Finding Andy in Bulgaria

I'm moving...

2008-07-18T19:12:00.003+03:00

I have decided to start a new website with my wife. Read as we finish our time in Bulgaria, move to America and try to find new jobs, an apartment and try to keep our sanity. Come see our new digital home!

another week done...

2007-10-12T16:35:00.000+03:00

I have been teaching here at the American University in Bulgaria since July and it has been great. I am teaching 29 class hours a week, I am usually at the language center from 11:00 am everyday to 8:00 pm, but I couldn't love it more. I have great students and my colleagues are great. I even have enough time in the morning to go to the gym and wake up not too late.

Today is Friday and so I only have one class. And it's done. I still don't have Internet at my apartment and so here I am still at school writing and downloading the 1978 AL East Playoff game between the Red Sox and the Yankees. MLB.com has a new service where they let you download old games and -starting this playoff season- new games for only $1.99 a game. The games are posted a day later, but for a fan living in Bulgaria while his team is on the way to the world series, the charge and the time delay is nothing. Real baseball, I can't wait.

As I have a free afternoon, I've started thinking about somethings. Mostly, the way my life has been going and where it will go in the future. And I am amazed at how my life has taken some turns I could never have imagined. So, I have decided to compile a top-five list. I hope you enjoy:

The Top 5 Things I Wasn't Expecting in my Life Ten Years Ago:
1. I would be living in Bulgaria. I gotta admit, this current situation was quite a surprise. I'm not sure 15 year old Andy even knew Bulgaria existed, besides some hazy notion of Bulgarian Olympic gymnasts. I never thought I would learn Bulgarian, make Bulgarian friends, eat cow stomach soup, can my own peppers and peaches, pick and dry herbs, or fall in love with a country so different than my own.

2. I would be teaching. I remember a teacher in my AP Biology class suggesting to me that I should look into teaching because while it is a really tough job, I would love it. Well, it's true but I thought at the time, "yeah, right."

3. I would be contemplating law school. I'm still shocked and unnerved by this one but there it is. I always thought that law school was for other people, not me. This was the same feeling that I had when I thought about applying to Ivy League schools and the Peace Corps. They were things that I always heard about growing up, but always thought they were not possible options in my life. Now, as I am once again standing at the door, I am beginning to think that this choice may bring me as much happiness and success as the other two.

4. I would miss New Hampshire and Concord. When I was 15, like most teenagers who grow up in a small town, one of my constant thoughts was how to get out. I was sick of how boring it was, how small it was, and how everywhere I went I kept running into people I knew. Now, after living abroad for 2 1/2 years, I have started to realize how much I took my state and my hometown for granted. I am looking forward to returning at the end of July to my home, my family, and friends, with an excitement that is both sweet and heartbreaking.

5. I would grow so much. I used to think when I was 15 that I was at the peak of my emotional, intellectual, and spiritual growth. Of course I would have never admitted it, either aloud or to myself, for fear of being labeled naive, but still I carried this sneaking suspicion inside me. After these two last years, I realize how much I have grown and yet how much this growing never stops. I know deep inside that we never stop growing. As long as we are active and care and try, we will never stop. And that excites me most of all.

where is andy?

2007-08-13T17:17:00.001+03:00

He is alive and well in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. Unfortunately, he has yet to get internet in his apartment. There has been some problems with finding an internet company in his new home. He is on vacation in his new apartment doing little more than watching TV, reading, and playing computer games. He feels like a slug because there is a whole internet world he can't access unless he wants to come to this dingy old internet club and pay too much money for too slow access. You can tell he is really upset because he is using third person speech. Anyway, until he can return to the 21st century, enjoy your internet access and think of him...

andy gets misty eyed

2007-06-29T01:56:00.000+03:00

Tonite is my last night in Bobov dol and my last nite as an active Peace Corps volunteer. I'm struggling with what that all means. Of course, I am not leaving Bulgaria; unlike all but three volunteers in my group, I will be staying for an extra year in Bulgaria and work in the American University as an English teacher. So while I will not technically be in Bobov dol, I will be only about a 40 minute car ride away. And while I will not be an officially active volunteer, I will continue living in the same country and continue teaching English. Things change but end staying the same...

As a way to say thank you to all the people here in Bobov dol, I hosted a banquet tonite at my favorite local bar. There were about 14 of my closest and most important friends here. There were people who took me to their village and taught me how to can peaches. There was the woman who gave me Bulgarian lessons, twice a week, for two years. There was her son who was in my seventh grade class, who despite all the other crap in his life, still has a grasp on English that is unnatural for this place. But more important than that, has a flame in him that refuses to be extinguished. There was the woman at whose apartment I was always welcome and with whom I ended up eating many dinners when all I wanted was a coffee. There was the counterpart who selflessly took over the position when my old counterpart left for the big city. She was like the big sister I never had who was there no matter what and was not afraid to tell me when I messed up. And the list goes on.

In between the eating, dancing and laughing, I started to grasp, albeit only in the most general of concepts, what actually happened here in these two years. I think it will take the rest of my life to actually figure that out exactly, but I did start to get an inkling. Here I was, surrounded by so many people who I can count on no matter what. People who I would trust with my life, though I have known them for two years, and many with whom I have only spoken to in a language that I have only been speaking for two years. I came to this town knowing no one and yet am leaving, feeling like the king of the town.

I knew I wanted to be a Peace Corps volunteer when I was about 6 and used to wake up early on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons. In those days, they used to have very simple commercials for Peace Corps, so simple in fact that I only remember the punchline: "Peace Corps: The toughest job you'll ever love." It sounded so perfect for a kid growing up on adventure shows and GI Joe. I liked to believe that I was tough, and the toughest? Well sign me up!

I have learned what tough means in these two years. But that was something that I was expecting. I knew it would be hard and that I would be tested. I know that I would be going into a possibly hostile environment, away from everything and everyone I had previously known and be expected to succeed. I knew that and it definitely lived up to those expectations. But in these two years, I learned something else. I learned that the second part of that slogan was the more important part. I learned what it means to love. To love a job, to love a place and to love people. Sure my job was infuriating at times, so much so I would have done anything to not go in some days. Sure Bobov dol made me angry sometimes, and made me question my hope in the future. And sure people here made me mad and made me question my hope in people. But through it all, I learned to love them all despite all these things. All these bad things don't make you love less, they make you love something more. Because it is easy to love something that provides no resistance, something that is welcoming of your love. It is so much harder to love something that acts like it doesn't need or want you, something that sometimes acts like it hates you. If you can persevere and love it despite this, your love will become so strong and will grow. I thought when I became a volunteer that this job would be tough because I would love it and put my whole heart into it, but I never expected I would love it because it was so tough.

Thank you Bobov dol for teaching me love. And thank you for being so tough.

VOTE FOR THE 7 NEW WONDERS!!

2007-06-07T16:04:00.000+03:00

There is less than a month less to vote for the new 7 world wonders! Go to this website, register and vote for what you think are the most important wonders in the world. It's free and a great way to take part in a truly worldwide vote. The results will be announced on 07.07.07 so you have little time left.

http://www.new7wonders.com/index.php?id=315

And if you are trying to decide on a 7th one to vote for, pick Petra. I've been there and can personally tell you how awesome it is. Or just check the comments page for my cousins, I'm sure they'll have something to say about it soon...

in a pile of bad news, a smile...

2007-06-05T14:42:00.000+03:00

I'm grading a pile of tests from my 7th graders and it was the usually bunch of bad news, until I got to one of the last tests. One of my best students got an American superstition a little confused...

Task: Write 5 American superstitions
4. "When you step on a crack, you will bake your mother's bag."

I'm sorry Mom but with a little honey, they don't taste all that bad.

chalga saves the world

2007-05-23T15:06:00.000+03:00

Apparently it is trying... Chalga- the part pop, part traditional music, all cheese- music style that is all the rage in Bulgaria and the rest of the Balkans has been exported to the Middle East where it is challenging existing conservative views. According to this BBC article, while this music isn't called Chalga, a new style of music has sprung up in the Middle East that smacks of the Chalga we have all grown to love. Cheezy videos, subtly (or not so subtly) erotic lyrics, scantily clad singers and controversy; yup it's gotta be Chalga. Good luck Arabic Chalga, I hope you can limit that religious extremism that decades of war haven't.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6666725.stm

"baby I think too much"

2007-05-16T16:05:00.000+03:00

I've been learning how to dance shopsko horo lately. Horos are traditional forms of Bulgarian dancing. It is kind of like the Greek dancing you may be familiar with where the people line up, hold hands and move in a line, at the end of which they throw plates down on the ground. Horo is like that but without the broken plates. Shopsko horo is a form of horo that is particular to my region of Bulgaria and just happens to be the HARDEST horo in Bulgaria. It's not so difficult because of the steps, they are fairly easy once you get the hang of them. The problem is that it is danced at an insane pace. The music is incredibly fast and your steps have to match the music. Think "River Dance" on crack and you start getting the idea.
I've been interested in learning Shopsko Horo for a long time. I know a bunch of other horos but after watching the beauty and skill of Shopsko horo, I decided I would give it a chance. And since the senior prom is coming up- one of my last chances to dance horo here in town- I thought I would get serious about it. I've been getting lessons from one of my 12th grade students, 2 or 3 times a week. But despite this, I'd been unable to move my feet fast enough.

And then today, like a puzzle, things fell into place. I was hitting the right steps and at a fast pace. The key? Stop thinking and just feel it. I have danced a lot of different kinds of dances. I learned Argentine Tango, Rumba, Waltz, Swing and Foxtrot, and the key to all of them is to just let the music flow over you. Of course at the beginning you have to spend a lot of time understanding the steps: where the left foot goes and then the right. But with dancing, you have to get to a certain point where you stop thinking about the steps and just feel the music. You stop watching your feet, you stop counting the beats, and you stop thinking about the next steps. You listen to the music and let your feet do their thing. You get into a zone where you are only conscious of the beat you are on and your body. You are completely in the moment, in the music and in your body. And you just do it.

Anyone who knows me, knows what a giant klutz I am. I trip on nothing, I clip my shoulders on walls and I always hit my head on everything. I am not coordinated. And the reason is that most of the time I am thinking about stuff. For a lot of my waking day, I am conscious only of the world inside my head. I think about things too much and usually get so wrapped in those thoughts that I have a hard time, at first, learning new skills. But here I was this afternoon, dancing up a storm.

How? I stopped thinking about everything and just started feeling. I've been thinking about this all afternoon (of course), and realized that I am at my best when I am doing this. I teach my best classes when I forget my lesson plan at home and instead feel the class and teach to them instead of teaching to what I think is them. I am best in my relationships with people when I am feeling them and really trying to understand them instead of trying to understand who I think they are. I am best in my faith when I open up my heart instead of doing what I think I should do.

I am thankful for my two years here in Bulgaria. I am thankful for what they have taught me and what I have learned. I am thankful for my new skills, my new friends and my new way of thinking. But I am most thankful that I am beginning to learn how to feel the music.

new hampshire: 2 steps forward, 1 step back

2007-04-28T10:20:00.000+03:00

I leave New Hampshire for two years and finally exciting things happen. The state becomes democratic, we get civil unions, and now we have two nuts in Plainfield, Ed and Elaine Brown, who are refusing to pay federal taxes in excess of $750,000. They have recently been sentenced by the federal courts to five years in prison and fined for the full amount of back taxes. But instead of facing the music and doing the right thing, they are fortifying their home in preparation of a siege.

Their logic is wrapped up in typical small town militia mindset: the federal system is corrupt, we don't have to answer to anyone but God, there is a "new world order" conspiracy... But the thing that gets me is the glaring contradiction. What would happen if a Muslim couple did this? What if a Muslim group refused to recognize a court by even showing up, refused to face their punishment, fortified their home with weapons and then posted everything on the web, including solicitation of violence against law enforcement and federal employees? I'm sure that the Department of Homeland would be there in a heartbeat. Instead authorities seem happy to wait for them to accumulate more weapons and more supporters (they are still allowed to have guests) and in the meantime ignore the rule of law.

I don't like paying taxes. I hate seeing how much money I am losing every payday. But I understand, as most rational people do that our taxes are being used to do things that we as individuals could not accomplish. Being here in Bulgaria makes me appreciate those things more and more. I have come to appreciate the things our federal government does to protect its citizens. In most places in America you can drink water right out of the tap, thanks to federal laws like the Clean Water Act. You can feel safe that the toothpaste, medicine or soap you are buying really contains the ingredients it says it does and will accomplish the things it says it will. You can buy food that is safe, untampered and unspoiled. Most places in America are subject to the rule of law. You don't have to fear saying something that might upset the local Don or gang boss. You have reliable electricity, water, postal and phone service. You have an effective road and highway system. You are protected at work from accidents and greedy bosses. And while these things might not always work 100% effectively, if something goes wrong you have a recourse for your grievances, a recourse that does not require having the largest guns, or the biggest army or the most money.

