Last night, as I am leaving the apartment of my counterpart (who is also, incidently, my Bulgarian tutor) after a particularly rousing Bulgarian lesson (Pila li si nyakoga rakiya predi chas?/Have you ever drunk rakiya before a class?) she hollers down the stairs, "Tomorrow classes will be 30 minutes!"
"Why?" I ask, though I have generally come out of the habit of asking that question over the past five months.
"Because tomorrow is the picking of the grapes," she says.
"It's the what?" I ask, again going against my newfound reluctance towards enquiry.
"Tomorrow everyone goes out to pick the grapes for wine and rakiya," she explains. She also explains that due to all the rain, this will be a bad year for both beverages (which, I am beginning to think, are the only two things that get Bulgarians through the winter. Could be interesting...)
Eh, I say to myself as I fumble home in the pitch black (Dark by 8?! No street lights?! Whaat?!!) During my time in Bulgaria, "Eh" has become by most-used utterance.
In the morning, as I sit in the supply closet with the other teachers, one looks at me and says, (in Bulgarian) "Classes will be 20 minutes."
Okay, I think to myself. Even less time!
First period is those pesky 5th-graders...Somehow I get through unscathed (no doubt because the class was only half as long as usual). Then I have my "window" (free period), and then I walk in to set my classroom up for my 3rd period 8th grade class...
That's funny, I think as I enter the room. There's no one here. Usually there is someone around, leaning and/or throwing things out of the window, writing obscenities or my name on the board, or generally causing some sort of mischief. But, nyama.
I check the hall. Surely they must be out there bothering other teachers. Surely they are swarming somewhere in the vicinity. But, no one there either.
Where is everyone?!
A 7th grader walks by. "What hour is this?" I ask, thinking I surely must have mixed up my window period in the confusion of the shortened day.
"Third," she says, looking at me like the little pauper boy at the end of A Christmas Carol when Scrooge asks what day it is.
Hrm, I think. Indeed, this is strange.
Low and behold, two of the calmer 8th graders come by. "Where is everyone," I ask.
"They left," the girl says. "Left where?" I ask. "Home," she says. "Oh," I say. "Can we go home too?" she asks. "Well, I guess so," I reply.
So, I guess that means no class now, huh? Okay, I guess I'll print out the essays on the printer downstairs that wasn't working this morning.
Twenty minutes later I go to wait for my 4th period 6th graders. And dammit, they show.
Friday, September 30, 2005
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Nothing of Consequence
It's not that I have anything pressing to say, I just have a few odd moments and do not know how else to fill them.
The weekend after the excursion was a nice as the excursion itself. On Saturday morning I caught the 8 a.m. train west via Plovdiv (that particular train and I are quite bonded...) and arrived in Pazardjik shortly after noon to meet Ned. He was the only of my tainingmates I had not seen since swearing-in in July. Needless to say, it was a nice reunion.
The two of us took a cab into the Mahala (the Roma ghetto) to attend a fellow volunteer's Multiculture Day, the highlight of which was a concert that included Bulgarian folk songs, Roma and Indian dances, and lots of horo. Ivan was in town doing work, so he met Ned and I to make plans for Sunday. We also saw other new and old volunteers, which is always nice.
After the concert, the two of us took the bus back to Plovdiv and began a search for a hostel. We found an absolutely beautiful place in Old Town (for 20 leva a night...a tad steep for our volunteer pocketbooks) and reserved our group's 5 beds. In the process we throughly confused the woman in reception who had apparently never had to register guests with lichna kartas (Bulgarian IDs) instead of passports. But the papers were worked out, and we headed out to pick up the first of the other arrivals at the bus station. (I'm not sure if any other training group learned Plovdiv as well as we did, so we tended to lead the gang). With Matt in tow, we headed for some "awesome-for-Bulgaria" pizza and registered him at the hostel. That's when we met Martin.
