Farewell, Old Friend

This is the official retirement of "so there I was..." It was a good blog. It did what I asked of it, even though I neglected it. It contains so much of the last two years, but at the same time lacks so much. It was there when I was frustrated, happy, bored, amused and verbose. Sometimes even angry. Sometimes even happy.

But one month from today, I will be eating hot dogs and drinking root beer and watching fireworks for the first time in two years. I will be jet lagged (I fly home July 3), but home.

I can't say these two years went by quickly. Perhaps, once I am home and the tiny details of my time in Bulgaria are blurred together in the stories I will tell over and over, it will seem like a blip. But sitting here, in this apartment, looking at my last month of service fill up with good-byes and final grades and last-minute trips, it seems like I have been here forever. I was 22 when I stepped off that plane, and now I am 25. That, dear friends, is no small chunk of time.

I am daunted by the prospect of starting over, again. I am daunted about trying to find a real job and move to a more permanent home (at least home-city) and set up a life. But I am ready to do it. I am ready to jump into the unknown again. I came to Bulgaria for the challenge, and I have taken all I can from it. I, in short, am burned out. Burned out, burned out, burned out.

For the past few weeks, I have been overwhelmed with moments where I want to be sitting on a plane, and moments when I just want to live this lifestyle forever. I want to leave, but I don't want to leave. I like being a foreigner, but I don't like being a foreigner. I like my solitude and freedom, but I miss living with people and having more constraints. I am so utterly ambivalent towards this month that I can hardly stand it.

So with this ambivalence, let me relate my one certain truth. This is my goodbye. I am signing off. It was good knowing you, and may this honest, rambling, sporadic and gap-filled blog represent my time in Bulgaria, out there in cyberspace, for years to come.

Crisis in Crimea and the Good Friday Miracle

So, we recently had our spring break (which for my group is the last time we can really leave the country without a work excuse). I took the chance to go visit a friend, Sarah, in Ukraine. She had been a volunteer in my group but went home in the spring of last year and found a job teaching English in Kiev. We like to consider ourselves travel warriors, and I think we earned our stripes on this trip...

I arrived on Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon we caught a train from Kiev to Sevastopol, Crimea. The train ride was 19 hours, made better only by the fact we had beds in a 4-person compartment complete with sheets and tea service. We got to Crimea early Monday morning, found a hotel, and deposited our stuff before heading out to find a bus to Balaklava, a little town near Sevastopol that has an old Soviet nuclear submarine factory hidden in surrounding caves. It was while trying to find a boatride over to this factory that I realized I no longer had my wallet. Someone had stolen it, and with it $200 in Ukrainian grivna, my Bulgarian ID card, my Peace Corps ID card, our return train tickets, my only American debit card and credit card, my Bulgarian bank card, my return flight info, and most fatally, my passport. I had no money, no identification documents. Plus, in Ukraine, you need a passport to even by a train ticket, and I was as far from the American Embassy as one could be in Ukraine. In short, I was screwed.

Luckily I had Sarah, who had money and a Russian dictionary. We hightailed it back to Sevastopol, back to our hotel, and I emailed everyone in the PC Bulgaria office I could think of with my hotel phone number. Within half an hour, Sergei (the Safety Director of PC Ukraine) was on the line, arranging for me to meet with two volunteers in Sevastopol to go to the police station and report the crime. They were very new volunteers and barely knew Russian, but between my Bulgarian and amazing charades ability, we managed to get the job done and I was able to use the document to buy a train ticket for the next night.

Determined to enjoy Crimea while we were there, we spent the next day wandering Sevastopol, a wicked cool city with CRAZY Soviet military memorials (there is still a fleet of Russian Navy stationed there). Sarah and I are both avid lovers of Soviet military art, so we were in heaven. As evening rolled in, we caught our second 19-hour train ride in two days and headed back to Kiev to deal with "the situation."

When we got home the following afternoon, I had an email from Sergei...All it said was, "Your documents seem to be found. Call me immediately." After a small freak out, I called him and he told me to come to PC Ukraine office to discuss it. Once there, he explained that someone had called the American Embassy to report that he had found my passport, but he "seemed reluctant to hand it over to the police" in Crimea. According to Sergei, this guy wanted a bribe, which is against PC policy. He said that we would just have to try and convince the guy to go to the police and hand in the wallet. He set me up an appointment at the embassy on Friday (this was Wednesday), and told me to sit tight until then. Meanwhile, the president disbanded the parliment and there were protests everywhere, so we were told to keep a low profile and stay away from crowds.