I think that if this couple really wants to live without paying their taxes, let them. But don't let them ride free on the services and infrastructure that the rest of us are paying for. If they feel that the federal system is wrong, fine. Then they won't mind losing their electricity. Federal regulations ensure that we don't have a monopoly and subsidies help private companies provide better service. I guess they also don't mind losing their phones and Internet. Again, our communications system is built upon years and years of federal funding and laws. No more water for the Browns, at least no more clean water. I sure hope they have a well that hasn't met certified levels of lead and other contaminants or else, sorry, they can't use that either. Mail, nope, that too is organized by the federal government. Roads? I hope they aren't expecting any out of state guests because it might take them a while to arrive if they don't use any interstate highways. I hope they don't need to make a 911 call because guess where New Hampshire got major funding for its state-wide 911 system? That's right, the Feds. And while they may say how corrupt law enforcement is and that they are a bunch of thugs doing the dirty work of the federal government, I'm sure they would prefer these thugs over any other group of nuts with more and bigger guns. Because once you start complaining about the federal government and calling for its downfall, you are attacking the very system that lets you say that. I would love to see how long Mr. and Mrs. Brown like living their anarchist dream without electricity, water, communication, safety and security.

Mr. and Mrs. Brown and all who inhabit the same imaginary planet, stop with the fantasy. We all know how this is going to end, you will lose, and you will end up hurting a lot of innocent people.

the continuous adventures of rascist advertising

2007-04-24T07:34:00.000+03:00

I have a strong personal distaste of the branding of cultures and races. The "Indian" mascot, and people arguing that Indian mascots are ok, boils my blood. While I was at Dartmouth, every year the argument would come up again and even this year there was another attempt by ignorant people at defending the former unofficial mascot. In an act of brazen racism, this time the conservative newpaper published a front page featuring a drawing of a native American holding a scalp with the headline "The Natives Are Getting Restless."

I found this multimedia article today in Slate Magazine and was stunned at how other rascist branding is still around, this time in the advertising of Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima. I hope you take a second and check it out, you'll never look at them the same.

http://www.slate.com/id/2164062/nav/tap1/

update

2007-04-17T20:20:00.000+03:00

I'm trying to get back to communicating with the outside world. I have added some captions to the Yordanov Den album. I also look forward to posting pictures about upcoming adventures, including my school's prom, our trip to Greece, Children's Day, Spazov Den and the end of my service in Bobov dol. Stay tuned!

sacrifices

2007-04-17T19:45:00.000+03:00

I've been reading our weekly free Newsweek and I have been absolutely sucked into the April 2nd Special Issue "Voices of the Fallen." Most of the issue is letters from American soldiers who have died in Iraq. And there are dozens of these letters. You read over and over again these soldiers making plans for when they return home only to read at the end of the letter how they were killed by a roadside bomb, or "small arms fire" or some accident. It is so sad that I have had to stop many times.

Reading these letters, you get an idea of how separated we non-soldier Americans are from the fighting. We are so numb that these dead men and women are usually nothing more than an increasing number on the evening news. For the lucky ones of us, we don't know anyone who has been wounded, let alone killed in Iraq. We have not been asked to sacrifice ANYTHING, while our fellow citizens are giving the ultimate sacrifice in the belief that they are protecting us. I like to think that I am serving my country- and the greater world- here but these men and women, were asked by a country they loved and trusted to fight for it and put themselves in the line of fire. They did so willingly and bravely. Many have died in order to fulfill that request.

Yet here we are, whether in America or abroad, without having to sacrifice a thing. Sure, prices have raised but what else have we given up? I remember when I was a kid, seeing the ration coupons my grandparents kept from WWII and hearing the stories of living under rations. I was amazed at the idea of "Victory Gardens," scrap metal drives, and the idea that it could actually be hard to buy flour. To say it was hard is an understatement, but everyone was in it together. Our country was at war for something we believed in, and everyone pitched in and sacrificed. Where are our Victory Gardens today? Where are our ration coupons?

Our country is trying to wage a war on the cheap. We cheer on our troops, we stick magnets on our cars, we wave our flags, but what are we sacrificing? Politicians are anxious to send more young men and women to fight a war without fronts, yet how many of them have children or grandchildren who are there? How many of them have seen war? How many know what a roadside bomb does to a vehicle or what a bullet does to a face? It may seem that many Republicans sacrificed their offices for their support of the war, but I tend to see that as justice.

I'm not sure exactly what I want to say here. Maybe I am just trying to wrestle with emotions that can't be written down. I feel ashamed. I feel sad. I feel afraid. I feel very unAmerican. Here I am living a challenging, yet safe life while people my age and younger are dying because they think they are protecting us. And I am doing nothing to help them. Heck, this year I didn't even have any taxes. I am not joining the military to cover their back, I am not rationing my food, I am not saying prayers every night for them and I am not working to make better armor or vehicles.

All this makes me angry because NO ONE IS ASKING ME to do anything. The government was so anxious to go to war, but so unwilling to do the brave thing and make this war real. No one wanted to risk their jobs and say, "hey we are doing this because we think it is right. It is so important that we win and because of that, things are going to hurt. We need everyone to sacrifice." I can think of two reasons why no one said this. Maybe our leaders didn't have an ounce of the courage our soldiers do and were too afraid of losing their jobs. They thought that this war was important but didn't want to stick their necks out. If this is true, then I am disgusted. The other reason, if it is true, makes me furious: the politicians sent our brothers and sisters to fight and die for a reason that wasn't worth the sacrifice. Maybe no one asked us to sacrifice because the war isn't worth it. We know now that the claims of WMD were false, that Saddam didn't have links to terrorists and that he didn't pose a threat to us or anyone else, but if the president ordered this war without ordering us to sacrifice, maybe he knew this truth then...

In any case, I know this isn't much of a sacrifice, indeed it isn't a sacrifice at all, but I just wanted to say to all of the troops in harm's way and all their families and friends back in states: "Thank you." Thank you for answering the call when our country called. We will find some way to match your unmatchable sacrifice.

straight from the horse's mouth

2007-02-02T13:49:00.000+02:00

Finally we agree on something....

"And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it."— President Bush speaking on National Public Radio, Jan. 29, 2007.

Listen to it here. The "Bushism" is at 17:21.

mom was right...

2007-02-01T06:37:00.000+02:00

My mom and other members of my family used to constantly be after me to buy new socks because different parts of my feet would always be poking through some hole or another. I used to think they were crazy; these are socks after all. They are meant to be hidden in shoes. Well, today I found this article about Paul Wolfowitz and it appears that having socks with giant holes in them really can come and bite you when you least expect it. And so, because I know that I am at least as smart as him, I must say, "No more holey socks for me!"

vote for the best cheese of all time!

2007-01-26T19:15:00.000+02:00

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.

truth, justice, and the american way or andy almost snaps

2007-01-23T20:32:00.000+02:00

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.

the one where andy has too many pictures of dudes in speedos

2007-01-17T20:14:00.000+02:00

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.

And now a word from the bulgarian tourist office:

2007-01-07T12:09:00.000+02:00

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.

happy (insert holiday here)!

2007-01-06T20:09:00.000+02:00

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!

"Ohh, there must be some easier way for me to get my wings."

2006-12-20T21:25:00.000+02:00

School is quickly wrapping up for the year and it could not come soon enough. I am exhausted and ready for two weeks off. I am looking forward to celebrating Budne Vecher (Christmas Eve) with my colleagues and then going to the beautiful new cathedral in Sofia on Christmas day to celebrate Mass there. I am also excited to go to Germany for a week to celebrate New Years there. But first I have to make it through two more days.

Monday started with a nice chill, we had no coal in the school. People laugh when I show them my thermal underwear, but I wear them precisely for days like this. I knew something was amiss when I walked into the teachers room in the morning and saw my breath. It was later confirmed when a colleague told me that the classes were shortened because it was so cold. So the kids wouldn’t get sick sitting in a cold classroom, they shortened the class periods from 40 minutes to 35. I’m sure we dodged the bullet on that one. I walked into my sixth grade class as they where mutinying. Some girls in the class had apparently been influenced by their 10th grade boyfriends to leave school early, and were trying to take the whole class with them. Applying two lessons I have learned over the last year and a half (ie, students will lie right to your face, even when confronted with overwhelming contrary evidence; and always, always trust your instinct) I stopped them from escaping, even when they told me that they had notes (which turned into, “well, we’ll bring in notes tomorrow” after a little questioning) and telling me they would get sick and it was all my fault.

All week I have been showing my 12th graders “It’s a Wonderful Life” during our class periods. At first my motivation for showing the movie was that I loved it and I wanted to share it with them. I thought maybe they would think it was interesting, but too old, too boring or too American. But much to my surprise they LOVE it. And they get it. We have the final installment tomorrow, but already I can tell that they are totally into it. They laugh at all the right times, they “ahhhh” at all the touching moments, and they are absolutely quiet at the really intense parts. I can’t wait to see their reaction tomorrow at the end of the movie.

What is it about that movie? What makes it so universal? Why can I, a 24 year old living in 2006, feel like a movie from 1946 was written about me? How can a group of 18 year olds in Bulgaria, feel similarly? I think the movie speaks to something deep inside of us all. We all struggle in life to do our best, and I think we all feel like we fail more than we succeed. And no matter how much people may be reluctant to talk about, I think we all worry that our life doesn’t add up to much in the end. I am reading “The Alchemist” right now and it hits a similar chord. It talks about how we are all created to fulfill our destiny, but so many of us are faint of heart and don’t follow through on our mission. I think that is true to some extent: we are all created to live for something greater than us. We are created to make this world a better place. But life beats us around and makes us think that we will never succeed, and all too often we believe it.

When he is young, George tells Mary that: “I'm shakin' the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I'm gonna see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Colosseum. Then, I'm comin' back here to go to college and see what they know. And then I'm gonna build things. I'm gonna build airfields, I'm gonna build skyscrapers a hundred stories high, I'm gonna build bridges a mile long...”

After a few years of being worn down by life George listens to his fears, this time in the form of Mister Potter: “Look at you. You used to be so cocky. You claimed you were going to go out and conquer the world. You once called me "a warped, frustrated, old man!" Who are you but a warped, frustrated young man, crawling in here on your hands and knees begging for help. No securities, no stocks, no bonds. Nothin' but a miserable little $500 equity in a life insurance policy. You're worth more dead than alive.”

I wish this wasn’t how life worked. I wish that we could all fulfill our destinies with ease. I wish we could go out into the world and do what really made us happy without this constant doubting. I wish when we tried and failed, that we would know that flying and crashing is better than not taking off at all. But life isn’t like that. In each day, life will test us to our limits and take away the things we want the most.

Friday is the darkest day of the year. My hope for you this Christmas season is that the light and hope that that famous birth brought will awaken in you the strength to fight back just a little longer. I hope it will light your path to your true destiny and true passion. I hope that you will remember that you are a special person and that if you had the opportunity George Bailey had, you too would run through town laughing and shouting at the top of your lungs.

the one with all the thanksgivings

2006-11-23T12:40:00.000+02:00

Today is Thanksgiving. It is my second Thanksgiving away from my family and country. In some ways, these times have a twinge of melancholy. What is Thanksgiving without gathering around the dinner table with your friends and family and gorging yourself on turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce? Here in Bulgaria, we have work today. There is no Macy’s parade. I have no family here. There is no chance of turkey or cranberry. And my mom won’t buy a whole carton of eggnog for only me. As I look out my window, I can see only a gray downpour. I am still stinging from a horrible day at school yesterday, in which I made two girls cry. I am dreading going to school tomorrow and facing that class again. Tonight, I am teaching at the prison.

