Stuff about Bulgaria.

Bulgarians believe that drafts from open windows carry sicknesses that will kill them.  So they like to keep windows closed.

They similarly believe that cold pavement will make you ill.  So when I sat on a cold stone step at a restaurant (I had escaped outside to get some fresh, non-nicotiney air), my host sister ran out to drag me back in, as the stone would make me sick.  Of course.

Going out without socks or wet hair will definitely make you ill.  Even if it's 85 degrees and you have Bulgarian class in 10 minutes and your hair will dry on the way.

Don't give people even numbers of flowers in a bouquet.  Odd numbers only.

Rakia (home-brewed whiskey) will cure all ills.

Bulgaria was part of the Ottoman Empire for 500 years, and although the Turkish Yoke ended in the 1700s, they're still very bitter and angry about it.  Consequently, Bulgarians don't like Turkey.

Or Greece.  Because the Turks allowed the Greeks to prosletyze Greek Orthodoxy under the Turkish Yoke.

Bulgarians aren't too fond of Romanians, either.  Not clear on why.

Marla.

I’ve been in country for six weeks so far, and sometimes it’s been hard, you know. At my low moments, I wonder if I really made the right decision, if maybe I shouldn’t just call up Sofia and ask for that return ticket home. That’s when I think of Marla.

I studied in Jerusalem in 1998-1999, during my junior year of college. I was there through the University of California’s Education Abroad Program, and all of us UC kids got to know each other pretty well. We made up something like a fourth of the entire program. (We were ubiquitous to the point that in official class lists, students were classified as “year-long students”, “single semester students” or “UC”.) One of the other UC students was Marla Bennett. I’d hesitate to really call Marla a friend, but I definitely liked her. We just never had any classes together, she went to Berkeley and I was at Santa Cruz, we simply never became close, but I liked her. She was a nice person, just good. This is Marla: in the spring of 1999, a whole bunch of us went on a school organized hiking trip in the Galilee for a few days. At one point, I was really tired, and sat down to take a breather. My tired and sweaty classmates all passed me by without a word. Except Marla. She stopped when she saw me. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Yeah,” I told her. “Just taking a moment to catch my breath.” “You’re sure you’re fine?” I assured her I was, and satisfied, she went on.

That was the sort of person she was, just really thoughtful of everyone. I know that she did volunteer work with Ethiopian immigrants, and she helped out with the crew for our Hillel production of Les Miserables. You can Google her name and read a hundred articles about her myriad kindnesses. But, like I said, we weren’t close and after we returned to the US, we didn’t keep in touch. So I didn’t know that after she graduated from college, she went back to Jerusalem to do her master’s degree in Jewish Studies. She was just finishing up her degree program when she was killed by a suicide bomber in the cafeteria at Hebrew University. July 31, 2002. She was twenty-four years old. She was working On August 1, I was reading the news on the internet in my stupid temp job in Ann Arbor when I saw the news. I took a break and sat outside on the lawn and cried and cried and cried.

So, when my spirit is low, I remember that Marla isn’t here, and I feel renewed in my commitment to do be a positive force in the world. The world is worse for her absense, and it’s up to the rest of us to pick up the slack.

Bulgarski ezik.

Sometimes, I think the Bulgarian language is a really, really, really elaborate joke someone is playing on us poor trainees.

We discuss communism.

Last week as part of our “community skills” studying, we had to have a community meeting about Bulgaria’s communist past. As a disclaimer, we only were able to get our own family members to come, they were all older women, and were all from Boboshevo. So it wasn’t a very diverse background.

We heard some pretty contradictory stuff. At first, they all said that life was better with communism. They had no fear of the next day, they all had enough money, life was good. But upon further discussion, they told us that Boboshevo had been used for tobacco production at the time. Harvesting tobacco is dirty and arduous, and they weren’t well-compensated for their work, considering how difficult it was. But at least they knew they would have a job. They knew they would get pensions when they were old. They didn’t have worry about paying for hospital visits. They didn’t like the censorship, but these are ordinary small town folk. They didn’t have a lot to complain about, anyway.

With democracy, all of this has changed. My host mother receives a pension from the government: 100 leva (~US$65) a month. Things are cheaper here in Bulgaria than the US, but not that much. One of the other host moms has no income. She was a nurse, was laid off, and no one will hire her because she’s too old – but she’s not old enough to receive a pension. She lives on the charity of her children. I don’t know what people who don’t have children do.

We asked them if they would prefer to return to communism. They accurately answered that it would be impossible, and any way, they don’t want to. They want the democracy that they have to work better. Bulgaria has hundreds of political parties, and since democracy arrived, no one party has held power for more than one term. Everyone at different levels of government is a member of different parties, and they seem to be incapable of working together. They argue and argue and nothing gets done, and then the next election comes along and a new party is elected in, and the cycle begins again.

I don’t know.

Tarator.

Is it hot where you are? It’s been broiling here in Bulgaria. Here’s a nice easy traditional Bulgarian recipe for a hot day.

You will need:

one container of plain yogurt
one cucumber
a couple green onions
some garlic, if you like
dill, fresh if possible
salt

Pour the container of yogurt into a bowl. Fill the empty container with water, and pour it into the bowl as well. Mix it up. Grate the cucumber with a cheese grater and add the shreds to the bowl. Chop your green onions finely, and add them. Season with garlic, dill, and a pinch of salt. Mix up, and you have tarator, a delicious cold soup, great for cooling down.