Also, mom and dad managed to Western Union me some money, so that made me happy.

So, Sarah and I took in the sites of Kiev. There are some amazingly beautiful churches, as well as amazingly hideous statues of dead people. The most stunning statue sits on top of the "Museum of the Great Patriotic War (WWII)" and is called "Rodina Mat" (Motherland). She is sort of the Soviet Statue of Liberty, only she's tin, muscular like a bodybuilder, holding a shield with a hammer and sickle in one hand and a sword in the other, and is just hideous. We also went to this monastery where a bunch of monks lived in caves and died there and now they are put in glass coffins lining the walls of the cave...Tourism in Ukraine truly is bizzare.

On Friday morning I prepared myself to get a new passport...I had photos taken, I put $100 in my wallet, and we headed to the PC office. Serei wasn't there, but "my case" as they called it, had been handed to his assistant, Andrei. Andrei came out with the news that the man in Crimea who had my wallet was in fact a border guard, and since there is some sort of hostility between border guards and the regular Crimean police, he refused to hand my wallet over to them. He wanted to use "his channels." He said he had given my wallet to a colleague who was leaving for Kiev, and that it would be waiting at the embassy for me by 9am. We called the embassy, but no wallet. Andrei sent Sarah and I to the lounge to wait, and we waited.

At 1pm, precisely one hour before my appointment at the embassy, Andrei came to find us. The wallet was at the Borisopol airport outside of Kiev. In a PC van, Sarah and I made our way out to the airport, met with a security guard, and retrieved my debit and credit cards, my Bulgarian and PC IDs, my return flight info, and most importantly, my passport. This was Good Friday, and I call it my Good Friday miracle.

That night we met with some friends and celebrated. On Saturday we went to Chernobyl, which I might write about at some later date. For now, I would like to close saying when you travel in Ukraine, WATCH YOUR BACK.

Thracian Kukeri

Ahhhh, Thracian Kukeri. If I was an evil spirit, however, I don't think I'd be scared...

Kukeri Backside

The backs of my Kukeri...These bells, by the way, are LOUD.

Contrary to popular belief, I am alive

I am so off on writing...I haven't written a Dover Post article in ages...I haven't written a blog since January. Part of this is because I am lazy. Part of it is that life doesn't seem so exotic as it did last year. Part of it is that senioritis has set in, and we are encouraged not to be negative about Bulgaria in public forums...But whatever the reason, this blog has been dying a slow death.

I can't promise a vitally healthy blog anymore, but I will try to include sum-ups of my last few months in the Balkans.

Since I last wrote I have had two visitors (training-mate Ethan and fellow Doverite Monica), gone to Istanbul, watched my town's Kukeri and bided my time at school. In short, have guests was fun, Istanbul restored my faith in the Balkans, Kukeri was amusing as always and school has gotten progressively less good. I have had to call my director in the middle of class on my cell phone to have her remove a student, another student and his mom almost killed another boy during a spectacular fight including a car (note: the guilty boy is still at school), no student has gotten above a 50% on any test I have given even though they get the test a week in advance, two boys almost broke my laptop sitting on my desk while I was walking around the classroom to check homework, and the level of whining and lying and cheating has hit fever pitch. I am soooooo ready not to be teaching anymore.

On the good side, the weather has been very nice, we had a couple of really fun holidays (including Baba Marta -- my favorite Bulgarian holiday), I have acquired 4 new pairs of knitted baba socks, I have a lot of fun plans that should make the next few months fly by if my wallet can handle it, and I have finally found Heinz ketchup in Sliven. All I have to say about the last part is IT'S ABOUT TIME!

So that's the update for now. Don't know when I'll update again. Until then, happy trails to you.

The Cat Came Back

Well, she didn't so much "come back" as "I found her!"

I was sitting in my chair when I heard an unhappy meow from the ground 3 stories below my balcony. I decided it had to be Zaeka...

I grabbed a flashlight and a can of tuna and proceeded to lean in all of the open windows along the back of the basement dripping in tuna water. In the window directly below my downstairs neighbors, I heard a thumping in a pile of broken down boxes. I called her name, and heard the slighest meow.

After dripping some tuna water around the pile, I heard the creature working her way towards me...When she popped her head out I instantly knew it was her. It was Zaeka's adorable little head peeping out at me!