But I have plenty to be thankful for. And continuing my infatuation with lists, I proudly present the

Top 10 Things Andy is Thankful for This Year: {Drum roll optional}
1. Despite the gray outside right now, this is a wonderful world. Look around. If we look hard enough, we see we are surrounded by love. We are the children of God and as such have inherited a perfectly formed world. Of course it is broken in some serious ways, but underneath all that crap, it is beautiful and runs on love. I am thankful for this.
2. I am heading to Razlog tomorrow to have a proper Thanksgiving with a bunch of other volunteers. While I love my friends here, there is something to be said for gathering with Americans on Thanksgiving. You remember all the great things about home and tend to forget the bad. You share memories and you laugh.
3. I have friends here. Tomorrow I head to Razlog for an American Thanksgiving, but tonite my colleagues and I will gather in my little apartment for a Bulgarian Thanksgiving. In the true tradition of Thanksgiving, tonight’s meal with be a joining of two cultures and their food. There will be pumpkin banitsa, calf meat, tsarska salata, mashed potatoes, onion soup, bread and mashed pumpkin. And of course there will be rakia, which will be washed down with Coca-cola, and bezalkohol. Besides the food - which of course is a big deal - I am happy to have the friendship. I am so lucky that I have such close friends in two countries, across very different cultures. We have helped each other get through some hard times and my life would be so much less without them.
4. I am thankful for the family and friends I have back home. You are my compass as I explore my life here. A day doesn’t go by when I don’t take out that compass and use it to find my way; sometimes out of desperation and sometimes just to double-check that I am on the right path. Thank you for that. I love you all and miss you, and someday I will be with you again.
5. I am healthy. I can walk to school every morning,I can breathe easily, I can manage on my own, I can do anything I want. Though I am putting on some weight around the middle, I can still challenge anyone I meet to a 400 meter dash.
6. Speaking of gaining weight, I have food. I can eat when I want, and I have never known what Hunger really means.
7. I can bounce back from problems. There are so many people in this world who can not get over things. I have only pity and love for them. I hope someday they learn that when things really hurt, there are ways to overcome it. You can talk to trusted friends, you can pray, you can see a therapist, you can try a new route, or you can simply laugh. Sometimes when things hurt the most we must just step back and laugh. To use a quote from one of my favorite books (and least favorite movies) “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”: "While McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top, spreading his laugh out across the water- laughing at the girl, at the guys, at George, at me sucking my bleeding thumb, at the captain back at the pier... and the Big Nurse and all of it. Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy. He knows there's a painful side; he knows my thumb smarts and his girlfriend has a bruised breast and the doctor is losing his glasses, but he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain." I am thankful that I will even get over the disaster that was yesterday.
8. I am thankful for my new relationship with God. Though some days are hard and I feel like throwing the whole thing away, He is patient with me and blesses me everyday with all these things. I am also thankful for His Catholic Church here on Earth that has made me feel as welcome here as back in my hometown. I am thankful for all the priests I have met who have helped me, especially Father Nolan in Monaghan, Ireland and Father Marcel in Franconia, New Hampshire. My new relationship is very personal, but I couldn’t make a list without including the Big Man and all his helpers.
9. I am thankful for the Internet. Strange I know, but I am thankful for this giant amazing thing that is so full of possibilities. Like any human invention, it is full of both good and bad, but it is still beautiful. I use it daily to keep in touch with those I love, for help with classes, to become a better teacher, and to simply expand my knowledge.
10. I am thankful for my school’s new multimedia room. I am so thankful for all the people with whom I worked to bring this wonderful new educational tool to Bobov dol. It is a big change from last year when I only had chalk and my imagination as classroom materials. Today I taught 3 classes in it, and all classes complained when they had to leave. On one class I had to turn off the lights to get them to leave. That kind of excitement is what makes teaching worth it.

So whoever you are, where ever you are, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving filled with love, peace, happiness, and lots of things to be thankful for.

“i've got to, that's the whole thing.” -will kane

2006-11-10T16:30:00.000+02:00

One of my favorite movies of all time is High Noon. I don’t know if you’ve seen it or not, but you should. Even if you don’t like Westerns it is such an important movie to see. Of course there is the underlying anti-democracy in the movie that got the writer black-balled during the 1950s but besides that it is a great example of a person standing up and doing what needs to be done. The main character, Marshall Will Kane, is getting married when the movie opens. He has just retired from being the local sheriff and plans to move far away. As the ceremony ends, he gets news that a dreaded cowboy gang that he previously kicked out of town is coming back to take over the town when he leaves. As much as he tries to rally the town to fight them, everyone has an excuse why he can’t fight. So at the end of the movie, he goes out to face the gang alone, with only his trusty six shooter to help him.

I love this movie because Will Kane “does what a man has to do.” Even though he will probably end up getting killed for it, he does what is the right thing. Alone. And I think that is what draws many people to the movie. I think all too often we believe we are in this alone. It is me versus the marauding gang; me versus the competition; me versus the world. We need movies like High Noon to motivate us and wanna go out there and kick some ass. Alone.

Why? Because it is so unnatural. We are not meant to go out into this world and “do it alone.” Of course, there are times when we need to stand up and do what is right, even if the popular consensus is against us. That is a given. But we must also not shut ourselves off in our drive, quest to do what is right. We are human beings, Homo sapiens. We are naked, clawless, fangless, weak animals. If we had been a non-communal species out on the savannah, we would have been a tiny blip in the history of the world. The first proto-lion would have torn us apart and the world would now be ruled by cockroaches. In addition to our brains, our ability to organize and band together allowed us to move from a second rate hunter on the savannah to the biggest kid on the block, er, world.

I am all too often guilty of this. I never ask for help because I don’t want to trouble anyone. I don’t want to be seen as weak. I ant all the glory for myself. The list goes on… But days like today make me remember we can’t live like this. I had a crappy day at school. I had to give two periods of oral exams to my sixth graders and had to listen to such nonsense as this: “What time is it? (pointing to the clock)” “My cat!” I had to break up a fight as I walked into my seventh grade class between seventh grade girls and tenth grade boys. Then I had to teach the tenth grade and ended up spending most of the class taking away cell-phones that kept going off. By the end, I had seven. At the end of the day I was actually hoping that one of my seventh graders who was climbing over a fence outside the school would fall on his head.

All I wanted to do was to go home and feel bad about my classes and the fact that my water boiler died last night. But a colleague invited me to lunch. I have a hard time refusing food so I went. And I think that lunch saved my sanity. Just talking with her made me feel better. We talked about what it meant to be a teacher, and especially what it meant to be a teacher in Bobov dol. Part of the reason I was feeling down was because I too often think that I am failing. But I was reminded today that the problem is bigger than me. This colleague teaches math and told me that in the twelfth grade class, she has students who can’t multiply 7 and 5. I know this student and can vouch that he seems like a pretty intelligent, with it guy. I felt better because I learned that I was not in this by myself. Here I am surrounded by a group of colleagues who, day in and day out, slog through the same problems I do. Colleagues who, for the most part, try their hardest to make a difference. And I was reminded that the rewards for this work aren’t measured in days. You don’t know what you accomplish at the end of the day. You don’t know at the end of the year. You don’t know even when the child graduates. Our success is measured in lifetimes. And even if we don’t see our rewards in this lifetime, I have faith and hope that someday, somewhere, I will reap these rewards.

Know what makes me love High Noon even more? Will Kane didn’t do it himself. As much as it is advertised as “one man against the world” in the end his wife stands by his side. No one, not even Will Kane, can do this all by themselves. I’m trying to remember this everyday…

goodbye, sweet innocence of childhood

2006-11-09T13:45:00.000+02:00

I grew up in New Hampshire believing three things were eternal:
1. The Red Sox will never win the World Series.
2. The Old Man of the Mountain will always be around.
3. New Hampshire is a Republican state.

Well, over the last few years the first two myths were shattered. The first one for the good, the second for bad. But somehow I still believed in the third. I believed in it so strongly that I almost didn't vote. I believed the US House race was definitely going to the Republican candidate and there was no way the Democrats would win either the NH senate or the NH house. But with a pathetic optimism I picked up in my 24 years of cheering on the Red Sox, I filled in the bubbles on my ballot and mailed it in, hoping beyond hope that "this was the year!"

Well wasn't I surprised when I read this article this afternoon:
Democratic Sweep Puts Lynch In Driver's Seat
Legislature Shifts To Democratic Control
CONCORD, N.H. -- The political landscape in New Hampshire shifted dramatically on Election Day, and observers said Gov. John Lynch may now have clear sailing to pass his entire agenda.
For the first time in history, New Hampshire Democrats will be in charge of the governor's office, Executive Council, state House and Senate. Democrats last held the governor's office, House and Senate in 1874.
Lynch was re-elected with a record 74 percent of the vote.

So let me just repeat this for those who don't quite understand.
November 6th
Democrats: Governor
Republicans: US Representatives; US Senators; NH House of Representatives; NH Senate; Executive Council
November 9th
Democrats: Governor; US Representatives; NH House of Representatives; NH Senate; Executive Council
Republicans: US Senators (they weren't up for election this cycle)

The Curse is Dead!

PS. (Special for my fellow New Hampshirites) Good luck Sylvia Larsen! I hope you get the President of the Senate position!

he's a canning beast

2006-11-07T18:48:00.000+02:00

Two Saturdays ago, I canned hot peppers with one of my colleagues. First we cooked the peppers on the stove. Literally!

Then we added salt, vinegar, sugar, parsley, garlic and crammed them into the jars. We were a little disappointed to learn that 3 kilograms of peppers only makes about 6 jars...

After putting the ingredients into the jars, we boiled them.

After boiling, we put the jars upside down to cool. Yes that is me with the Satan eye.

And then we ate. The results? Sinus-clearing delicious! That's right, I got my canned peppers and peaches, my dried parsley, thyme and mint, bring it on, Winter!

monday, blah, blah, blah... VOTE!

2006-11-06T20:05:00.000+02:00

I hate Mondays. What happened this Monday? I flipped out in my 7th grade class and had them spend the last 15 minutes of the class copying new vocabulary over and over again. In this class there are 23 students, all in the throes of puberty and unable to maintain a thought process for longer than 30 seconds. I warned them but they just wouldn't listen. Not that I think "duvet" and "face flannel" are especially important words to know in English but it's the principle... Tenth grade class wouldn't listen because they were too busy trying to keep from shivering. I was a little easier on them... 12th grade was good. We learned how to use monolingual dictionaries. We also learned how different words are related. My personal favorite was making the sentence, "the captors captured the captive."... My 11th graders began the class by running around the classroom hitting each other. They are all girls.

I feel very bitter today. Anyone who wants to cheer me up, give it a try. I really need to shake this day off.

In other news, VOTE! Even if you don't agree with my politics, go out and vote. I have a new appreciation for democracy and urge everyone to exercise their freedom. My 10th grade students skipped school on Friday and one student's reason: It's a free country now, I can do what I want. Democracy isn't easy. Democracy, like faith, is something you must work for. It may be a pain to fit voting into your busy schedule, but it is important. If you don't vote, you are saying that you don't care about democracy, you don't care about the sacrifices generations have made before you and you are too weak to decide your future. Go out and just do it!

that's president andy to you...

2006-10-25T06:51:00.000+03:00

My brother told me something very interesting right before the 2000 election. In what was to turn out to be one of his most accurate statements ever, he said, "Andy, George Bush is just running for president to gain favors. He wants to be president just so he can make his friends rich, then when he finishes, all those people will owe him." Over the last 6 years, we have seen that repeatedly come true: the Administrations Energy Policy, the war in Iraq and Haliburton, the election of Katherine Harris, the fact that most of his cabinet members are millionaires. Now we learn that the No Child Left Behind Act- an Act that is hurting our most important resource of all- is also helping to launch the business of his brother! Nathan, I promise when I become president, I will make a cabinet position for you called "Department of Watching-Out-For-Selfish-@ssh*les." Maybe you can come up with a better name.

what the heck happened?

2006-10-24T20:24:00.000+03:00

I’m no political scientist but I have a few ideas about the recent Bulgarian presidential election. The election was last Sunday and due to the low voter turnout, there will be a run-off election this coming Sunday. The two candidates in the run-off will be Georgi Parvanov (the incumbent and winner of the first election) and Volen Siderov (leader of the ultra-nationalist Ataka party). The fact that Parnanov won the election is unsurprising; the second place finish of an ultra-nationalist, however, is a bit alarming. I believe that the second place finish of this candidate speaks more about the current situation of Bulgaria than an overwhelming racist and xenophobic society. I think that people voted for Ataka for some of the following reasons:

1. Fed-up. I think that many Bulgarians are simply fed-up with the status quo. I believe that many Bulgarians are tired of having to work so hard to make ends meet. They are tired of seeing everyone’s wealth growing while theirs shrinks and shrinks. They see people around them, people they always assume to be mafia, getting rich, while they have barely enough money to keep warm in the winter. Remember, Bulgaria currently has an unemployment rate of 12% and 13% of the people are people are below the poverty line. In parliament, they claim that their politicians are arguing about what to do with the old king’s land and not much else. Ataka wants a drastic change in the government and the way the system works.
Ataka’s preoccupation with Bulgarian Roma is another example of being fed-up. They are making Roma into scapegoats for why things are wrong. They think that Roma are getting all the money from the government and international organizations that should rightfully go to “honest, hard-working Bulgarians” (I find this argument kind of hard to swallow, especially since Roma make up less than 5% of the population). This is very similar to the way racism works in the good ol’ US of A, and I assume most other places. People see others getting “handouts” and want a piece of the action.

