The Norwegian Dental Hygenist and other tales

*to the tune of I'm So Pretty* I'm so sleepy. Oh so sleepy. I feel sleepy, and dirty, and poor.

That's because Becca has moved to Sofia for the week -- the pocket-emptying, dirt-ifying, sleepless, soul-sucking grad to the east. But, they have Pizza Hut, so it's not ALL bad.

I arrived Monday on the famous 3:45 a.m. bus from Straldja. As always, I felt only half-alive by the time I arrived, but the sight of some of my fellow B17s lifted my spirits. The mood in the rest of the office, however, was quite somber as a particular set of volunteers took care of their final business before going home. That's all I'll say about that.

Those of us in town for the Resource Volunteer meeting crowded into the small Primary TEFL office, and had our small training on our responsibilities. (We will be visiting the new kids arriving Monday at their training sites to offer deep insight and set a noble example.) They've picked a good group of us to do it, I think. Then again, we 17s really rock the whole of PC Bulgaria.

Once the meeting was finished I went downtown to check into Hostel Mostel, my home for the week. As soon as I had laid down my load, I managed to find my way to a Subway in this food-courty thing. A SUBWAY. I could hardly believe it. Mmmm, meatballs... I passed the evening with Sarah, who has decided to go home (she made her mind up Monday afternoon). We managed to find our way to the National Palace of Culture to see Brokeback Mountain. (A two-second review: Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams have never been better. I still hate Anne Hathaway. The photography was stunning.)

In an effort to pace my spending, I called it an early night and went "home" to sleep.

So Tuesday. Tuesday was a bonus Day of Nothing. I had no real business, but Dora and Chavdawg agreed it was stoopid to make me go home Monday night, teach Tuesday, then come BACK Wednesday morning at 3:45. Since I had no business, I didn't go near the office. In fact, I didn't go much of anywhere. Sarah came to the hostel and we went out to eat, and then we took a walk through some random park with random communist art. I loves me some communist art. We took photos, chatted with some kiddos, and generally passed the time until she had to take a night train to her town to pack up.

Then it was Wednesday. Ahhh, Wednesday. I had my mid-service physical in the morning, so I got up and headed to the office. Andrea poked and prodded me and told me I wasn't dying so far as she could tell. She also told me that Elena, another 17, would be moving from the hospital (where she had had her appendix removed) to the sick bay in the office.

Since it is odd to sleep alone in the locked office, it was arranged that I would sleep with her on the extra mattress. I went back to the hostel, packed a small bag, and headed down to my dentist appointment.

The Peace Corps has no dentist here in Bulgaria so they send us to this Swedish dude. His office, interestingly enough, is located in a converted guest room in a 5-star hotel. Mr. Swedish Dentist happened to be on vacation this week, so I was handled my Mrs. Norwegian Hygenist.

Mrs. Norwegian Hygenist was typical Norwegian...Blonde. Blue eyed. Fair skinned. And she pronounced it "tar-TAR." I have never had a Scandanavian dental exam before, and I assume you never have either. So let me walk you through it. I was given little plastic booties to put over my shoes when I entered. I was put in the chair and the fast-talking hygenist took my X-rays. Then she took a lazer gun and blasted each of my teeth to remove the tar-TAR. I had extra tar-TAR on the teeth under my tounge, which was extra uncomfortable to remove. Once the lazer gun had done its business, she took the siver hooky thing and scraped each of my teeth to remove even more tar-TAR. My sensitive canines were a'wailing, which exist because I brush too hard (or so says Mrs. Norwegian Hygenist). The next step, however, took the cake. Mrs. Norwegian Hygenist whipped out a goggles/mask jobby and told me that she would, and I quote, "Blaaast [my] teet wit a so-LU-tion of sALT, LEmon, and WWWAter." She told me to keep my eyes closed, and smathered my lips with, I swear to god, body lotion. She proceed to blaaast my teet with this machine that almost drove me mad right there in the chair. Between the air, the coldness, the wetness, and the sheer power, my gums got crazy angry.

When it was all over I rinsed like I've never rinsed before, and realized my face felt like it had been at the beach, unwashed, for upwards of a week. My teeth, on the other hand, felt baby smooth. Once I had wiped a sufficient amount of salt from my face, I caught a cab and went back to the office to hunker down with Elena. And when I say hunker down, I mean it. It was the most secure night of sleep I have ever had, complete with two guards, an electric iron fense and a giant bomb-proof door.

It is a surreal sensation to wake up in an office where people are arriving for work. It seems so...backwards. In any event, I washed up and bit and bummed in the basement lounge until we began our Volunteer Support Network training.

For the afternoon we got to act out volunteers with problems and practice being good listeners. It was really easy to act out volunteers with problems seeing as we'd been in most of the situations ourselves.

Once our training was finished we went en masse to Hostel Mostel which by this time was packed to the gills. I escaped the crowd by meeting my Bulgarian friend, Ivcho, for dinner.

Friday was more of the same. Back to training...and I caught the 5:30 p.m. bus home.

Write more later...

(this blog was written bit by bit from Tuesday until today, the following Monday.)