I’ve been listening to a CD my friend Jessica sent me last year over and over again. I love the CD and all the songs on it, but we have both acknowledged that this CD contains some of THE SCHMALTZIEST songs of all time. And I have gotten to thinking: What exactly is the all time cheesiest song? I thought I would enlist the help of the internet to figure it out. The choices:
“High Enough” – Damn Yankees
“Sometimes When We Touch” – Dan Hill
“I Want to Know What Love Is” – Foreigner
“I Can’t Fight this Feeling” – REO Speedwagon
Feel free to write in a candidate…
The polling booths will close in a week.
26 January 2007
23 January 2007
truth, justice, and the american way or andy almost snaps
I have been thinking of punishment a lot lately. In particular, I have been thinking about how my school hasn’t any. Of course there are some so-called things that pass as punishment in our school but they have no substance and if the kids ever found out, we would have full out anarchy in our school. How can this be you ask? Simple: it’s a product of population mathematics.
Schools, whether in America, Britain, Timbuktu or Bobov dol, run on an economy of attendance. You attend school, study hard, pass tests and move on to the next grade. After repeating this cycle 12 or so times, you graduate -you are certified- and you go out into “the real world” and either get a job or enter college to repeat the cycle. If you fail any of the prerequisites for completing a step (not attending, not studying, not passing tests), you have to spend another year attempting to complete the step or you get removed from school. If you are removed from school, you lose your chance at certification, you don’t get a job and you end up mooching off your parents for the rest of your life. In order to maintain a conducive learning environment, schools also threaten expulsion if you do not behave in the school. It’s a simple economic system really; if you want to “buy” certification, you have to “pay” with effort in the form of good behavior and studying.
The problem is, here in Bobov dol, this system has broken down because they have taken away the granddaddy of punishments: expulsion. Whether you like to admit it or not, our education system ultimately comes down to this threat: “Do this or you will fail!” Like many schools in Bulgaria, ours can no longer say this because we don’t have enough students. Due to population decline, if we kick out any more students, we will not have enough students to continue the grade. That means that we wouldn’t have enough hours for teachers and we they would lose their jobs. Without the threat of expulsion, there is little you can do to motivate a student.
It goes something like this:
Me: “You were late today. Please come on time tomorrow.”
Student: “Why?”
Me: “Because you are missing material in class.”
Student: “So?”
Me: “You will not learn the material.”
Student: “So?”
Me: “You will do badly on the test.”
Student: “So?”
And that’s where the next logical answer is “You will fail.” Most logical thinking students would at least have reason here to pause and consider the weight of this punishment. Unfortunately here the next answer is “…” NOTHING! There is nothing more I can do beyond this step. They got me! This kind of dialogue is repeated daily on everything from skipping classes, not doing homework, kicking our brand new whiteboards (happened today…) to fighting in class and cheating on tests.
Maybe I am an unimaginative teacher but if you take away the ultimate punishment, how can you motivate students to learn the modal verbs and past perfect continuous tense?
Something I have realized lately is that punishment is a form of love. No, seriously. As much as the kid in me tries to convince me otherwise, punishment is an act of love. I am not taking here about cruelty or revenge or sadism. I mean punishment as a part of justice. When you, as an individual or society, stand up and punish someone who commits a crime, you are showing that you care about the future and want it to be better. You are loving the person who was wronged; you are restoring their faith that someone cares about them and their live. When you punish the aggressor, you are loving them by making them aware of their error and hopefully dissuading them from doing it again. I was reading the Letter of Paul to the Romans the other day and was struck by Paul’s words. He talks about the punishment of the idolators and Israel and how God’s wrath was an act of love. Justice is obviously a virtue, it is even one of the 4 Cardinal Virtues of the Roman Catholic Church (Bonus points: Anyone know the other 3?). But Justice cannot exist if Punishment does not flow into and from it. There can be no Justice if injustice is not punished and Justice is corrupted if Punishment is unjust. I had never thought of it that way but it makes perfect sense.
If this is hard to imagine think of a small child. Say the small child steals a candy bar from a store. You as the parent find out later that day. You have two options. You can pretend you didn’t see it and do nothing, or you can punish the child and make him take the bar back to the store and have him apologize. Of course the second option is embarrassing, awkward and painful for both you and the child, but it is an act of love. You are teaching the child that stealing is not okay. They will learn that they should not steal and hopefully grow up to be a more moral person. The storeowner is reassured that people care about him and his business. Society as a whole benefits because the child will grow up into someone who appreciates justice and the storeowner will continue to believe in justice.