2. Pride. Bulgarians are proud people. They are quick to tell a visitor about the beautiful Bulgarian Black Sea coast, mountains and women. They also readily tell anyone willing to listen that once upon a time, Bulgaria, Rome and Byzantium were the only empires in Europe. They also remind you that Bulgaria is one of a handful of countries to have sent a man into space and that the father of the founder of IBM was a Bulgarian. They are embarrassed of the current state of the country and the fact that people don’t pay attention to this small country. Ataka plays upon this pride, and reminds people that they should be proud of their country.

3. The good ol’ days. Many Bulgarians yearn for what they consider the good ol’ days. They remember the communist era when allegedly everyone had what they needed, everyone was employed and there was no risk of losing a job. Life was so much easier, they say. They also remember a mythical time when people worked the land, harvested all day and danced the horo all night long. I think in someway they want those times back, whether they really existed or not. I hate when analogies with Nazi Germany are tossed around, so I will use the more general fascist analogy. Fascists groups thrive on these kind of memories. They love to conjure the images of a pure, idyllic, innocent time full of pure, idyllic and innocent people (all belonging to one ethnicity, of course) and they use these images to hook people. Ataka not only plays on the hate of Roma, but also Turks. They regularly remind everyone that the Turks oppressed the Bulgarians for 500 years. Ataka is employing no different strategy than what has been successful for all the other fascist groups throughout the second half of the 20th century.

4. Anti-BSP. While some people are in love with the idea of the great communist era, they still can’t bring themselves to vote for the current socialist party, BSP. This is the party of the current president and leading party of the parliament. I know a couple people who refuse to vote in this election because they don’t want Ataka to lead the country but they can’t stand the thought of voting for “those communists.” For some people it is less conflicted, they hate the communists and will vote for Ataka to show them that hate. It is not surprising that Ataka started to rise at the same time that BSP did.

5. Anti-globalization. Some people are simply afraid of the upcoming EU accession and the current NATO membership. People are afraid of losing their national rights so soon after gaining them. Some of Ataka’s big issues are anti-privatization and keeping Bulgaria’s nuclear reactor open. They dislike EU’s calls to privatize such things as coal mines (a big deal in Bobov dol) and to shut down the reactor. They want to retain a certain amount of national independence and after so many years of oppression one can hardly blame them. People are also afraid of the unknown. They see some of the birthing pains that other ascending countries have undergone and don’t want the same thing to happen to them. NATO-wise, they are also afraid of being dragged into a war they shouldn’t be fighting. You don’t have to look any farther than Iraq to see that maybe they have a point.

I am by no means an Ataka sympathizer. I am pretty secure in my left-wing politics. I simply want to show that maybe Ataka isn’t gaining in popularity because all Bulgarians hate Roma and Turks. Remember, over 60% of voters voted for the BSP candidate, about triple the amount for Ataka. But there is a significant number of Bulgarians who have legitimate complaints about the current status-quo and fears about the future. I suspect that while Parvanov will win the next election on Sunday, the gap between Parnanov and Siderov will be a lot closer. I’d like to hear what other volunteers think, please post a comment.

what happens when people mess with andy's food

2006-10-12T21:49:00.001+03:00

I had to eat chicken livers again tonight. Of course I love the family I went to visit and so I said nothing about it, but there is no disappointment quite like when you are expecting a nice, tasty, home-cooked meal and the mother brings out chicken livers. It’s kinda like finding out there is no Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny, and that the Tooth Fairy isn’t some philanthropic fairy do-gooder but just your parents getting rid of spare change. Maybe I exaggerate, but chicken livers… {shiver}.

On the other hand, I had one of those This-Is-Why-I-Teach moments today. In my fourth grade class we were talking about pets and what they like and what they don’t like. (Aside: Who, I ask WHO?!, decides that “tarantula” is an appropriate word to teach 4th graders? I can barely pronounce it. I thought their little heads were gonna explode.) In the textbook, one of the characters had a parrot. It so happened that a kid in the class who NEVER talks also happened to have a parrot as a pet. And so I asked him questions about the parrot and he just opened up. He even went on to volunteer to answer other questions. I felt great because I saw an opportunity and took it and maybe, just maybe, that kid will think English is cool. That’s my thought at least. At any rate, it felt a lot better than trying to swallow chicken livers without chewing…

* Thanks to Jessica for the picture from our adventures this summer in Veliko Turnovo

"my big fat bulgarian wedding"

2006-10-09T22:10:00.000+03:00

I went to a wedding at the end of August in Blagoevgrad. The groom was an ex-neighbor of a colleague of mine. You can see her in the last picture as we were coming back on Sunday morning after a lot of partying and not a lot of sleeping. Two weeks after this wedding I went to my brother's wedding. I got to thinking and thought of a top 10 list of differences between this Bulgarian wedding and Nathan's... And being competive, I thought I would keep points...
Who throws a better wedding, Bulgaria or America?
10. America: Bride wears white.
Bulgaria: Bride wears gray.
America:1
9. America: Gifts are put on a table by the entrance.
Bulgaria: Groom, bride, best man and maid of honor come to each table looking for money.
America: 1
8. America: Wedding in church, then party.
Bulgaria: Wedding in city hall, then the church, then the party.
Bulgaria: 1
7. America: No crowns...
Bulgaria: Crowns!
Bulgaria: 1
6. America: No horo
Bulgaria: Horo.
Bulgaria: 1
5. America: Bride didn't smoke.
Bulgaria: Bride smoked like a chimney.
America: 1
4. America: No one threw anything.
Bulgaria: Bouqet AND garter throwing!
Bulgaria:2
3. America: Everyone gets pimped out.
Bulgaria: Bride gets pimped out.
America: 1
2. America: Groom carried bride into party tent so she wouldn't have to step in any puddles.
Bulgaria: No carrying...except the big bag of extorted money.
America: 2
1. America: Best best man speech in the world!
Bulgaria: Some random dude gave a speech... and it was all in Bulgarian!
America: 10!

Final Score:
America: 16
Bulgaria: 5

Sorry, Bulgaria. I still had a good time. Enjoy the pictures!

what does a rpcv and the pope have in common?

2006-10-09T21:17:00.000+03:00

I had the opportunity to meet with a former Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) here in Bulgaria a couple of days ago. There were several current volunteers and this RPCV. We got dinner and I really enjoyed this person's company. S/he was intelligent, thoughtful and everything that I expected in a RPCV. S/he now lives in America and has a good DC job with a think tank. S/he was a volunteer near Bobov dol and everyone I've met who has known s/he has had only wonderful things to say about her/him.

One thing s/he said, however, has been nagging at the back of my mind since s/he said it. We were talking about our SPA projects and s/he laughed and said how strange it was to hear current vounteers stuck "in the Peace Corps bubble." S/he went on to say that once you leave Peace Corps and go back to America you realize how your time here was simply time in a little bubble and it was all for naught. S/he seemed to be saying that you shouldn't worry about whether you are being a good volunteer because it won't really matter once you leave country.

What a sad, cynical thing to say. I have had a hard time lately dealing with people's cynicism lately. I am currently reading a book by Pope John Paul II called "Crossing the Threshold of Hope" (a great book by the way...) and he touched on the same idea. He says in a chapter on youth that something in us has changed. Previous generations had an idealism. They dreamed of better things. They experienced a world that was full of strife and pain. They had to fight for a better world. We are the first generation who have not had to fight for what we have. We have all had a pretty good life, comparatively. All of us Western young people were born into a world free from wars. Our great grandparents had WWI. Our grandparents had WWII. Our parents had Vietnam. But us, we've had what? Desert Storm? Iraqi Freedom. Yea, they're "wars" but how much do they really touch our lives, how much do they make us struggle?

Pope John Paul II says that as youth, we still have that fundamental idealism, "even if nowadays it tends to be expressed mostly in the form of criticism, whereas before it would have been translated into duty." I think the Pope hit the nail right on the head (no pun intended...). Here we are, a generation, like all young people, who are born for glory, born to go out and make the world better, born to do our duty as world changers and we encounter a world that's "not so bad." So what do we do? We sit around and criticize and become cynical. We think there is nothing to drive us, no battles to fight and so we tear apart, piece by piece, what exists. We forget that what we have has been paid for us, by the blood, sweat and tears of countless generations before us.

I think this RPCV is a victim of this generational tendency. It is so common for us to sit around and be cynical that we don't see the value in duty. We feel that the easy life has always been around and that we don't owe anyone anything. We don't feel the attraction of living a life of duty. What is wrong with being in a Peace Corps bubble for two years? What is wrong with spending two years exhausting yourself in the idealistic pursuit of "Changing this World?" What is wrong with fighting for progress, a better world? I don't want to pick on this RPCV; s/he did a great job while s/he was here. S/he just happened to make a comment that crystallized all these feelings I've had lately. The problem is more widespread than her/him.

We all need to stand up and see what is going on here. Our innate desire for glory, duty, our fundamental idealism has sat on the shelf too long and turned into a gooey, smelly, raunchy Cynicism. We are afraid to launch into a quest, a life lived for something bigger than us. I say let us relish this bubble! Let us enjoy this amazing chance we have to live in a bubble and work our asses off for something that is hard, at times depressing and for something we may never see the results of. Let us go into that fight and come back bloodied, sweaty and crying. For we can never know how wonderful we can make this world and ourselves until we push ourselves past our breaking point. Thank you RPCV for reminding me of what is inside me and all of us, just waiting to come out and kick some ass...

a new year in san quentin

2006-10-05T21:11:00.000+03:00

I started a new school year today in the prison here in balmy Bobov dol. I thought I would continue teaching the prisoners I had from last year. I went in all prepared for a lesson with them, I had my Jeopardy! game ready with a “what-did-Andy-do-this-summer” theme. It was awesome. But when I got to the prison, I learned that the administration decided I should get a whole new class. With 19 students. Who know no English. Needless to say, I didn’t use the Jeopardy! game.
It’s like when the new Saved by the Bell cast came on TV. I think it was “Saved by the Bell: The New Class” or something like that, and it was ok, but it was not as good as the original. The weirdest thing was that they tried to do some weird clone-like characters from the original cast. You had the quasi-Zach, and the quasi-Slatter, and the quasi-Kelly but they weren’t the same. They weren’t quite able to touch us in the same way as the original. Walking into that class today was like that. It seemed like a class of weird clones from last year, only these guys were twice the size and had more tattoos. There is the long haired, Italian looking guy who has the I-Don’t-Care exterior hiding the I-Really-Do interior. Then there is the old guy, seemingly content with the world, smiling like a big old medicated sun, in the back. The overachiever in the front, who always answers first. And the big guy in the middle who translates my Bulgarian from Bulgarian to Bulgarian to the rest of the class. But something is missing.
It’s strange to say I really miss those guys from last year. I’m excited by this new opportunity to teach a whole new set of guys, but still I miss the sense of camaraderie that we had last year. Part of me knows that this will return, I will make these guys friends too, but I still miss those wild and crazy guys.

reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated

2006-10-03T14:05:00.000+03:00

I’m alive. I’m still in Bulgaria. I’m not dead. I’m sorry that I have been so delinquent on keeping up with my posts but I’ve been busy. And right now I’m sick. Well, right now I’m recovering but I was sick enough to miss school yesterday and today. It’s been hard for me to do this. Even harder to do no work.

So what’s new with me? Well, my brother got married on September 9th, to a wonderful girl named Meghan. I went home for two weeks as I was the Best Man and of course I couldn’t miss my brother’s wedding. The wedding was a great time, it was in the beautiful little Northern towns of Landaff and Franconia, New Hampshire.

School has also began again. This year I’m teaching 6th, 7th, 10th, 11th and 12th grades. I’m excited for this year because my classes this year are more motivated and have a better grasp on English than some of my classes last year. I will also begin teaching at the prison again on Thursday. The other day I had a hard day at school and actually found myself wishing that I had a class that night at the prison. Even though it is extra work, my classes there tend to relax me and make me feel as if I am making a difference.

I wrote a short essay last night at the request of my program manager that I thought I would share here. It sort of sums up my first year and a half here. Hope you enjoy:
I am sitting here in my apartment, which is unusual for a Monday afternoon, but I am sick. It seems like whenever the seasons change, I get some kind of cough or throat problem. But I think this is good because it gives me a chance to reflect on my year and a half as a TEFL volunteer in Bulgaria. Unfortunately, no simple one word descriptions come to mind; my time here has been full of great highs and lows. But somehow, despite the cold winters, the hard times teaching and learning to make do with little, I remember the good things more clearly.