Martin was the Northern Irish lad sharing our room with us, and he quickly became one of the group. When Ned and Matt went to fetch Scott and Rachel from the bus station, Martin and I found a nice jazz beer garden to chill in until we met the other 4 in the center. After more food, the lot of us happened upon a very Western-style, chilled-out bar to talk to some Bulgarians in. They were NUTS! Ranting about Macedonia and the problems in Yugoslavia...It gave our Bulgarian quite a workout. We finally left at 4:30 a.m., officially making it my latest night yet in Bulgaria. It's not something I do often, which allows me to do it at all...
The next morning I woke up early (payback, I suppose) and got as clean as I could without shower supplies...i.e. soap, shampoo or towels. At 11:30 Ned and I met Ivan at the mosque in the center and went for some salad and French fries for lunch. After that we made our way to another cafe for a nostalgic beer together and ran into the others (including Martin) so they joined us, as did one of Ivan's "real" Bulgarian friends. (I must say, it was fun to meet someone he actually chose to be friends with instead of folks he was stuck with, like us.)
However, all good times must come to an end, and by 4 p.m. I was on a train headed east again. By that time my lack of sleep hit me, and I dozed on and off on the ride. I crossed my threshold shortly after 8, and there I stayed until bed an hour later.
Yesterday and today have been more of the same as far as school goes. My counterpart translated my rules list and contract for the students, so with any luck things on the discipline front with improve. Tomorrow I have off (there are no foreign languages at my school on Wednesdays) so I will have a chance to get caught up on my housework...Paying bills, washing dishes, finishing odd projects for the Business Center in town, and planning lessons for the rest of the week. Not terribly exciting, but I enjoy a good day of catch-up once in a while.
And, I'm spent...
The weekend after the excursion was a nice as the excursion itself. On Saturday morning I caught the 8 a.m. train west via Plovdiv (that particular train and I are quite bonded...) and arrived in Pazardjik shortly after noon to meet Ned. He was the only of my tainingmates I had not seen since swearing-in in July. Needless to say, it was a nice reunion.
The two of us took a cab into the Mahala (the Roma ghetto) to attend a fellow volunteer's Multiculture Day, the highlight of which was a concert that included Bulgarian folk songs, Roma and Indian dances, and lots of horo. Ivan was in town doing work, so he met Ned and I to make plans for Sunday. We also saw other new and old volunteers, which is always nice.
After the concert, the two of us took the bus back to Plovdiv and began a search for a hostel. We found an absolutely beautiful place in Old Town (for 20 leva a night...a tad steep for our volunteer pocketbooks) and reserved our group's 5 beds. In the process we throughly confused the woman in reception who had apparently never had to register guests with lichna kartas (Bulgarian IDs) instead of passports. But the papers were worked out, and we headed out to pick up the first of the other arrivals at the bus station. (I'm not sure if any other training group learned Plovdiv as well as we did, so we tended to lead the gang). With Matt in tow, we headed for some "awesome-for-Bulgaria" pizza and registered him at the hostel. That's when we met Martin.
Martin was the Northern Irish lad sharing our room with us, and he quickly became one of the group. When Ned and Matt went to fetch Scott and Rachel from the bus station, Martin and I found a nice jazz beer garden to chill in until we met the other 4 in the center. After more food, the lot of us happened upon a very Western-style, chilled-out bar to talk to some Bulgarians in. They were NUTS! Ranting about Macedonia and the problems in Yugoslavia...It gave our Bulgarian quite a workout. We finally left at 4:30 a.m., officially making it my latest night yet in Bulgaria. It's not something I do often, which allows me to do it at all...
The next morning I woke up early (payback, I suppose) and got as clean as I could without shower supplies...i.e. soap, shampoo or towels. At 11:30 Ned and I met Ivan at the mosque in the center and went for some salad and French fries for lunch. After that we made our way to another cafe for a nostalgic beer together and ran into the others (including Martin) so they joined us, as did one of Ivan's "real" Bulgarian friends. (I must say, it was fun to meet someone he actually chose to be friends with instead of folks he was stuck with, like us.)
However, all good times must come to an end, and by 4 p.m. I was on a train headed east again. By that time my lack of sleep hit me, and I dozed on and off on the ride. I crossed my threshold shortly after 8, and there I stayed until bed an hour later.