I think a society that has lost the capacity for love would first stop punishing people. They would not even have enough love for each other to say that pain and hate will not be accepted in the community. They would not care enough about the future to stop problems before they balloon out of control. Unfortunately I see that in my school. Kids fight in the halls between classes and teachers do nothing. Students skip classes by smoking in the cafeteria and teachers say nothing. Today, in my 12th grade class, a kid kicked one of our brand new whiteboards. The class is divided into two groups and he is in the other group. As he was getting up to go to the other classroom he, for no apparent reason at all, kicked the board. He walked out and I chased him down. There were two other teachers who saw him do it. One teacher came out and followed me. When I caught the kid I grabbed him by the arm and started yelling at him and came dangerously close to throwing him up against the wall and literally choking him. I was surprised at how close I was. I was trying to say something to him in Bulgarian but nothing came out. I was hoping one of the other three teachers (an extra one was in the hallway) would do something, but they did nothing. Nothing. I was so shocked and dismayed that I have been bummed all day. Could this town be so gone that it doesn’t even have the concept of Justice and Punishment, basic ingredients of love? I pray to God that it isn’t.
Schools, whether in America, Britain, Timbuktu or Bobov dol, run on an economy of attendance. You attend school, study hard, pass tests and move on to the next grade. After repeating this cycle 12 or so times, you graduate -you are certified- and you go out into “the real world” and either get a job or enter college to repeat the cycle. If you fail any of the prerequisites for completing a step (not attending, not studying, not passing tests), you have to spend another year attempting to complete the step or you get removed from school. If you are removed from school, you lose your chance at certification, you don’t get a job and you end up mooching off your parents for the rest of your life. In order to maintain a conducive learning environment, schools also threaten expulsion if you do not behave in the school. It’s a simple economic system really; if you want to “buy” certification, you have to “pay” with effort in the form of good behavior and studying.
The problem is, here in Bobov dol, this system has broken down because they have taken away the granddaddy of punishments: expulsion. Whether you like to admit it or not, our education system ultimately comes down to this threat: “Do this or you will fail!” Like many schools in Bulgaria, ours can no longer say this because we don’t have enough students. Due to population decline, if we kick out any more students, we will not have enough students to continue the grade. That means that we wouldn’t have enough hours for teachers and we they would lose their jobs. Without the threat of expulsion, there is little you can do to motivate a student.
It goes something like this:
Me: “You were late today. Please come on time tomorrow.”
Student: “Why?”
Me: “Because you are missing material in class.”
Student: “So?”
Me: “You will not learn the material.”
Student: “So?”
Me: “You will do badly on the test.”
Student: “So?”
And that’s where the next logical answer is “You will fail.” Most logical thinking students would at least have reason here to pause and consider the weight of this punishment. Unfortunately here the next answer is “…” NOTHING! There is nothing more I can do beyond this step. They got me! This kind of dialogue is repeated daily on everything from skipping classes, not doing homework, kicking our brand new whiteboards (happened today…) to fighting in class and cheating on tests.
Maybe I am an unimaginative teacher but if you take away the ultimate punishment, how can you motivate students to learn the modal verbs and past perfect continuous tense?
Something I have realized lately is that punishment is a form of love. No, seriously. As much as the kid in me tries to convince me otherwise, punishment is an act of love. I am not taking here about cruelty or revenge or sadism. I mean punishment as a part of justice. When you, as an individual or society, stand up and punish someone who commits a crime, you are showing that you care about the future and want it to be better. You are loving the person who was wronged; you are restoring their faith that someone cares about them and their live. When you punish the aggressor, you are loving them by making them aware of their error and hopefully dissuading them from doing it again. I was reading the Letter of Paul to the Romans the other day and was struck by Paul’s words. He talks about the punishment of the idolators and Israel and how God’s wrath was an act of love. Justice is obviously a virtue, it is even one of the 4 Cardinal Virtues of the Roman Catholic Church (Bonus points: Anyone know the other 3?). But Justice cannot exist if Punishment does not flow into and from it. There can be no Justice if injustice is not punished and Justice is corrupted if Punishment is unjust. I had never thought of it that way but it makes perfect sense.