I remember the look on my 11th grade students last year when they finally understood the Future Perfect Progressive tense. I remember my 12th graders putting all of their end-of-the-year effort into making posters describing the “8 Steps to Success,” which this year will be hung up in our new multimedia room. I remember prisoners, to whom I teach English, being able to hold conversations, in English, with visitors. And I remember the many holidays, birthdays and outings with friends I have made here. But the happiest memory I have came just last night.

My 8th grade class last year was a real struggle for me. There were numerous problems with discipline, motivation and respect. Added to this, for the first semester I was in the classroom by myself. In particular, one boy really got on my nerves. He yelled in class, never did his homework and the only words he knew in English were swears. I tried to work hard with him, like all the students. By the end of the year, much to my shock, he was doing homework, sitting in the front of class, and actually chastising other students for their poor behavior. This year he has moved to a technical school and he told me that his class is divided into a slower class and more advanced for English. He told me with a smile that he was in the advanced class.

I joined the Peace Corps in part because of the commercials that used to say: “Peace Corps: The toughest job you’ll ever love.” Those commercials have fallen out of usage as of late, but I think they are part of the most powerful and honest advertising campaign I have ever seen. Is the Peace Corps hard? Oh man, is it. Will it challenge you and sometimes beat you down? Of course. But will you always remember these times and will it make a difference in your life and others? Yes. And will your time in country mean something? Without a doubt.

the continuing adventures of guy smiley

2006-05-19T16:57:00.000+03:00

(I tried attaching pictures to this but something is wrong, so that is why there is no pictures, and it's a week late...)

Today was the last day of school for 12th grade. And it didn't come a day too soon. Yesterday, I wanted to do something a little special for them, because while I think they are very lazy, they are good kids and I like them. So I baked a batch of peanut-butter cookies from my secret stash of American-via-Jordan peanut butter, bought some soda and cups and brought some music for a little last-English-class party. Out of 28 students, 4 came. Four! While they thought my music was too strange, at least they liked the cookies .

I was here last year for the seniors last day and so I knew what to expect. Lots of balloons, tears, the senior class officers handing off the school flag to the juniors. I even got smart and hung out in the back of the crowd so when the principal threw the bucket of water down the stairs, I wouldn't be soaked, like last year. One thing I did not expect, however, was to win a Maojor Award.

This year the seniors decided to vote on various categories for teachers. There were categories such as "Strictest Teacher," "Best Dressed Teacher," "Best Teacher," "Shyest Teacher," etc., etc. As the celebration was going on, three representatives from the 12th grade called out the winners. I really wanted "Lowest-grades Teacher," but alas my language tutor got that one. Then they named the three nominees for "Sexiest Male Teacher." I was named second. I could feel everyone's eyes on me. I was sweating. Could it be possible? Could little ol me, really be the sexiest teacher at "SOU Hristo Botev, Bobov Dol"? I held my breath. "And the winner of this category..."-I mentally organized my acceptance speech- "Mr. Pepojiski!" Everyone appaulded. Except me. Mr. Pepojiski?! The gym teacher?! The one with the gut and the receeding hairline?It's rigged!

In the end, I won the "Most Smily Teacher" award. I guess it's an honor to get any award, and this one came with a certificate suitable for framing, but still seriously: "The Most Smily Teacher?!" I feel like I should be a motivational speaker and not an English teacher. Oh, well. Next week we have the senior ball in Sandanski, I still have time to plot my revenge. Call me Mr. Smiley, we'll see about that...

don't forget who we are...

2006-05-01T12:16:00.000+03:00

I was doing some searching on the internet today, (after the quizzes) and found this speech, given first by Robert F. Kennedy in 1966 in South Africa and again repeated at his funeral by his brother Edward. I think this short speech, more than so many others, shows not only what is wrong with politics today but what we should be working for. What ever happened to this idealism in America? What ever happened to the idea that we, normal citizens of the world, can change bad, evil things, not through exclusion and demonizing but by love and cooperation? I know I try desperately everyday to cling to these ideas, and it is hard. But I hope, that though simple acts everyday, all around the world we can not only recover this vision but make it a reality. Please take a few moments to read these words, read them aloud, and feel the power of the words and the hope that RFK was feeling. Remember as he said: “Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not”

"There is discrimination in this world and slavery and slaughter and starvation. Governments repress their people; millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich and wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere. These are differing evils, but they are the common works of man. They reflect the imperfection of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, our lack of sensibility towards the suffering of our fellows. But we can perhaps remember -- even if only for a time -- that those who live with us are our brothers; that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek -- as we do -- nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men. And surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. The answer is to rely on youth -- not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to the obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. They cannot be moved by those who cling to a present that is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger that come with even the most peaceful progress.

It is a revolutionary world we live in, and this generation at home and around the world has had thrust upon it a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived. Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation; a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth; a young woman reclaimed the territory of France; and it was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the 32 year-old Thomas Jefferson who [pro]claimed that "all men are created equal."

These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the globe.

For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. Like it or not, we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history. All of us will ultimately be judged, and as the years pass we will surely judge ourselves on the effort we have contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that event.

The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society. Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live."

Check out other important American speeches at American Rhetoric .

well, i got some bad news and i got some good news

2006-05-01T10:27:00.000+03:00

While I might not be truly American, at least I would pass the citzenship test with a 100%...
Happy May Day!

You Are 53% American

Most times you are proud to be an American.
Though sometimes the good ole US of A makes you cringe
Still, you know there's no place better suited to be your home.
You love your freedom and no one's going to take it away from you!

How American Are You?

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 10 out of 10 correct!

Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test?

rivers, bets and a crazy little thing called love

2006-04-25T21:30:00.000+03:00

I spent this last mini-break in my former Host Site of Krichim. I had a great time. I celebrated Orthodox Easter, saw some friends and ate a lot of eggs. I also learned some valuable lessons. In no particular order, the following are …
Five Lessons Learned:

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” Okay, I’ll admit, I didn’t come up with this one. But this weekend, as I visited my host family for probably the fourth time, I realized that each time I come back I expect things to be exactly the same as when I left last July. They’re not. Of course they’re not. Children are a little bit taller, people are a little bit older, friends are a little less familiar, and the town is a little bit different. I am different. But still, I am a little disappointed when I find out how much things have changed. Like my home back in the states, I want everything to be preserved in a state of deep freeze until I make my (triumphant) return. I want things to cease to function without me. I want a place where everything is simple, understood and predictable. But alas, this doesn’t happen.

Krichim is still the most beautiful town in Bulgaria. I might be a little biased, but I am amazed every time I come back to Krichim and see the beautiful farms, nature, houses, church, mosque and mountains. We went on a hike yesterday to the top of the mountain above the city and as usual I looked down at the town and thought, “this is it.” I watched some men water their cherry orchard, a young family picking lilacs, and some kids having a picnic and I thought that I was in some kind of heaven that the modern world had missed. Even when it rains it is perfect. My friend Tsvetana and I got caught in an afternoon thunderstorm and took refuge in a kindergarten playground. We watched the rain pour down around us and afterwards we watched the sun break through, letting us know that he was sorry for disturbing our walk and we were free to continue.

My home, however, is Bobov Dol. While I think that Krichim is beautiful, and I have a family there, Bobov Dol has become my home. Krichim has become a place to visit. And while this is sad, it is part of the change I talked about. I am happy with my life in Bobov Dol and being a part of the community here. Here I have friends, people who I consider like family, a job, projects, I know shop-owners, and people honk at me. I am happy here and happy when I return after a trip away.

My stubbornness wins out over my pride. I learned this this weekend, when what started out as a simple comment evolved into a bet-to-beat-all-bets. I won’t get into the specifics but suffice it to say that I was right, and even though I might have had to sacrifice my self-respect, my fidelity to the truth won out and I think we are all better for it. And I am 5 dollars richer.

Love never ceases to surprise me with its complexity. I know this isn’t some groundbreaking idea but still, this fact always seems to come up and bite you when you least expect it. I have been dating girls since I was in 4th grade, and yet I still expect love to be simple. It’s not. Things never work out the way you want and nothing is ever perfect. Just when you think you know what you want, something happens, someone looks at you in a certain way and you fall flat on your face. All you can do is give in, give yourself and hope that someone, somewhere is guiding this big ol’ mess we call love.

peter gunn vs audrey hepburn

2006-04-02T23:02:00.000+03:00

So what do you do when you are stuck in the Athens International Airport for 6 hours, and are unable to leave because you have NO (zero, nada, ziltch) money? You sit. And you read. And you listen to your MP3 player. If you are lucky, like me, you have a large collection of some weird stuff. Official Soundtrack for today: the varied works of Henry Mancini. Every one of his songs fits a different possible mood you may have over 5 hours. Nothing makes the seemingly endless boredom more fun than seeing who, in the bustling mass of people who constantly walk by, is walking in step to the Baby Elephant Walk. Next, wanna feel like an international spy typing important messages into your laptop? Why, click over to the theme from the Pink Panther, or just as good, the theme from Peter Gunn. Suddenly that fat woman who only a song ago made you laugh because she was “the baby elephant” is now Helga Vitripchova, Head Undercover Agent of the Greek Wing of the KGB.

Once you are done saving the world from those nefarious double-agents, the “Sweetheart Tree” comes on and makes you think, once again, about that new girl who since yesterday has never been far from your thoughts. After this beautiful little song ends, “Moon River” comes on and you try to act like you are a tough guy and not listening to the most poignant song ever written.

Finally once you get all in the lovey-dovey, life-is-all-roses-and-wine mood, the second greatest movie theme-music composer, John Williams, comes on and you become Darth Vader!! Love flies right outta your head and your only desire is to rule the Universe!! “Wooooh-hoooh {Darth Vader sounds} What is thy bidding, my Master?”

finding andy in jordan?

2006-03-29T16:59:00.000+03:00

I will be gone for the next two weeks. I will be visiting family in Jordan, riding camels, floating in the Dead Sea and pretending I am Indiana Jones in Petra. I will try to post some stuff while I'm there but my cousin tells me she has a slower internet connection than I do in Bobov Dol so we'll see. Have a great couple of weeks; to all you teachers and students, have a great vacation, and see you later!

i'm holding my breath...

2006-03-23T21:25:00.000+02:00

It looks like another terrorist group has decided to try the political route. ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna or "Basque Homeland and Freedom”), a Basque terrorist group on the border of Spain and France has recently announced that it will call a cease-fire, as a prerequisite for entering into a political process. I am interested to see how this goes, maybe if these guys can lay down their weapons and enter into the civil arena, there might be hope for Palestine and Israel.

"say hello to my little friend!"

2006-03-22T11:22:00.000+02:00

Well, today I woke up with a headache from a na-gosti with my upstairs neighbors and didn't feel like going to school. But I noticed something different this morning: I could see! The sun got up before me! That meant only one thing, spring is here!

Still, my head was throbbing and even this little good news couldn't shake it. But, then what was that that just whizzed by my window? Could it be? Yes, it was! The first swallow of the year! As Krali freaked out, trying to pounce through the window, I threw open the curtains to make sure. Yes, it was, the very first swallow!
Normally, I don't get that excited by seeing a little bird, but this year, I am celebrating Baba Marta and still wearing 14 martenitsi on my wrists. With the arrival of this swallow, I was now allowed to take of these red and white (and stinky) bracelets and pins and hang them on trees. And so I did. All the way to school...

I hope you have a great day, (Especially you Sarah, all this pain will pass...). Here in Bobov Dol it is nice and sunny and I can even believe that winter is over. Welcome spring, good riddence Baba Marta, and hello
life without long-johns!

happy st. patrick(ov) day!