Pavel Banya

I’ve just come back from visiting Pavel Banya, my permanent site. It’s a very small town, about 3100 people, right in the center of Bulgaria, in what’s called the Rose Valley. It’s known for its mineral hot springs, which supposedly have some kind of healing properties. There are, I think six or seven public swimming pools, all naturally heated. Though the land is mostly flat in the town, the Stara Planina (Old Mountains) sit along the northern horizon. Very pretty. There’s a large public park along the edge of town, about two blocks from my future apartment. Kazanluck, population ~70,000 is about twenty minutes away, and there are a couple volunteers working there.

Despite its small size, Pavel Banya is a pretty bustling place, with ten or so restaurants and cafes. There’s a toy store, a few clothing shops, and a yarn shop! Yesterday after school, I sat on a bench and watched the kids play in the park. Very nice.

As for school, I don’t know. My counterpart (the Bulgarian English teacher I’ll be working with) seems very nice, but she doesn’t really speak that much English. She works directly from the book because she pretty much has to – she doesn’t have the resources to improvise or do more interesting lessons. I wanted to teach the second graders a song, and she told me “There aren’t any songs in this lesson”. Well, of course not! The lesson is entirely from an insipid textbook! But I know lots of songs and games that could make learning more fun! She told me that the kids don’t remember things from one lesson to another, and honestly, I can see why; the teacher isn’t able to make English interesting or memorable at all. It’s not really her fault – every English teacher I’ve met so far in Bulgaria is at about her level of fluency. Her English is about as good as my Spanish, basically. She can hold a simple conversation, but anything complex is impossible, and she can’t understand me at all when I speak at normal speed. (I read a text to the fifth graders yesterday and had to read it absurdly slowly for them to understand at all. Even at a normally slow speed with careful enunciation was too fast. Good luck trying to get a native English speaker talk like that outside of a classroom.) I want to introduce new, more fun ideas into the classroom. I hope my counterpart isn’t too averse to that.

My apartment is…not really ready to live in. It doesn’t have plumbing yet, but they assure me it’ll be finished by July 1. So I had to use the Turkish toilet. Ewwww. Not a fan. I think it’ll be nice when it’s finished though, and it’s very close to everything.

Oh, my school has both a primary and high school in it. I sat in on the eleventh grade English class, and I have to say, am so glad I’m a primary teacher! The high school English teacher (who doesn’t speak any better English than my counterpart) didn’t even attempt to control them. They seemed like good kids, but didn’t pay her any attention at all, even making phone calls in class! To my horror, she described the ethnic background of her students to me right there! At least now I know there’s an ethnic Turkish village nearby Pavel Banya.

At the moment, I’m in Dupnitsa. I took a bus from Pavel Banya to Sofia this morning, then another bus that stopped here en route to Blagoevgrad – the bus driver basically let me off on the side of the highway, yikes! But I made my way to the Peace Corps office, where I found mail waiting for me! Yay! Thanks, mom and dad! Then I hit the internet club, so I could write this while it was still fresh in my head.

Will update again when I can.

The Peace Corps is a government agency.

In case you’ve forgotten.

I have to say, the bureacracy thing…not my favorite. I’m at hub right now, and I pretty much hate it. See, my “class”, B[ulgaria]19 has 39 people. (Down from 41.) During training, we’re in small groups in towns and villages surrounding Dupnitsa, our “hub site”. There are five of us in Boboshevo, which is about 20 minutes south of Dupnitsa. Every two weeks, B19 gets together for a couple days of meetings and training sessions. The best part is the technical training, ie, discussing teaching methods and ideas. It’s really useful, and Angelina, the trainer, is very good. Most everything else is a waste of time.

They treat us like kids. The unfortunate thing is, there’s a reason for this: Peace Corps Bulgaria has gotten in a lot of trouble. Maybe if we were in Africa or the jungles of South America, it wouldn’t be like this, but Bulgaria is a pretty posh location, by Peace Corps standards. There are lots of bars and discos and many, many opportunities to do stupid things that will get you sent home. I understand that 16 people got sent home last year, 8 in one fell swoop. The ambassador got on the PC director’s case, and now we have to be on best behavior. So, I am annoyed at the Peace Corps for making us sit through these lectures that treat us like children (and I told them so in my feedback form), and I am annoyed at the people who screwed up and got everyone put under close scrutiny.

It’s frustrating, and I’m pretty sure this babying was the prime reason the two people who’ve already quit did so. Personally, I think they made the wrong decision, though. I’m really loving the teaching – which is what we’re here for – and am excited to get started at my permanent site. I wish they had stuck with it longer, given it more of a chance. I think (hope) when we get to our permanent sites, the Big Brother act will relax. This really is an amazing opportunity.

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. 

My new life in Bulgaria!

Recently, I told my friend Joscelyn that I was born during water rationing in California, that my parents had to save the bathwater and pour it into the toilet to get it to flush. She asked me “would that really work?” I told her I guessed it would, I’d never actually tried it myself.

Well, Jos, I can now assure you from my personal experience, yes, it works.