Yesterday and today have been more of the same as far as school goes. My counterpart translated my rules list and contract for the students, so with any luck things on the discipline front with improve. Tomorrow I have off (there are no foreign languages at my school on Wednesdays) so I will have a chance to get caught up on my housework...Paying bills, washing dishes, finishing odd projects for the Business Center in town, and planning lessons for the rest of the week. Not terribly exciting, but I enjoy a good day of catch-up once in a while.
And, I'm spent...
Friday, September 23, 2005
A cold schlep north
Here is the story of the past two days.
It began with a 7 a.m. departure Wednesday, Sept. 21. The party included my counterpart Rosie, geography teacher Naska, history teacher Tanya, Tanya's twin 12-year-old boys, the driver Ivan and myself.
The weather threatened to be cold and rainy for the whole of the excursion, but at the moment it was just a moody dawn. As soon as we began our climb up the first ridge of the Balkan Mountains at Hain Boaz (the Turkish word for The Pass of the Hans) however, the moodiness began to work against us. We stopped briefly at a river called "Stinky River" vue to the sulfur in the water. It is so sulfuric, in fact, that one can light it on fire...And we did.
That task completed, we headed on towards the Kilifarevski Monastary. It was lovely, old...Once we had exhausted the views there we went to Arabanassi, a small historically-preserved village near Veliko Turnovo. There the rain was heavier in addition to busloads of German tourists, but the Nativty Church in town was one of the most intricately-painted chapels I have ever seen...There were literally thousands of paintings all over the walls. When we'd had our fill (of the German tourists, not the paintings), it was on to Veliko Turnovo itself.
The first order of business there was to pick up an inflatable mattress I was inheriting from a COSd PCV. Her boyfriend had kept the thing, and it was from him I purchased it. Once it was procured (a transaction that took all of 5 minutes and left me 20 leva poorer) Rosie, Tanya and I headed up to Tsarevets, the ancient fortress in town.
I am in no humor to try to describe to you how beautiful and interesting Veliko Turnovo is...Just go see it for yourself. I will be curious to see it in the sunshine, as it was so cool and atmospheric in the gloom.
But we had places to go...After a few hours in town, we boarded the bus and made our way to the Dryanovski Monastary. Again, beautiful, old, and surrounded by massive stone crags.
Back in the bus, off to Pleven. Search for hotel. Sleep...or try to sleep. Беше ми много студено. Wake up next morning. Coffee in the hotel. And out in the cold rain once again.
Pleven is a very important historical town not just for Bulgaria but for the word, though not many know it. It was here that the unraveling of the Ottoman Empire became fatal after a 3-month seige that pitted against the invading Bulgarian/Russian/Romanian army tried to caputre the town from the resident Turks. As such a town, there are many, many, many monuments to the war fallen. The most impressive of them was our last stop in Pleven -- the Panorama. It is, in essence, a painting, but it is so much more...I think they said 60 meters around, 15 meters high, a perfect circle with a real 3D simulation extending out the bottom towards the railing behind which gawkers stand. Again, something you just have to see.
After our look it was on to what I call "30 Minutes in Lovech," (I will have to go visit the PCV there later...) then some time at the Troyan Monastery (the third-largest in the country) and a small amount of time at some folk art exhibit nearby. Back on the bus...This time south towards Etura...an "Open Air Ethnographic Museum."
Oh, the profound cold, damp air there. I was put in mind of Scotland on a cold day in November. Profound gloom. Profound gray. The redeeming factor, however, was the warmth from the artisan shops that make up the replica 19th-century village. The stipulation for artisans to have shops there is that they must make traditional crafts in traditional manners with traditional tools. I bought a mug...My splurge for the trip (a wapping $4!). Once back in the shelter of the bus, it was on to our final destination: the Shipka Pass.
The Shipka Pass' history is linked to (and therefore just as important as) Pleven. While the seige was going on in Pleven, it was the small band of farmers from the town of Shipka who were driving back the 10,000-strong Ottoman reinforcements. It is rumored that when the farmers, who were camped in the pass, ran out of bullets, they began to throw and shoot rocks, clothing and even farm animals at the invaders. They held the pass, and because they did, reinforcements never reached Pleven and the Turks there were forced to surrender.