2006-03-17T20:01:00.000+02:00

     I’ve been celebrating so many Bulgarian holidays lately that I figured I would go all out and celebrate a holiday I’m familiar with. Thus begin Bobov Dol’s first St. Patrick’s Day. I’ll admit it was pretty lame; there were no parades, no corned beef and cabbage, no green beer (though Bobov Dol was introduced to its first Irish coffee…), there wasn’t even an Irish tricolor in sight. But still I think people won’t soon forget it.
     I woke up this morning dreading going to school. I don’t know why besides the fact that I have been having this feeling of dread/ anxiety for the last couple of weeks. This feeling was compounded by the fact that because of a change in the schedule this week I had a class today, though usually today is a day off for me. I realized, however, as I was standing in my long underwear trying to figure out what to wear that I was sick of feeling like this. I looked at the green tie, suit jacket and slacks in my closet and had an idea. I quickly put together the tackiest greenest outfit I have ever worn (green shirt, green tie, green jacket, green pants and green socks. Each a slightly different shade of green…) and scribbled a quick “Happy St. Patrick’s Day!” (“Честит Св. Патриков Ден!”) sign and walked to school.
     My outfit was quickly noticed by… everyone. At first I was a little sheepish, but after a little while, I forgot I was even wearing it. Bulgaria celebrates many Saint Days and so it was easy to explain this one. But I think people thought the tie and jacket was a little strange…
I guess St. Patrick must have enjoyed my little display, because my day went really well. I went in with a colleague to help her teach a third grade class. If I’m not busy on Fridays, I go in and help her teach this class. The students are the sweetest things I have ever seen and they absolutely love me. They energize me to teach for the next week. Today, I introduced them to “Old MacDonald” and they loved it. Despite the fact that my voice is somewhat akin to the sound a cat in heat makes, we had a great time. They had to try hard from falling out of their seats at different parts. I don’t know what else they learned in class, but I know they went home singing “Here a moo! there a moo! everywhere a moo-moo!” most likely at the top of their lungs.
My next class was my dreaded 8th graders. I had a plan to do some boring activity from the book, but when I walked in they saw my suit, and whistled and clapped. I knew what I had to do. I spent the rest of the class explaining the traditions of this day and, while I almost had to pinch myself to believe it, they understood what I was saying, and (and!) I asked some comprehension questions at the end of the class and they answered! Correctly!
I had lunch with some neighbors, had the world’s best éclair (no exaggeration, whatsoever…), talked about life during communist times and religion in Bulgaria. They even had a shamrock plant (from where, I have no bloody idea) and they pinned a leaf on my jacket.  All in all it was a great day. Hope you all have a great St. Patrick’s Day, and whoever you are, wherever you are, take a moment to share a little of the green!

i need a friend today

2006-03-16T22:07:00.000+02:00

Had a crappy day.
Found a pet that *doesn't* try on an hourly basis to rip my face off.
Posted it on my website.
Enjoy.

adopt your own virtual pet!

"happy 3rd of march!" or "how andy ended up at an ataka rally"

2006-03-10T06:05:00.000+02:00

Last Friday was National Liberation Day here in Bulgaria, similar in many respects to our Independence Day, only colder. I was in Sofia for some work and managed to see some interesting things. Here, in pictures, is my day:
I actually forgot that it was National Liberation Day. We had the day off from school, but because I usually have Fridays off anyway I forgot. But when I got to Sofia, I rounded a corner that leads to the Alexander Nevski Cathedral and saw this. There were representatives from each branch of the military in dress uniforms doing a traditional parade march.

You can say what you want about communist governments, but they sure knew how to do military displays. The former communist military history was very apparent in this march, from the high goose-stepping to the running marches to guy with the bullhorn.

Then the climax came and they raised the flag at the eternal flame. I got a picture of the President examining the troops but I erased later in the day when I needed to free up some memory because I walked right into the middle of...

A BULGARIAN NATIONALIST RALLY!!!That's right. As I was leaving Sofia in mid-afternoon, I crossed back through the center, and ran smack dab into a huge Ataka meeting. For those not in the know, Ataka is the Bulgarian far-right nationalist party whose platform consists primarly of blaming everything on the Turks and Roma.
I don't know how many of you have been in the middle of a huge nationalist rally but I've been to two and they were both scary (I admit I was a bit more frightened at this one. The Republicans don't have quite the same fear Ataka has, though they are working on it...)
There was a lot of booing, and cheering "Ataka!" and playing of that Ataka Charge! song. One of the people who got up to speak greeted the crowd by saying "welcome to those who truly love Bulgaria!" which was followed quickly by "Ataka! Ataka! Ataka!" and lots of "Down with Gypsies, Down with Turks!" Surrounded by the thousands of people, a simple thing as a "boo!" can turn into a very ugly, and hateful thing. Especially being a foreigner. I was thinking of asking people why they were supporting a party that offers little beside scapegoating but I realized that the middle of a xenophobic political rally was not the ideal place for a foreigner to be asking a lot of questions. I just imagined someone shouting "Foreigner" and beating this little liberal to a broken pulp. I was able to smile, however, at a sign someone was holding. It was a movie poster from a movie called "Age of the Han," a movie about the founder of Bulgaria, Han Asparuh (see previous post). Under the picture of the actor was written, "a true Bulgarian." The irony, of course, is that the movie is English, the dialogue is all in English and I think even the actor who played the "true Bulgarian" is, you guessed it, English. But Ataka, like most far-right parties, can't be tripped up by a little thing like the truth...
Moral of the story: (Former) Communists can make a good military parade, but no one throws a rally like Fascists.

"if it wasn't for bad luck, i wouldn't have no luck at all"

2006-03-05T17:28:00.000+02:00

There is a family here in Bobov Dol who is always asking me to come over and visit. I’ll see them on the street and they’ll ask when I’m coming to visit and we’ll decide on a time either later that day or the next day. That time will come around and I’ll go and we’ll have a great visit. The father will break out the chess and absolutely destroy me, or he’ll try to teach me a card game in Bulgarian and I won’t understand a single thing. Or the mother will stuff me until I can’t up with home canned fruits, the most tender meat I have ever had or homemade yoghurt with homemade honey. Those times are great, and though they make me stay longer than I want, and embarrass me with generosity I love visiting them.

The other times, though, it is always awkward. Whenever I leave they always tell me that I don’t need an invitation, just come over whenever. When I do that though, I always pick the worst times to come over. One time I rang the bell and the father came out unshaven in his boxers. Another time, I woke them up (they are older and like to sleep in the afternoon). Today, even though I told them I was coming over this weekend, I caught them right as they were leaving to go visit their parents. So they dropped everything and invited me in and made coffee, and brought out homemade sweets and chocolates and we ended up talking for an hour. The whole time I was thinking, “ohman they hate me.” Once, just once, I would like to pick a time when they didn’t open the door and say “oh, hi, Andy, it’s uh… good to see you…” (Translated from Bulgarian…)

Happy Grandma March (Late)

2006-03-03T17:33:00.001+02:00

Wednesday was March 1st, or in Bulgaria Баба Марта (Baba Marta, "Grandma March"). This is a purely Bulgarian holiday to celebrate the coming spring, but few are sure how it started. Some say it has a historical connection to the founding father of Bulgaria, Han Asparouk. But today the holiday is celebrated by giving red and white bracelets or pins (Мартеници, Martenitsi) to friends and loved ones. They have all kinds of Martenitsi too, some have tassels, some have blue clasps, others have chalga singers, football teams or, my favorite, Alf. The white is supposed to symbolize a long life and red, health. According to tradition, when you see the first stork or swallow of the year, you are supposed to tie your martenitsa to a tree or bury it under a rock and you will have good health for the rest of the year.

I went a little overboard with Martenitsi. I am currently wearing 14 on my wrists. I just kept getting them as gifts from people and I didn't want to offend anyone so I kept putting them on. Now I am stuck with them until I see a swallow or stork. Or the end of March, whichever comes first. It's a neat tradition though, because now wherever you go you see people sporting these things. Little kids, police officers, bus drivers, drunk old guys, everyone! Even the guys at the Atacka rally {see next post}... 11th grade gave me a huge Martenitsa with two traditional figures: the guy is Пижо (Pijo) and the woman is Пенда (Penda). I'm not wearing this martenitsa though, I'm not that hard core...

how do you spell "amphetamine?"

2006-02-22T10:36:00.000+02:00

So I was bad last week with posting. I’m sorry. I’ve been writing a lot, just not posting stuff. I think I would like to write more in the future, but not about stuff I want to post here. Here I am trying to post things about my experiences in Bulgaria, to try to inform people about life here.

Life here. I had dinner with one of my prisoners last nite. He works in the employee cafeteria, but had last nite off so joined me for dinner, kinda. He ate two pieces of cake while I ate cold steak and soup. Apparently he’s been in prison for two years, and hopes to get out soon. He said anytime now. I usually don’t want to know what my students did to get in the big house but he brought it up.

How it was presented was like this (rough translation):
Prisoner X: So what was your profession in America?
Me: Well, I was a student.
Prisoner X: What did you study?
Me: Well, I studied Anthropology.
Prisoner X: {Something I didn’t catch} studied {unintelligible}
Me: What?
Prisoner X: I studied {again, something unintelligible}chemistry.
Me: What? What kind of chemistry?
Prisoner X: {you guessed it, I didn’t understand again} chemistry.
Me: Biological chemistry?
Prisoner X: No, {still didn’t get it} chemistry.
Me: {cue the light bulb… now!} Oh, Synthetic Chemistry!
Prisoner: Yes, that’s how I got in here.
Me: Huh?
Prisoner X: Well, you take a little of this and a little of that and {some gestures with hands} you got Amphetamines.
Me: Oh, gotcha.

So one of my men is a drugmaker. Ok. He got married last year, while in prison, to a woman who he knew before. He hopes to get out in a few months and live with her for the first time. It’s interesting, this guy probably ruined a bunch of people’s lives by making drugs, but you wouldn’t know it from talking with him. He’s an honest guy, works hard in the kitchen, takes English classes, and has one simple wish: to return to live with his wife. I hope he learned his lesson these years in jail and will return to the public a changed man. I’d hate for the next volunteer to have him in their class too.

bird flu, colin farrel and torettes

2006-02-21T19:57:00.000+02:00

     I came home from an awful day at school this afternoon to have one of my neighborhood street kids tell me that the river near our block has Bird Flu. This kid, who looks like a three foot tall Colin Farrell, is usually crazy anyway so I laughed him off and proceeded to my apartment to drown my sorrows in a huge fried egg sandwich. I met another neighbor outside my block and she confirmed what the little Colin said; apparently she found a dead pigeon outside our block and she was waiting for someone to come from the Municipality to collect it.

     I don’t think we really have Bird Flu. I mean, we do have chickens. Lots of chickens. But Bird Flu? It would explain why the kids were so awful today. Even my 11th grade class was horrible. Granted I had them for their last period and I’m sure they were itching to leave but I had to stop several times to get them to calm down. Twelfth grade, the grade that could usually care less, I must say, were pretty good, considering. But 8th grade, oh 8th grade. I have come to the sneaking suspicion that some of the students a.) take crack before or during class, b.) have Tourette's Syndrome, c.) are possessed by the Prince of Darkness or d.) are Neanderthals. It’s a class of all guys. Once upon a time the class did have girls but I think they ate them or something. And today, they just couldn’t stay still or not talk. My new colleague was teaching them and I was in the back trying to discipline them but it was to no avail. I thought my colleague was gonna have a aneurysm which wouldn’t have been that bad because they would have just eaten her too. Near the end of class I thought I had lost a kid. I turned and Cvetozar wasn’t there. I didn’t remember letting any kids out but nonetheless he was gone. At first I was a little happy because I thought they had turned upon themselves and there would be a Ultimate Fighting Championship and I would only have to teach one student. But alas, I happened to turn my head and there he was… hiding in a cupboard in the back of class! This kid is tall too. Anyway, I turned back around and pretended I didn’t see him.

     I think this might have something to do with the nice, freakish weather we are having now. For the first time since November, I didn’t have to wear thermal underwear. Windows were opened. Kids migrated to the other side of the classroom instead of cramming to one side of the room, right next to radiator. And of course, I think once their brains unfroze so did their crazy centers. Oh well, I only have two classes tomorrow. Neither of them are with the cannibals.

happy birthday to me!

2006-02-17T21:12:00.000+02:00

Well I celebrated my first birthday in Bulgaria on Wednesday and it was quite an event. The night before my birthday, which in America is Valentine's Day, in Bulgaria is "Трифон Зарезан" the day of vine cutting. This holiday is the traditional day that the grape vines are cut for the upcoming year, and as such, it is celebrated with lots of wine and rakia. I was invited by a neighbor to go to one of the villages and celebrate there. The night involved a lot of alcohol and dancing. As I had work the next morning, I avoided a lot of the alcohol but I took full advantage of the opportunity to practice my traditional dancing skills.
Then on my birthday morning, I was pleasantly suprised by a call from my friend Ruthie from the states. I brought in my compulsary two boxes of chocolates, sweets and soda to treat my colleagues at school, and then rushed to my first class with 12th grade. There I was treated to a beautiful rendition of Happy Birthday, a delicious cake and a icon of Mary and Child. I blew out the candles and felt like a jerk because I made the students pull out there homework and study for the test the next day. I run a tight ship, bribery will get you nowhere.
Luckily on Wednesdays, I only have two classes and was able to race home after school and start preparing for my bash. I made a little bit of everything, dip, pork, apple cobbler, mashed potatoes, salami (which I had to cut myself, stupid neighbors...), and bread and cheese. At around 3:00, my friend Gergana came over to help me prepare and at 6:00 the guests started trickling in. I have a problem with hosting guests. When I have a celebration, I like to invite everyone I know, and this sometimes leads to trouble. In high school and college, I used to have big parties that always overflowed expectations. On Thanksgiving here, I had 15 guests in this little apartment. If you've seen my apartment, you will know that having 15 people here at one time involves some kind of black magic. This time I did a little bit better and only had 12 guests. Of course, I ran out of dishes and space on the table, and people learned quick to keep track of their personal fork, but at least people had fun, I think.
The discussion over dinner mostly revolved around stupid things I had said in Bulgarian and trips I had taken with neighbors to the villages, to the pool, and other parties. And of course, the discussion meandered into politics and gypsies but I was happy to sit back and enjoy people enjoying themselves.
I want to thank everyone who texted me, or called me, or sent me e-mails or real letters. I appreciated them all and you made me feel very special and loved. Thanks.

the mystery of lawn darts

2006-02-14T17:59:00.000+02:00

I was having a conversation with my friend Jessica today, and we started talking about the Olympics. And as we all know, you can not talk about the intense, unparalleled exhibit of athleticism, courage and training that is the modern Olympics without bringing up Curling. This got us to thinking, what other over-hyped, non-sports are there out there? Lawn Darts. I had to explain them to Jessica, but she caught on quickly. Then I got thinking, what the Hell ever happened to Lawn Darts? I vaguely remember deaths were involved. So Jessica and her amazing computer hacking skills found the info. Apparently they were banned in the US. Too many people getting skull fractures I guess. That, however, also got me thinking, where are our Lawn Darts? Mom, didn’t we have a set? What happened to them?