If this is hard to imagine think of a small child. Say the small child steals a candy bar from a store. You as the parent find out later that day. You have two options. You can pretend you didn’t see it and do nothing, or you can punish the child and make him take the bar back to the store and have him apologize. Of course the second option is embarrassing, awkward and painful for both you and the child, but it is an act of love. You are teaching the child that stealing is not okay. They will learn that they should not steal and hopefully grow up to be a more moral person. The storeowner is reassured that people care about him and his business. Society as a whole benefits because the child will grow up into someone who appreciates justice and the storeowner will continue to believe in justice.
I think a society that has lost the capacity for love would first stop punishing people. They would not even have enough love for each other to say that pain and hate will not be accepted in the community. They would not care enough about the future to stop problems before they balloon out of control. Unfortunately I see that in my school. Kids fight in the halls between classes and teachers do nothing. Students skip classes by smoking in the cafeteria and teachers say nothing. Today, in my 12th grade class, a kid kicked one of our brand new whiteboards. The class is divided into two groups and he is in the other group. As he was getting up to go to the other classroom he, for no apparent reason at all, kicked the board. He walked out and I chased him down. There were two other teachers who saw him do it. One teacher came out and followed me. When I caught the kid I grabbed him by the arm and started yelling at him and came dangerously close to throwing him up against the wall and literally choking him. I was surprised at how close I was. I was trying to say something to him in Bulgarian but nothing came out. I was hoping one of the other three teachers (an extra one was in the hallway) would do something, but they did nothing. Nothing. I was so shocked and dismayed that I have been bummed all day. Could this town be so gone that it doesn’t even have the concept of Justice and Punishment, basic ingredients of love? I pray to God that it isn’t.
17 January 2007
the one where andy has too many pictures of dudes in speedos
I’ve started going to the local “fitness center” here in Bobov dol. I was really into weightlifting when I was in high school, college and in the year before I came to Bulgaria. My brother introduced me to it, and – this may not make sense if you have never done it – I became addicted to it. I never became huge like Arnold but I can honestly say that I was able to lift quite some weight for someone my size. When I came to Bulgaria, I kinda got over my addiction because there was nowhere for me to get my fix. But I have recently discovered the Bobov dol fitness center and have been going frequently for the last month.
It’s quite different than any fitness center I’ve gone to in America. I have joked with people that I feel like Rocky training to beat that Russian dude. For one, there is no heat. I usually see my breath when I work out. The walls are covered with posters of various steroid-using body builders in Speedos. Anyone remember King Kalemeni? Lou Ferrigno? Bill Pearl? The equipment is old and… unique. The dumbbells I use are old train wheels welded to lengths of rebar. And unlike every other fitness center I’ve been to, there is no Metallica or AC/DC cranking out the speakers. Instead, we have Bulgarian pop-folk. The weights that do exist are in kilograms and I don’t know if you have ever tried it, but going up in weight by 10 kilograms (over 20 pounds) is quite a step. Trust me, I tried it today. One of the other people there told me that my “face is like a big tomato!”
So why do I go? There is something comforting about being there. It reminds me of my life in America. I like the time to myself to forget about what the girls in 11th class did, or what my colleagues said to me. There is also something so black and white about lifting. You can either pick up the weight or not; there is no cultural misunderstanding there. Everyday is a test, and the result is always up to me. I can’t blame it on my bad Bulgarian, or my inexperience teaching. If I fail I fail on my own. And there is something strangely comforting in that. Of course, if I succeed, I succeed solely on my own too.
Anyway, all that for 50 stotinki ain’t too shabby.
It’s quite different than any fitness center I’ve gone to in America. I have joked with people that I feel like Rocky training to beat that Russian dude. For one, there is no heat. I usually see my breath when I work out. The walls are covered with posters of various steroid-using body builders in Speedos. Anyone remember King Kalemeni? Lou Ferrigno? Bill Pearl? The equipment is old and… unique. The dumbbells I use are old train wheels welded to lengths of rebar. And unlike every other fitness center I’ve been to, there is no Metallica or AC/DC cranking out the speakers. Instead, we have Bulgarian pop-folk. The weights that do exist are in kilograms and I don’t know if you have ever tried it, but going up in weight by 10 kilograms (over 20 pounds) is quite a step. Trust me, I tried it today. One of the other people there told me that my “face is like a big tomato!”