I was excited to see this pass...Up the mountain we climbed, up and up. It was a winding, narrow road. And as we climbed furthur and furthur, the 30-year-old microbus lurching inch by inch, a profound fog set in. By the time we reached the summit, we could not see the hood of the car. The pass, a sign read, was closed.
(I was not too dissappointed, however, as I was assured I could accompany the first graders when they make their pilgrimage there this spring...)
So, we descended. We drove out of the cloud and soon found ourselves on a ridge facing the Valley of Roses with Sredna Gora in the distance (another, smaller mountain range). Below the storm the sky was blue over the plain, and very windy. We decended into the town of Shipka and found our way to the Russian Memorial Church, another thing of beauty I will not attempt to describe. (see below photo).
And that was that. We went home. I'm sorry for being abrupt, but I have an early train to catch tomorrow and I want some shut-eye. Ciao.
It began with a 7 a.m. departure Wednesday, Sept. 21. The party included my counterpart Rosie, geography teacher Naska, history teacher Tanya, Tanya's twin 12-year-old boys, the driver Ivan and myself.
The weather threatened to be cold and rainy for the whole of the excursion, but at the moment it was just a moody dawn. As soon as we began our climb up the first ridge of the Balkan Mountains at Hain Boaz (the Turkish word for The Pass of the Hans) however, the moodiness began to work against us. We stopped briefly at a river called "Stinky River" vue to the sulfur in the water. It is so sulfuric, in fact, that one can light it on fire...And we did.
That task completed, we headed on towards the Kilifarevski Monastary. It was lovely, old...Once we had exhausted the views there we went to Arabanassi, a small historically-preserved village near Veliko Turnovo. There the rain was heavier in addition to busloads of German tourists, but the Nativty Church in town was one of the most intricately-painted chapels I have ever seen...There were literally thousands of paintings all over the walls. When we'd had our fill (of the German tourists, not the paintings), it was on to Veliko Turnovo itself.
The first order of business there was to pick up an inflatable mattress I was inheriting from a COSd PCV. Her boyfriend had kept the thing, and it was from him I purchased it. Once it was procured (a transaction that took all of 5 minutes and left me 20 leva poorer) Rosie, Tanya and I headed up to Tsarevets, the ancient fortress in town.
I am in no humor to try to describe to you how beautiful and interesting Veliko Turnovo is...Just go see it for yourself. I will be curious to see it in the sunshine, as it was so cool and atmospheric in the gloom.
But we had places to go...After a few hours in town, we boarded the bus and made our way to the Dryanovski Monastary. Again, beautiful, old, and surrounded by massive stone crags.
Back in the bus, off to Pleven. Search for hotel. Sleep...or try to sleep. Беше ми много студено. Wake up next morning. Coffee in the hotel. And out in the cold rain once again.
Pleven is a very important historical town not just for Bulgaria but for the word, though not many know it. It was here that the unraveling of the Ottoman Empire became fatal after a 3-month seige that pitted against the invading Bulgarian/Russian/Romanian army tried to caputre the town from the resident Turks. As such a town, there are many, many, many monuments to the war fallen. The most impressive of them was our last stop in Pleven -- the Panorama. It is, in essence, a painting, but it is so much more...I think they said 60 meters around, 15 meters high, a perfect circle with a real 3D simulation extending out the bottom towards the railing behind which gawkers stand. Again, something you just have to see.
After our look it was on to what I call "30 Minutes in Lovech," (I will have to go visit the PCV there later...) then some time at the Troyan Monastery (the third-largest in the country) and a small amount of time at some folk art exhibit nearby. Back on the bus...This time south towards Etura...an "Open Air Ethnographic Museum."
Oh, the profound cold, damp air there. I was put in mind of Scotland on a cold day in November. Profound gloom. Profound gray. The redeeming factor, however, was the warmth from the artisan shops that make up the replica 19th-century village. The stipulation for artisans to have shops there is that they must make traditional crafts in traditional manners with traditional tools. I bought a mug...My splurge for the trip (a wapping $4!). Once back in the shelter of the bus, it was on to our final destination: the Shipka Pass.