In a totally unrelated note, if someone has a set of Lawn Darts, Jessica and I would like to talk to you. We are planning a Decathlon of Non-sports for some time in 2007. We are now taking donations. If you have any equipment for Lawn Darts, bowling, horseshoes, ping-pong, badminton, Dwarf Throwing (including, but not limited to a dwarf), croquet, capture the flag, bocce and pool let us know.

grades and theater

2006-02-01T15:10:00.000+02:00

Today was the last day of the first term at school. It has been a hectic last week fitting in term tests, term test retakes, alternate term tests (for students who were too busy to be in their regularly scheduled class for their term test) final projects, and calculating final grades. Today was especially hard because I announced the term grades to the students. Before that though I had to finally give a grade to several students whom I had been dreading giving grades. Some of these kids are in my 12th grade class and deserve to fail. They are lazy, they skip class a lot and when they do show up, they cause disruptions and are just plain nasty. Another teacher, however, pleaded with me to pass them and this colleague is very important to my life here.

Three of the kids are in my 11th class and though they rarely show up to class, they are smart. They are good kids and they understand some English. Both of the boys are nice guys. One I actually didn’t know he was in my class until November 21st, when he first decided to come. When he decides to put in enough effort to show up to class, he participates well, helps me translate and says funny (non-inappropriate) things in English. Since November, he has been showing up more regularly and working harder. The other boy knows no English (expect “Oh, sh--!” whenever I call on him in class), he doesn’t do his homework, or show up for tests. I normally would have no qualms about flunking his sorry ass, but he is the son of that very important person here. I normally hate playing favorites like that but this person is so integral to my life here that I feel I owe her son a passing grade. And finally, the girl. She has showed up to my class 4 times and she too is funny and knows some English. She has a rough family life and has to work all the time.

So what did I do? I must admit I am ashamed to admit it. I passed the three guys from 12th class and the son and failed the girl. I asked some other colleagues what to do about her and they suggested I flunk her. So I did, but now I feel bad about it. And as for the other boy in 11th, I gave him a 4 (a “C” in the American system.). He still argued and wanted a 5 (a “B”).
It’s crazy that back home something like this would be so simple; a kid who never shows up for class, acts like a jerk the whole time, never does his homework or hasn’t learned a thing is failed. It’s simple, you don’t do what’s required, you fail. But here I have to weigh family allegiances, and pleading colleagues who are keys to my emotional and physical well-being along with poverty and domestic disturbances. I’m not naïve enough to believe that this doesn’t happen in America, but it seems so much less prevalent. Maybe I am wrong, and please let me know if I am, but at least at home I think I would feel safer making a stand. There I have a stronger, larger support network and would be working in a system that is more in align with my teaching ethos. Here, when it comes to grading, I constantly doubt myself that the kids are ready to be held up to an American system of grading that values discipline, participation, creativity and effort over rote-memorization, social-network, and group tranquility.

There was a bright light today. Today was the first ever English theater in SOU Hristo Botev, Bobov Dol. Over the last two weeks, my 11th class came up with an idea for a play, wrote it, rehearsed it and today performed the courtroom drama, “Chaos in Sleepy Hollow” before an audience of about 10 students and teachers.

I can tell you that I have rarely before felt such pride for the actions of others. (I think the last time was when I was a Boy Scout leading a group of eight, usually spastic, adolescents boys as they undertook a series of tasks and tests which the efficiency of a SEAL team in the Klondike Derby. Any former Boy Scout patrol leaders out there know exactly what I am talking about…). I was so proud of these boys and girls because not only did they do a great job, not only did they put in a lot of effort but they made the project their own and attempted something that was completely foreign to them.

On Wednesdays, I have two periods with 11th class: fourth and fifth. Right before 4th period two girls from the class entered the teachers room and asked me if they could have the room to themselves for the period so that they could surprise me. I said “yes” partly because I trusted this class and partly because I was intrigued about what they were up to. The next period, I found out. They had brought in make up and costumes and wanted to surprise me because this was not listed in the requirements I had given them for the project. They had taken this on themselves. They had also enlisted the help of a girl from 6th class to act as a Bulgarian Fortune –Teller. I was pleasantly surprised to say the least.

But more than anything, I was proud because they were doing something that they had never been asked to do. I know for a fact that in none of their other classes have they been asked to use this much creativity, taken this much risk and been given this much freedom and responsibility. After seeing the performance, a teacher congratulated me. I told her that she should congratulate them, I was only the editor. She was shocked. She had thought I had made the script and simply given it to them to act out.

During the performance, of course, the student’s accents showed though and made it hard at times to understand what they said. And I’m not sure that “Objection!” and “Sustained!” are the most important English words one needs to know. But I do know that they learned something about creativity, responsibility and pride in a job well done. This, I think, this is the important lesson and maybe, just maybe, why I am here. Bravo, kids.

I'll skip the musaka tonite

2006-01-31T19:29:00.000+02:00

Sweet... Thanks Jessica for the heads up...
Sofia - Bulgarian customs stopped a 75-ton shipment of beef meat from Ireland that may have been frozen since 1984, local media reported on Monday.The meat was sent for testing after officials at the Kulata border pass with Greece noticed that the meat had a bluish colour. Among the papers with the shipment was a 22-year-old health certificate.Experts were to be called in to determine whether the meat, en route to Plovdiv, was really as old, but it was immediately clear that it was not suitable for consumption. The reports did not say where the frozen meat was previously stored.
http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=29&art_id=qw1138626901641B214

i am jack pulido

2006-01-30T15:19:00.000+02:00

     As I sat in the bar Saturday night, drinking my third or fourth double shot of whiskey and practicing my new word of the night, “Божественярско (Bojestvenyarsko),” while Tony The Barman drew a stick figure picture of Tito and his wife in order to explain a joke,  I had a startling realization. You remember in high school, there was always that foreign-exchange student who you thought was a little bit slow? I am him.

In my high school, our foreign exchange student wasn’t actually a foreign exchange student. He was from China, or Taiwan or the Phillipines (I suddenly feel really bad that I can’t remember where he was from…) and his parents owned a Chinese restaurant in town. He had moved to America and wasn’t going back. It always seemed that Jack was around whenever my group of friends got together. I don’t remember inviting him ever, but nonetheless, he was there. People would talk to him and ask him things but it usually had to be translated by another friend into simpler English. He would get invited to parties, to events, to almost everything, but he didn’t say much and he always laughed a split second after everyone else. People would get him to say funny things to others and we would teach him slang. Of course, the next time we would see him, he would use the slang in a particularly inappropriate time, and that would make us crack up all over again, accompanied by plenty of high fives and thumbs up.

I always thought that Jack was slow. I thought that because he didn’t say much and didn’t always understand everything, he was stupid. I’ll be honest, I thought Jack was a little retarded. And now I think I am paying for thinking that. I realize that I was the person who was ignorant. Maybe it was because I never took the time to really get to know Jack. It wasn’t until our senior year of high school that I learned Jack was really into Anime and could draw some great pictures. But there is something bigger. I used to judge people too quickly. I think I still do. All too often, I did and do make a judgment on people by the way they speak, what they talk about, or what they are interested in. Poor Jack, because he spoke slow and with a strong accent, couldn’t talk about deep philosophy and wasn’t interested in track, history, or classic literature, I assumed he was a waste of time for me. It was too hard to talk with him and too hard to connect with him.

I said now I am paying for being this ignorant, but that’s not right. I am so lucky here. I am a foreigner in a foreign land speaking a very foreign tongue, but I have people who are patient enough to put up with that. I have learned quickly enough to recognize that absolutely demoralizing phrase: “Не може да разбира. (He can’t understand).” But I have also learned to recognize the equally uplifting I-can-do-anything-get-me-a-gold-star! phrase “Браво, Анди! (Bravo, Andy!).” I have been amazed to see people take the time to pantomime a joke or even find a paper and pen to draw it out. I have been invited over and over again to parties and banquets, even though most of the time I just stew in my seat, drinking their alcohol and wishing they didn’t play that damn Pop-folk so loud. I still have a hard time figuring out why these people are putting this much effort into getting to know me, especially when I couldn’t be bothered to put in 1/100th of the effort to get to know Jack. At the end of the day, I give up trying to figure it out and chalk it up to love. When it comes down to it, this is love. A love that is divinely human. Reaching out to someone simply because they need it. I need this attention and this support and this camaraderie. Everyday, I am thankfully to be here and experiencing this love.

And so, though I graduated from college with a High-honors degree in Anthropology, I can speak eloquently on the leading causes of the Peloponnesian War, I read and understood Tess of the D’urbervilles, Heart of Darkness and Catch-22, and I can name the capitals of most of the countries in this world, I still sound like a moron when I get “watermelon” and “lover” mixed up in Bulgarian. But I am beginning to be okay with it. I am accepting that I am Jack Pulido.

where are you captain planet?

2006-01-29T11:30:00.000+02:00

Here are two summarized articles by The New York Times and The Washington Post about global warming. It’s scary stuff, and unfortunately not enough people are paying attention. I remember watching Captain Planet when I was little and being thankful that there weren’t bad guys in real life like there was on the show. People who were driven only by greed, willing to sacrifice anything to line their own pockets. I have come to realize that there are people like this in real life, only in real life we don’t have a Captain Planet. The New York Times article talks about how the administration is trying to silence NASA scientists from speaking out about what they have found. What was the name of that villain on Captain Planet that was a freaky half pig/ half man thing? I think I found his real life counterpart…

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001920362

funny brownies

2006-01-26T23:24:00.000+02:00

Today was my second day of my mini-vacation. What did I do? Not much of anything. I taught my lessons at the prison. I baked some “molasses squares” but seeing as I can’t find molasses in Bulgaria, I used dark honey. A colleague of mine has a birthday party tomorrow and she loves trying American sweets. These sweets taste a little weird though. I don’t know if I burned them or the fumes from my stove got into them. Fumes from a stove? Yeah forgot to mention that… Since July I have been having an on-again/off-again relationship with my stove. Sometimes it decides to work and sometimes it decides to blow up. So today the municipality made good on its October promise to get me a new one. But as soon as I start trying to cook with it this evening, smoke starts pouring out of it. Like the idiot I am I keep going. “Maybe, this is what happens with all new appliances” I say. I leave the kitchen to write some emails and return to check on my fake-molasses squares and my kitchen is full of smoke that smells oddly like burning paint. I open a window and keep going. Now my fake-molasses squares taste like… burning paint. And honey. And my lungs feel funny.
Lesson learned: I’m not quite sure, I think I lost that brain cell when I was cutting up the squares…

warriors and wusses

2006-01-25T10:43:00.000+02:00

I don’t know if I exactly agree with this guy but what he has written about the troops in Iraq at least makes you think. Whether you have a yellow ribbon on your car or think that we should call the soldiers baby-killers, read this.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-oe-stein24jan24,0,4430346.column?coll=la-headlines-pe-california

andy finally goes snowboarding, bulgarian stylin'