So why do I go? There is something comforting about being there. It reminds me of my life in America. I like the time to myself to forget about what the girls in 11th class did, or what my colleagues said to me. There is also something so black and white about lifting. You can either pick up the weight or not; there is no cultural misunderstanding there. Everyday is a test, and the result is always up to me. I can’t blame it on my bad Bulgarian, or my inexperience teaching. If I fail I fail on my own. And there is something strangely comforting in that. Of course, if I succeed, I succeed solely on my own too.
Anyway, all that for 50 stotinki ain’t too shabby.
07 January 2007
And now a word from the bulgarian tourist office:
These pictures came from a recent trip I took to the Rila Monastery with Rebecca and her parents. People always talk about how beautiful the Rila Monastery is, here is why:
Thanks to Rebecca's parents for organizing the trip and inviting me. I had a wonderful time and enjoyed meeting you and talking with you.
06 January 2007
happy (insert holiday here)!
Happy New Year! I hope everyone has been having a great 2007 so far. I recently returned from an amazing trip to Bonn, Germany, and I have some great pictures which I will post tomorrow. I also want to wish everyone a happy Yordanov Den as today is my favorite name day. Once again I went to the village of Saparevo and once again I watched the kids jump for the cross thrown in the fountain and once again I ate too much. But what a fun, beautiful day it was.
For those who don’t remember from last year Yordanov Den is the holiday in Bulgaria which celebrates the baptism of Jesus (Yordanov = Jordan). A year older and hopefully wiser, this year’s celebration was different for me. I had the extreme luck and privilege to actually visit the baptism site of Jesus in Jordan. I consider myself lucky and privileged not only because most people don’t get the opportunity to visit Jordan but also because for so many years the site was closed to the public due to hostilities between Israel and Jordan (the Jordan river is the border between the two countries). I am thankful that a site which so strongly symbolizes our hope for peace is once again peaceful.
This year in Saparevo as we were waiting for the cross to be thrown into the fountain and the kids to once again dive in after it, I began reflecting on the amazing trip that the Christian religion has gone through to get where it is now. Maybe I have been reading too much from the “Der Spiegel Special International Edition: The Power of Faith” magazine I picked up in Germany (I highly recommend this issue of the magazine. It’s in English and you can order it at http://www.international.spiegel.de/ The whole magazine explores different issues regarding faith throughout the world and encompasses all faiths from Christianity and Islam to Taoism and Atheism. It is very balanced and highly informative). But lately I have been thinking a lot about the role of religion in the lives of people. It is amazing how faiths have crossed varied cultural and geographical boundaries to create a patchwork of beliefs across the whole world. It is also amazing how these faiths have affected and been affected by the cultures where they are found. Speaking specifically of the Christian Faith we have Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans and Protestants as the three main branches, but from these have sprouted many different branches depending on the place you are talking about. From Catholicism, you have eight branches including Roman Catholic, Byzantine Catholic and Armenian Catholic. In the Orthodox faith you have Russian, Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian etc. From the Anglican religion you have British Anglican, African Anglican and American Episcopalian (which itself is right now undergoing many changes based on very heated cultural dialogues) and others. And finally, the Protestants have more branches than I can keep track of, from Lutheran to Baptist to Methodist to Pentecostal.
I think this is a true testament to the desire of people to make sure that they understand faith in the context of their own lives. As the many controversies in faith show today, especially the widening chasm in the Episcopal Church and the changes in the Catholic Church, people are still searching for the truth. Faith has never been static and this search for the ultimate truth has created the beautiful patchwork we see in the world today.
As I was watching the Mass and later pandemonium in the fountain today, I was struck at how beautiful and intriguing this search is. Sometimes everything seems so foreign here; the language, the culture and the religion. And while the faith here seems so foreign to what I grew up with, as the same time the search is the same. Today I saw people worshipping the same God and the same Trinity that I do. I could feel the same piety and love in their hearts as in mine. And I shared with them the same hope that the people who witnessed Jesus’ baptism almost 2000 years ago must have felt. I am still charged about it.