The Shipka Pass' history is linked to (and therefore just as important as) Pleven. While the seige was going on in Pleven, it was the small band of farmers from the town of Shipka who were driving back the 10,000-strong Ottoman reinforcements. It is rumored that when the farmers, who were camped in the pass, ran out of bullets, they began to throw and shoot rocks, clothing and even farm animals at the invaders. They held the pass, and because they did, reinforcements never reached Pleven and the Turks there were forced to surrender.
I was excited to see this pass...Up the mountain we climbed, up and up. It was a winding, narrow road. And as we climbed furthur and furthur, the 30-year-old microbus lurching inch by inch, a profound fog set in. By the time we reached the summit, we could not see the hood of the car. The pass, a sign read, was closed.
(I was not too dissappointed, however, as I was assured I could accompany the first graders when they make their pilgrimage there this spring...)
So, we descended. We drove out of the cloud and soon found ourselves on a ridge facing the Valley of Roses with Sredna Gora in the distance (another, smaller mountain range). Below the storm the sky was blue over the plain, and very windy. We decended into the town of Shipka and found our way to the Russian Memorial Church, another thing of beauty I will not attempt to describe. (see below photo).
And that was that. We went home. I'm sorry for being abrupt, but I have an early train to catch tomorrow and I want some shut-eye. Ciao.
Monday, September 19, 2005
The First Gen-U-Ine Post
The posts previous to this one have all been cut and pasted from the mass emails I've been sending to interested parties stateside since my arrival in Bulgaria in April. This one, however, is an honest-to-goodness, bona-fide post. Check back as time passes for news (some noteworthy and some less noteworthy). Лека Нощ!
Sunday, September 11, 2005
One Last Hoo-Ha
On Thurdsay school starts for real, and thus will end this summer. As most teaching volunteers will not have time to make it to Sofia during the school year, a huge amount of us made the trip this past weekend. While it was fun, I came home much more exhausted, and much poorer.
Last Wednesday we had a regional meeting in Yambol with the four of us in our region (which covers the Thracian Plain from Starra Zagora in the center of the country to the Black Sea coast, and from the Starra Planina -- the mountain range that divides the country into North and South -- to the Greek and Turkish border.) It is a huge region, and as there are only four of us we realized how isolated we really are. Kellen, the volunteer who lives right on the sea a few km. north of Turkey, got stranded and ended up staying the night at my apartment. He was my first volunteer guest, so that was nice.
Then on Thursday my counterpart took me to a meeting in Yambol that all foreign language teachers in this region have to attend. It is put on my the regional ministry of education, and was very very boring. She fell asleep, and we left about halfway through.
Friday I woke up at 3 a.m. to catch a 3:45 a.m. bus to Sofia. Rumor has it there will be an 8 a.m. bus come October, but as of now this is my only option as the train tracks in the west were very badly damaged during the floods this summer. Needless to say, I was exhausted when I arrived at 9 a.m. in the capital. I checked into my hostel, went up to the Peace Corps office, and got all kinds of goodies such as a smoke detector, a bike helmet, some cough medicine for the winter and some type of powdery goop to clean my water filter. It felt like Christmas.
In the afternoon I was met by Eric (my nearest volunteer) and two other volunteers and we ate lunch at this pretty good Indian food place. During lunch someone brought up the notion of eating dinner at Pizza Hut, and that immediately became the drive of our day. After another trip to the PC office, we went to the National Cultural Center to watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (6 leva admittance, and admittance in Plovdiv is 3 leva. Sofia is outrageously expensive for people on Bulgarian wages...) Oh, what a good movie it was. One particularly amusing incident happened when Johnny Depp made a pun on the words "heir" and "hair." We were the only people in the theater to laugh, and then we realized that the joke probably did not translate into Bulgarian. Everyone was staring at us after that. After the movie we did indeed eat Pizza Hut for dinner, and it was everything I thought it could be!
