D's is also something to talk about in Bulgaria. They're probably the nicest 5-leva-for-a-meal restaurants in the country. I've seen better in America at times (No view in Bulgaria, for example, compares to the view from the legendary McDonalds in Sitka, AK), but they're bathrooms here are always above reproach and the people behind the counter give some of the better customer service in the country. This is most likely due to the fact that they're payed better than your standard American cashier. Bulgarian McDonalds employees, as I understand it, have to be at least a little bilingual. Sometimes they even seem a little put off when I come up to them with a slow Bulgarian. Like anyone saying Mozhe li something or other might as well just be speaking English for all the good it does them. They still put up the old smile, though. So that's something.

After dinner, I dropped my backpack off at a hostel and Jeff, a Belgian guy we'd met at the hostel, and I went off to entertain ourselves with Hellboy. Not a bad movie, actually, despite the unfortunate title it inherited from its comic book source. The army captures a baby demon during World War II and raises it into a superhero. Good special effects, good directing, good acting, it all goes to show once again that entertaining movies can be made out of comic books if you get a good crew on it.

The next morning, Jeff said goodbye and Peace Corps drove him to the airport, and I took a seven hour busride back home. Still here with less than a year left and skip in my step. School's kicking up again in two weeks, and there'll be some new challenges and new faces and all the new experiences that seem to make life worth living. Fun times.