a collection of minor oddities

Oddity 1: The Creepy Kids Who Speak Neither English Nor Bulgarian
The first time it happened was a few weeks ago...A young girl saw me walking home from school and as is normal with the local kids who I do not teach, she crossed the street to grill me. Her opening line -- "Hello. My name is."

I waited for the follow-up. There was none. So I asked, "What?"

"My name is."

What is this girl talking about? I asked her, in Bulgarian, "What's your name?"

She goes, "Yes."

Again I ask, "What's your name?"

"Yes."

WHAT IS GOING ON?! In Bulgarian I explain that what she has in fact said is, "My name is yes."

She just mildly smiles and says, "Yes."

Is she serious? Is she mocking me? She doesn't have the look of a mocker.

*skip to two days ago*

I am walking through the center and this boy, about the same age as the girl, comes up to me. "Hello," he says. I respond with a hello.

"My name is," he says.

Are you KIDDING me? I ask him, in Bulgarian, to repeat.

"My name is."

I ask him, in Bulgarian, what his name is.

"Yes," he says.

I am sick of this linguistic confusion. I ask him, one more time, in Bulgarian, what his name is.

"Stoyan," he tells me. FINALLY, we are getting somewhere.

In very deliberate English I ask, "How are you?"

"Yes yes, Stoyan," he says.

I slowly walk away....


Oddity 2: A Bundle of My Pending Doom
My cat is trying to kill me. And I'm not even joking.

The other night I was hanging in the nice middle-consciousness of the last few moments before a deep sleep. My legs were slightly bent into two knobby mounds under my blanket.

Suddenly, without any sound or other warning, I feel more than see a black ball flying through the darkness, over the mounds of my knees directly towards my face. Before I have a chance to move, a furry belly has landed square on my nose, claws peircing my scalp and the skin below my earlobes, and immediately a motor-like purring commences.

Curious to see what she intends to do now, and trying to make my heart start beating again, I leave her to sit on my face. She sits there a full three minutes before I simply can not stand any more and throw her off of the bed.

Since this incident, she has taken to sleeping on the top of the heater, where it is warm. Last night she layed there for a full three hours, never turning over to warm the other side of her belly. So long as she doesn't cook herself (which, I fear, she is dumb enough to actually do), I'm okay with it.


Oddity 3: My Percieved Superpowers
I have been asked to take on a number of very strange and, frankly, miraculous tasks by the Bulgarians of this town. Apparently, I am an American, which also means I'm MAGIC.

Among these random tasks are finding medicine that isn't available in Europe for my assistant director's daughter, helping the Business Center in town convert their online payment system (me work with computers? you crazy!), finding buyers for my counterpart's husband's partially-finished house in town, and helping another teacher find a job in Rochester.

I understand that as an American, I have more opportunites to do some of these things. And I will try my hardest to fulfill, or at least aid in, most of these situations. But really, I have never had anyone put as much faith in me as these people do. It's pretty intense.


Oddity 4: The Car-Cart
It has finally happened. I have finally seen a donkey-drawn cart towing a car behind it. It was everything I could have hoped it would be.


And I know there were other oddities, but I seem to have forgotten them at the moment. Check back for more.