On Saturday a huge group of volunteers went to the outskirts of the city to work on the first Habitat For Humanity building project in the Balkans. It is a small apartment complex that is in its final stages. For most of the day I was relegated to leveling the rocky yards, carting away the biggest rocks and helping mix cement for the terraces. My specific task in the cement-making was carrying buckets of water around and pouring it on the ingredients as the guys mixed them up with shovels. Then I had to run a stick down the poured goop to make it smooth on top while drying. I was pretty exhausted when the day was over, but it was really cool to meet the families who will be living in the apartments. One of the little boys was my assistant, and I have never seen a kid work so hard. When we complimented him on his diligence he said, "Imam golyama rabota..." "I have big work..." which in Bulgarian means work that is personally important to someone. He was maybe 10 years old.
That night we were all too tired to do much of anything except eat dinner at the hostel with all the Aussies and Brits, and wander around aimlessly. Sunday eveyone started to head for home, but my bus was late so I took a walk to one of the big parts and happened upon an Avon rally for breast cancer awareness. I also happened upon the changing of the guard at the president's office, which I didn't even know happens...Go figure. My bus was at 3 p.m., so I made it home by 8 and crashed.
Now I am back at school helping the cleaning process. Three days to go...
Last Wednesday we had a regional meeting in Yambol with the four of us in our region (which covers the Thracian Plain from Starra Zagora in the center of the country to the Black Sea coast, and from the Starra Planina -- the mountain range that divides the country into North and South -- to the Greek and Turkish border.) It is a huge region, and as there are only four of us we realized how isolated we really are. Kellen, the volunteer who lives right on the sea a few km. north of Turkey, got stranded and ended up staying the night at my apartment. He was my first volunteer guest, so that was nice.
Then on Thursday my counterpart took me to a meeting in Yambol that all foreign language teachers in this region have to attend. It is put on my the regional ministry of education, and was very very boring. She fell asleep, and we left about halfway through.
Friday I woke up at 3 a.m. to catch a 3:45 a.m. bus to Sofia. Rumor has it there will be an 8 a.m. bus come October, but as of now this is my only option as the train tracks in the west were very badly damaged during the floods this summer. Needless to say, I was exhausted when I arrived at 9 a.m. in the capital. I checked into my hostel, went up to the Peace Corps office, and got all kinds of goodies such as a smoke detector, a bike helmet, some cough medicine for the winter and some type of powdery goop to clean my water filter. It felt like Christmas.
In the afternoon I was met by Eric (my nearest volunteer) and two other volunteers and we ate lunch at this pretty good Indian food place. During lunch someone brought up the notion of eating dinner at Pizza Hut, and that immediately became the drive of our day. After another trip to the PC office, we went to the National Cultural Center to watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (6 leva admittance, and admittance in Plovdiv is 3 leva. Sofia is outrageously expensive for people on Bulgarian wages...) Oh, what a good movie it was. One particularly amusing incident happened when Johnny Depp made a pun on the words "heir" and "hair." We were the only people in the theater to laugh, and then we realized that the joke probably did not translate into Bulgarian. Everyone was staring at us after that. After the movie we did indeed eat Pizza Hut for dinner, and it was everything I thought it could be!
On Saturday a huge group of volunteers went to the outskirts of the city to work on the first Habitat For Humanity building project in the Balkans. It is a small apartment complex that is in its final stages. For most of the day I was relegated to leveling the rocky yards, carting away the biggest rocks and helping mix cement for the terraces. My specific task in the cement-making was carrying buckets of water around and pouring it on the ingredients as the guys mixed them up with shovels. Then I had to run a stick down the poured goop to make it smooth on top while drying. I was pretty exhausted when the day was over, but it was really cool to meet the families who will be living in the apartments. One of the little boys was my assistant, and I have never seen a kid work so hard. When we complimented him on his diligence he said, "Imam golyama rabota..." "I have big work..." which in Bulgarian means work that is personally important to someone. He was maybe 10 years old.
That night we were all too tired to do much of anything except eat dinner at the hostel with all the Aussies and Brits, and wander around aimlessly. Sunday eveyone started to head for home, but my bus was late so I took a walk to one of the big parts and happened upon an Avon rally for breast cancer awareness. I also happened upon the changing of the guard at the president's office, which I didn't even know happens...Go figure. My bus was at 3 p.m., so I made it home by 8 and crashed.
