My host mom gets a talking to.

So, I live with my host mom, right? She is really nice and sweet and generous and…smothering. Everywhere we walked, she clutched my arm like I was about to make a break for freedom. One day, I’d intended to wake up early, but when my alarm clock went off, I decided I needed to sleep for another couple hours. Unfortunately, my host mother heard the alarm clock, and pounded on my door for half an hour until I got up, not unlike when my dad used to try to wake my sister up for school. Except I am 27 years old and responsible for my own decisions. Gotta say, not really a fan of this sort of protective behavior. My language trainer, Yulia, offered to talk to her for me, since she speaks no English and my Bulgarian is, to say the least, limited. But I told her not to, because I didn’t want to offend her or upset her.

Fortunately for me, Yulia took matters into her own hands, and when she had an opportunity, she gently told my host mom that “Americans don’t like to be touched so much”. And now she lets me walk around untethered! Ah, bliss!

I saw a dog killed the other day. Horrible horrible horrible. This bus slammed right into the poor doggy and its body got trapped under the wheels. The stuff of nightmares.

There’s a yard in Boboshevo that I love. It has these funny little white goats, chickens, turkeys, and one dog. I took a picture of the yard one day. A few days later, I walked past the yard with my host mother and she mimed taking a picture. Ha! I have no idea how she knew I took that picture, but that’s Boboshevo for you. Can’t do anything without people noticing.

Found out my permanent site today, incidentally – I’ll be in Pavel Vania, smack dab in the middle of the country. I go to visit on Wednesday! Exciting!

Boboshevo is dying. And I wash my underwear.

So, in case you hadn't noticed, I finally made it to Bulgaria.  I am living in Boboshevo, a small town (never call it a village!) of about 1000 people maybe 90 km SE of Sofia.  It is quaint, has gorgeous mountain views, and is dying.

The downtown area is full of boarded up shops and cafes.  There are still several magazines (the Bulgarian word for "corner store") and a couple cafes open, but most of the economy has moved away, apparently to Italy, the chosen spot for expatriate Bulgarians.  Everyone has a relative or two in Italy.  My host mother's son lives in Milan.  The larger city nearby, Dupnitsa, has lost half of its population since the end of communism, from 50,000 to 25,000.

It's very sad.  But if Bulgaria maybe develops more of a tourist industry, things will improve.  It's so scenic and quaint and cute.  
Speaking of my host mother, yesterday she provided me with some brand new nightmare filler.  I came home from school (ie, 4 hours of Bulgarian) and she started insisting we do laundry.  I told her I didn't really have enough for a load.  (We communicate through pantomime and my 50 or so words of Bulgarian.)  So she reached into my dirty laundry bag, which lives in the bathroom, and to my horror, pulled out four pairs of underwear.   She babbled about how Yulia, my Bulgarian teacher, had told her that she was supposed to teach me to wash clothes by hand.  Which is true – but we'd already done it, a few days previously.  Now we can use the washing machine!  All hail the washing machine!

But she didn't get it.  Or she chose not to.  There's nothing like trying to hand wash a pair of your underwear when you've got a toothless Bulgarian woman standing over you pointing out how it's not clean enough.  "Humiliating" is the word that comes to mind.

Me, trying to handwash a pair of underwear: This is like some kind of hellish nightmare.

Host Mother: *cackle*

Speaking of toothlessness, dentistry is apparently not high on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, because pretty much every Bulgarian over the age of 40 is in severe need of an Extreme Dental Makeover.

Monday is HUB day – my class of 40 is scattered in smaller villages and towns around Dupnitsa in groups of four or five, and we're all going to see each other for the first time in a week and a half in Dupnitsa for workshops.  I'm looking forward to a. being in a hotel for a night! b. being around the corner from an internet club, and c. seeing everyone to hear about their towns.