It also inspired something else in me which I have been doubting: my future. The faith I saw today and a story I heard has made me think very seriously about starting a Master’s Degree in religion. The colleague who I joined in Saparevo told me about her personal baptism. Her father was a communist. He was a manager in the coal mine here in Bobov dol and as such was required to be a communist member. My colleague’s grandmother, however, was a committed Christian and wanted to make sure all her grandchildren were baptized. So she took my colleague when she was a baby and had her secretly baptized in the church. Imagine the risk this woman put herself and her family through in order to pursue the Truth. And this made me think of all the old babas I saw ringed around the fountain. How did they maintain their faith through those 50 years? How did those 50 years change the faith of the nation? How have people rebuilt their faith after having it forbidden? And then I realized that these questions go on and on. How does faith grow and change in relation to culture and historical events? I would love to spend more time investigating these questions. Thank you once again, Saparevo, for stuffing my stomach with food and my mind with thoughts!
For those who don’t remember from last year Yordanov Den is the holiday in Bulgaria which celebrates the baptism of Jesus (Yordanov = Jordan). A year older and hopefully wiser, this year’s celebration was different for me. I had the extreme luck and privilege to actually visit the baptism site of Jesus in Jordan. I consider myself lucky and privileged not only because most people don’t get the opportunity to visit Jordan but also because for so many years the site was closed to the public due to hostilities between Israel and Jordan (the Jordan river is the border between the two countries). I am thankful that a site which so strongly symbolizes our hope for peace is once again peaceful.
This year in Saparevo as we were waiting for the cross to be thrown into the fountain and the kids to once again dive in after it, I began reflecting on the amazing trip that the Christian religion has gone through to get where it is now. Maybe I have been reading too much from the “Der Spiegel Special International Edition: The Power of Faith” magazine I picked up in Germany (I highly recommend this issue of the magazine. It’s in English and you can order it at http://www.international.spiegel.de/ The whole magazine explores different issues regarding faith throughout the world and encompasses all faiths from Christianity and Islam to Taoism and Atheism. It is very balanced and highly informative). But lately I have been thinking a lot about the role of religion in the lives of people. It is amazing how faiths have crossed varied cultural and geographical boundaries to create a patchwork of beliefs across the whole world. It is also amazing how these faiths have affected and been affected by the cultures where they are found. Speaking specifically of the Christian Faith we have Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans and Protestants as the three main branches, but from these have sprouted many different branches depending on the place you are talking about. From Catholicism, you have eight branches including Roman Catholic, Byzantine Catholic and Armenian Catholic. In the Orthodox faith you have Russian, Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian etc. From the Anglican religion you have British Anglican, African Anglican and American Episcopalian (which itself is right now undergoing many changes based on very heated cultural dialogues) and others. And finally, the Protestants have more branches than I can keep track of, from Lutheran to Baptist to Methodist to Pentecostal.
I think this is a true testament to the desire of people to make sure that they understand faith in the context of their own lives. As the many controversies in faith show today, especially the widening chasm in the Episcopal Church and the changes in the Catholic Church, people are still searching for the truth. Faith has never been static and this search for the ultimate truth has created the beautiful patchwork we see in the world today.
As I was watching the Mass and later pandemonium in the fountain today, I was struck at how beautiful and intriguing this search is. Sometimes everything seems so foreign here; the language, the culture and the religion. And while the faith here seems so foreign to what I grew up with, as the same time the search is the same. Today I saw people worshipping the same God and the same Trinity that I do. I could feel the same piety and love in their hearts as in mine. And I shared with them the same hope that the people who witnessed Jesus’ baptism almost 2000 years ago must have felt. I am still charged about it.
It also inspired something else in me which I have been doubting: my future. The faith I saw today and a story I heard has made me think very seriously about starting a Master’s Degree in religion. The colleague who I joined in Saparevo told me about her personal baptism. Her father was a communist. He was a manager in the coal mine here in Bobov dol and as such was required to be a communist member. My colleague’s grandmother, however, was a committed Christian and wanted to make sure all her grandchildren were baptized. So she took my colleague when she was a baby and had her secretly baptized in the church. Imagine the risk this woman put herself and her family through in order to pursue the Truth. And this made me think of all the old babas I saw ringed around the fountain. How did they maintain their faith through those 50 years? How did those 50 years change the faith of the nation? How have people rebuilt their faith after having it forbidden? And then I realized that these questions go on and on. How does faith grow and change in relation to culture and historical events? I would love to spend more time investigating these questions. Thank you once again, Saparevo, for stuffing my stomach with food and my mind with thoughts!
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