Now I am back at school helping the cleaning process. Three days to go...
Monday, September 05, 2005
Bit by bit, real life begins
On Sept. 1 teachers across Bulgaria headed back to school for service days...As far as I can tell "service days" include a 5-mintue meeting at 8a.m. (or whenever the teachers and administrators decide to arrive) and then about 6 hours of drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and talking with eachother in the teacher's lounge, complete with an hour off for lunch. I don't smoke, but the coffee and the talking are fun (and quite a good workout for my Bulgarian skills.) We were supposed to clean the courtyard free of weeds Friday, but it rained and so there went that idea. Then today and tomorrow are holidays (today just because they want a holiday and tomorrow because it marks their independence from the Turkish Yoke in the 1800's). Shesti Septemvri (The Sixth of September) is one of the most important national holidays they have here, so I am looking forward to see what goes on.
As far as weather goes, I am finding that autmn is a real reward here. The air is clearer and cooler, the sun is oranger and people seem to be getting more active. I am told, however, that come winter life will stop in its tracks as Bulgarians hate the cold. But for now, everyone seems to be in better moods.
Friday night Jay, the old volunteer in Straldja, left for a few weeks in Switzerland and then he heads home from there. We had a "na gosti" (visit) Friday night for him and saw him off on his 11:30 p.m. train to Sofia. Now I am the only American in town, and I will have to answer for his absence for weeks to come I am sure (the babas are very curious...)
Yesterday I decided to take another trip to Burgas for two reasons: first, it was lovely and the train ride would not be such a miserable ordeal and second, I had to buy some books and one bookstore there has a pretty good selection of English-language novels. I bought Ivanhoe and Ethan Frome, which are decidely more classic novels than the ones I have been reading as of late. The sea was fantastic, and I could see clear to Nesebur (it is better from a distance...)
Today I met Eric from Elhovo in Sliven and we found a park with a really amazing (and brand new) swimming pool complex. Why we didn't find it two months ago when we were sweating to death and bored as crap I don't know. But at least we know about it for next summer!
I also got my schedule for this first semester. I will teach 5, 6, 7 and 9 grade. I have Wednesdays off so I can go pick up packages in Yambol (hint hint) and do grocery shopping. I also lucked through by finishing school at 11:30 Fridays so I can catch afternoon trains to weekend getaways. I was happy with that.
Other than that, I am simply looking forward to autmn. Real school starts Sept. 15, and who knows what will happen before then. I'll keep you posted.
As far as weather goes, I am finding that autmn is a real reward here. The air is clearer and cooler, the sun is oranger and people seem to be getting more active. I am told, however, that come winter life will stop in its tracks as Bulgarians hate the cold. But for now, everyone seems to be in better moods.
Friday night Jay, the old volunteer in Straldja, left for a few weeks in Switzerland and then he heads home from there. We had a "na gosti" (visit) Friday night for him and saw him off on his 11:30 p.m. train to Sofia. Now I am the only American in town, and I will have to answer for his absence for weeks to come I am sure (the babas are very curious...)
Yesterday I decided to take another trip to Burgas for two reasons: first, it was lovely and the train ride would not be such a miserable ordeal and second, I had to buy some books and one bookstore there has a pretty good selection of English-language novels. I bought Ivanhoe and Ethan Frome, which are decidely more classic novels than the ones I have been reading as of late. The sea was fantastic, and I could see clear to Nesebur (it is better from a distance...)
Today I met Eric from Elhovo in Sliven and we found a park with a really amazing (and brand new) swimming pool complex. Why we didn't find it two months ago when we were sweating to death and bored as crap I don't know. But at least we know about it for next summer!
I also got my schedule for this first semester. I will teach 5, 6, 7 and 9 grade. I have Wednesdays off so I can go pick up packages in Yambol (hint hint) and do grocery shopping. I also lucked through by finishing school at 11:30 Fridays so I can catch afternoon trains to weekend getaways. I was happy with that.
Other than that, I am simply looking forward to autmn. Real school starts Sept. 15, and who knows what will happen before then. I'll keep you posted.
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