She was still pretty spooked, so I put the tuna in a place where she'd have to climb out a bit, then I literally grabbed her by the neck and manhandled her until I got her into the apartment. (Actually she recognized the door and immediately started bawling.)

When I put her down inside the door she meowed loudly at everything, as if saying hello to it after a long absence. Tail piqued, ears back, she slowly remembered the more comfortable, safe life she had lead with me.

For fear of a flea infenstation, I gave her a bath right after I fed her. That was where this photo was from. As you can tell, she was none to happy (and very cold afterwards), but now she's adjusting.

So, she's back. Yay.

Requiem for a Cat

Zaeka (my cat, my companion, my headache and my main object of conversation) has disappeared. She bolted from me out of fear on Sunday during our "Get Zaeka Adjusted to Outdoors" romp, and the last I saw her she popped through a broken window into my building's basement. Where could she have gone, you ask? God only knows.

The search for Zaeka began immediately...I put food at the two places she could have entered or exited the basement. A neighbor who has the key to the basement opened the gate to let me walk around for a while. I called for her and psssted for her and got no response. The next day at school I had a collegue make a little advertisement for me to put on the building's doors. And I played the waiting game.

The search has had it's lighthearted moments. Tuesday afternoon a little boy from fourth grade rang my doorbell after school and shouted they had found her by the place where I had last seen her. I followed him with flashlights and some food and found a crowd of fourth and fifth graders huddled around the door trying to block her in. But when I decended the stairs and crouched in the corner where they had seen her run, I found nothing.

When I went back outside, I found a pack of ferral cats who all look exactly like Zaeka...I assume it was one of them that the kids saw. I was sorry to disappoint them so.

Everytime I go out, I walk by that broken window and call in to her. I wander the back of the building where she could have escaped through another open window...I'm sure the neighbors think I'm crazy. But they all ask about her, if I've found her. One couldn't ask for more friendly people.

But as it looks like she might be really lost...and I mean GONE...I will send this out into the world as a bit of a reverie for her.

She was a cat named "Rabbit." She liked sunny spots and the small of my back when I laid in bed, her pink nylon cube mom and dad sent from the States, licking everything, climbing the curtains, pooping when I had just cleaned the litterbox, sleeping on my radiator in the winter, and chirping at flies and other intruders.

She sighed when she settled...a deep, contented sigh. She ate very slowly. She put her ears back to hunt me. She wasn't scared to bite. She wasn't scared to scratch. When she was really pissed, she even spat.

She was not a gentle cat, but she was spunky. She was pretty, and I'm very sure she knew it. Wherever she is, I hope she overcame her fear of outdoors and is having fun hunting for real.

Goodbye, Zaeka. I hope all is well.

More Sliven

Again, the view from the Sliven lift.

Isn't it lovely?

Here is the view coming down the lift in Sliven. My god it was cold.

One-Hundreth Post! HOOPLA!!

So my folks came to spend Christmas and New Years with me in Bulgarland. Aside from a few catastrophes, it was a good time. We schelped up and down the country, almost slid off of icy mountains, went na gosti to eat freshly-killed pigs, watched men in goathair dance around driving out bad spirits, slept with earplugs. Crazy.

While we were gone, I had my elderly neighbor stop in to feed and love on the cat a bit. I told her the catfood was in the fridge. I figured she'd run out, so I stocked up on some kremvish...

When I returned home, I saw three brown chunks of something sitting in her food dish. at first glance, I took them to be...feces. There was another blob on the floor, and with trepidation I approached it to discern what it actually was.

As I got closer, I caught wiff of mint. What the...?

Then it hit me. It was my Aunt Dori's fudge.

My Aunt Dori had sent along a tin of her chocolate-mint fudge with my folks for us to eat on Christmas. I had left the tin on the TOP of the fridge, and when the food ran out I guess Stoika thought it was cat food. FUDGE! CAT FOOD!

I got a good laugh about it, cut up some kremvish and watched Zaeka gobble down food she could actually eat.

The next morning I was woken by the sound of keys jingling in my door. I stumbled out of bed and opened the door to find Stoika trying to come in with a pan of banitsa (a Bulgarian pastry with cheese). She had made the banitsa for the cat, since there was no more food.

BANITSA! FUDGE! What do they FEED Bulgarian cats?!

Anyway, all's back to normal now. Zaeka's taken to sleeping on my back at night, and on the heater during the day. All's well with the world.

Aaaaand that was my feeble attempt to force myself to write. Happy 100th Blog. Check ya later.