2006-01-24T22:40:00.000+02:00

I went snowboarding in Bansko this weekend with Arin, Maegen, and Maegen’s counterpart, Yulia. It was pretty sweet, though the trails weren’t quite as challenging as I would have liked. The views were absolutely beautiful, much more beautiful than any ski area in New Hampshire. Though I think the skier etiquette in New Hampshire is a little bit better. Halfway through the day, I was tearing down this trail and was in good control when some yahoo cut me off. Trying to avoid hitting him and a group of guys in the middle of trail who decided that it was a good place to talk, I busted my ass and went face first down the slope. I clipped two of the afore-mentioned guys with my board and their skis flew off it several directions. When I finally came to a stop, I realized that my tail bone had taken the brunt of the crash. The guys limped over to me and asked if I was okay. I was a little dazed and forgot to ask the same. But I could tell by the things they said to each other about me that at least their jaws weren’t injured. Next time, a place a little cheaper and fewer crazy guys.

frozen snot

2006-01-24T22:03:00.000+02:00

I have no school for the rest of the week because it’s snot-freezing cold here. I wish I could take credit for such an accurate weather description but alas, I heard it from someone in college. For those who have never been lucky enough to experience snot-freezing cold, it’s when you are in a place so cold that the snot in your nose freezes (sure it sounds gross and if you are offended, I’m sorry. But when you think about it, there is actually nothing to be that offended by. Everyone has snot. Some of us more than others, of course, but still everyone has it. And as long as it’s not hanging outta your nose or, God forbid you’re picking it, there’s nothing really to be grossed out by…). It actually makes a good indicator of the current weather. You can measure the severity of the weather by how long it takes to freeze. It’s not as accurate as a thermometer, of course, but who actually carries around a thermometer? One week in college, Hanover was colder then the North Pole. That’s cold. That’s instant snot freeze. But here, in Bobov Dol today, I would give it a three minute snot freeze. Not bad, but still enough for me to wear my “Hey, check it out, it’s a Kenneth Cole! But I bought it second hand at the Peace Corps clothing sale for 2 leva and it couldn’t keep a nuclear reactor warm in the middle of the Death Valley” winter hat, my hood from my trusty 2004 Red Sox Championship Sweatshirt and the hood from The Best Snowboarding Jacket Ever.
So for the record, a 3 minute snot freeze is cold enough for Bobov Dol to cancel school for the rest of the week. It’s called a “Durvana Vakantsia” which roughly translated means a “wood vacation.” The school can’t stay warm enough to prevent the kids from sticking to exposed metal so they cancel it. Not bad, from my vantage point. Unlike America, the kids don’t have to make this time up at the end of the year. I heard that we teachers will have to come in in the summer and make up the time. But I would much rather sit in the teachers’ room for a couple hours in my man-pris and a T-shirt in June than see my breath while I yell at Ivan for playing with a shard of glass in January. At least it’s too cold for them to blow snot rockets at each other.

another waste of time

2006-01-22T18:23:00.000+02:00

where are you right now?	In my apartment in Bobov Dol
what did you do today?	I traveled from Razlog after a weekend snowboarding and visiting other volunteers. Now I am trying to do some tsuff for classes tomorrow while reading "High Fidelity."
three things that help you get through the day?	My Bulgarian friends, the internet and books.
who did you last talk to on the phone?	Maegen, telling her that I took the wrong trail at the ski area and had snowboarded halfway to Greece.
favorite food:	Musaka.
favorite music:	Ska. Punk. (Ha, "ska" looks funny after "Musaka")
drink of choice:	Beer
*Complete:*
In ten years:	I will be either a famous anthropology professor who always appears on NPR to comment on recent developments in the border conflicts. Or be an expert in international security/ crime issues. I will be married to a beautiful, kind woman and we will have two kids and looking to adopt a third. I will have my little apple orchard with an apiary and during the spring I will harvest maple syrup. I will have my little woodworking workshop, a big old hound dog and an old pick up truck. We will be living in Northern New Hampshire trying to get as far away from Massholes as possible.
Your ideal man/woman:	My ideal woman is beautiful, smart and kind. She would put up with me being a jerk sometimes, and being stupid usually. She would also not be afraid to travel around the world on whatever adventures we get into. She would have to be passionate and caring. A good mother. And of course, she would have to have curly hair.
The perfect vacation:	Someplace warm.
If you threw a dinner party and could invite any three people, living or dead, who would you ask to come:	My grandfather, Ghandi and Frederik Barth
*Right Now:*
are you in a relationship?	Nope.
do you have a crush on anyone?	Not really.
are you happy?	Yes.
what are you listening to?	A punk mix my cousin Fuff made when I went vto visit her in Geneva.
what are you thinking about?	God.
is it raining?	Nope.
what are you reading?	"High Fidelity," "Shake Hands With the Devil," "Silent Night" and "Freakonomics"
are you angry with anyone?	No.
*When was the last time:*
hugged someone:	When I said goodbye to Sarah last weekend.
cried:	The summer.
went to church:	Yordanov Den
read a book you gave to someone else to read:	Today.
went to a party:	Tuesday
ate rabbit:	The beginning of the month.
completed a crossword puzzle:	Never?
got a present:	Last week.
CREATE YOUR OWN! - or - GET PAID TO TAKE SURVEYS!

crime wave hits bobov dol

2006-01-18T16:18:00.000+02:00

I don’t know why I did it. Normally, I shy away from buying frivolous things but when I saw that package of sliced salami in the store, I was intrigued. See, normally I only find non-sliced salami in any store here. It comes in a long stick and if you want to make a sandwich you must cut off a couple of disks. I don’t like doing this because my knife sucks, the salami is really hard and it takes time. Maybe I was lazy and wanted something a little easier. Maybe I was missing home and that package of sliced pig products reminded me of Mom’s sandwiches. Maybe I wanted something a little different. I don’t know but after a week of staring at that lonely package in the display case, I broke down and paid the few extra stotinki for the package of sliced salami.

I know it was frivolous. I mean, how lazy am I that I can’t even cut my own meat? But does that mean that it had to be taken away from me in such a dastardly way? Let me explain. It started with my refrigerator. Once upon a time, my refrigerator used to be a normal refrigerator. Put something in there and it kept it cool. Since winter began, my refrigerator has become a deep freeze machine. Beer, cheese, mayonnaise, no matter what, it goes in liquid, pliable or gelatinous, magically comes out a solid rock. So I have taken to putting things out on my terrace, where believe it or not, the Bulgarian winter is warmer than my refrigerator. And so when I bought my prized sliced salami, of course, out to the terrace it went.

I had one sandwich with it and I’m not gonna lie, it was good. But alas, one sandwich was all I was gonna have of those little slices of Heaven, because sometime between yesterday afternoon and this afternoon my upstairs neighbors staged a daring ninja-attack and stole my salami. Here is the crime scene:
Employing at least four different hooks (three that failed and presumably one that didn’t), my upstairs neighbors lowered down a string and hooked the bag that held my salami treasure and a new package of cheese. Luckily, the cheese fell out of the bag and I was able to save it. But, unfortunately, my salami didn’t, and is now suffering a much more grisly fate. Like Golam and his magic ring, I wanted to have something special for myself. I got too attached to my salami and the world showed me what happens when you love something too much: It gets taken away. I learned my lesson. I will not allow myself to get so attached to a stupid object. Still, I hope those bastards upstairs choke on it.

taking down the decorations

2006-01-16T20:54:00.000+02:00

Well I held out as long as I could, but today was finally the day I decided to put away my Christmas decorations. There weren't a lot of them to begin with with but still...
I want to thank everyone who sent me a Christmas card. I never realized how important and wonderful a card can be until this year. I used to think that a card was merely something you opened before you opened the really important thing: the present. This year I realized that the card symbolizes the important thing: Love.

So thank you Tsvetana, my very special friend in Krichim. Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Clancy, my friends in Concord who hooked me up with the most delicious peanut-butter cookies. Thank you Nathan and Meghan, my big brother and his fiance. Thank you Rosen, a student from my class at the prison. Thank you Vecelika and Georgi, the prison psychologist and her husband. Thank you to my 11th grade class. Thank you Jessica, one of my very best friends in the whole world. I will keep your cards in a very special place.

lazy

2006-01-13T22:41:00.000+02:00

I need to post something. It’s been a while. But I am tired. Tomorrow. Hmmmm, I can’t back that up, maybe the day after that. Or the day after that…

avoiding work

2006-01-09T19:48:00.000+02:00

*TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF - The Survey*
Name:	Andrew R. Hamilton
Birthday:	February 15, 1982
Birthplace:	Stoughton MA
Current Location:	Bobov Dol, Bulgaria
Eye Color:	Brown/ green
Hair Color:	Brown
Height:	6'
Right Handed or Left Handed:	Right
Your Heritage:	I'll go with American
The Shoes You Wore Today:	My new bulgarian boots
Your Weakness:	Girls with curly hair, and "Friends"
Your Fears:	Being paralyzed
Your Perfect Pizza:	Pepperoni, and hot sausage
Goal You Would Like To Achieve This Year:	Be a better friend
Your Most Overused Phrase On an instant messenger:	Damn!
Thoughts First Waking Up:	Where is the snooze?
Your Best Physical Feature:	My expressive eyebrows
Your Bedtime:	10:00
Your Most Missed Memory:	My parents and friends back home
Pepsi or Coke:	Coke
MacDonalds or Burger King:	Burger Kind
Single or Group Dates:	Couple. Single dates are just pathetic.
Lipton Ice Tea or Nestea:	There's a difference?
Chocolate or Vanilla:	Vanilla
Cappuccino or Coffee:	Coffee
Do you Smoke:	No
Do you Swear:	Sometimes
Do you Sing:	Yes, by myself
Do you Shower Daily:	Yes
Have you Been in Love:	Yes
Do you want to go to College:	Went and want to go again
Do you want to get Married:	Uh, yes definitely
Do you belive in yourself:	Yes
Do you get Motion Sickness:	No
Do you think you are Attractive:	Yes
Are you a Health Freak:	I was, I'm a recovering health freak
Do you get along with your Parents:	Yes
Do you like Thunderstorms:	Yes
Do you play an Instrument:	Used to
In the past month have you Drank Alcohol:	Uh yea
In the past month have you Smoked:	Nope
In the past month have you been on Drugs:	No
In the past month have you gone on a Date:	Nope
In the past month have you gone to a Mall:	Na uh
In the past month have you eaten a box of Oreos:	Nope
In the past month have you eaten Sushi:	No
In the past month have you been on Stage:	Nope
In the past month have you been Dumped:	Kinda
In the past month have you gone Skinny Dipping:	No
In the past month have you Stolen Anything:	No
Ever been Drunk:	I'm drunk right now!
Ever been called a Tease:	Yes
Ever been Beaten up:	No
Ever Shoplifted:	No
How do you want to Die:	Saving someone else
What do you want to be when you Grow Up:	Good question
What country would you most like to Visit:	Argentina
Best Clothing Style:	Rugged, stylish chic
Number of Drugs I have taken:	None
Number of CDs I own:	Crapload
Number of Piercings:	None
Number of Tattoos:	1
Number of things in my Past I Regret:	1
CREATE YOUR OWN! - or - GET PAID TO TAKE SURVEYS!

we have an oil baron as king, but still no oil

2006-01-08T11:06:00.000+02:00

Well, it seems that we finally have some form of leadership in America, unfortunately it is coming from Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan President. The Venezuelan government is providing cheap oil to various poor communities in New England and New York, including the Bronx, Boston, and four Native American tribes in Maine. “James Sappier, the Penobscot tribal chief, said snow was falling in Maine and praised Chavez for his help. ‘We appreciate him very much as a leader,’ he said. ‘It's been said he's one of us. His thinking is like ours.’” I guess after 200 years of neglect, tribal members in Maine have decided to look somewhere else for help.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/05A5D504-3D56-4D91-856F-12B730D0BBB2.htm

death defying stunts!

2006-01-06T19:38:00.001+02:00

Today in Bulgaria is Yordanov Den, the nameday for all people with names originating from Jordan, or God. Such names include Yordanka, Yordan, Bojidar and so on. To celebrate this day, it is a tradition in Bulgaria to recreate the baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan. In Bulgaria, recreating this event means cajoling teenage boys to jump in the town’s largest body of water after a cross. Always interested in seeing the eternal battle between pride and the body’s natural aversion to hyperthermia, I accepted the invitation by a colleague to go to a village and celebrate the day.
The name of the village is Saparevo and it is a small but charming place. I have been there previously to pick potatoes and celebrate another holiday at a local monastery. My colleague’s family lives in an old family house that still has an outhouse. I arrived in the village with two of my students and we immediately went to the church where I was greeted by my colleague.

The church is beautiful. It is modeled after the famous Rila Monastery and it is full of icons and murals. Like all the Orthodox churches I have been in, every space is full of icons, paintings, flowers, gilded objects or lights. For someone used to a rather stoic Catholic church, walking into an Orthodox church is quite a change. After waiting around for ten minutes, listening to part of the mass, lighting some candles and leaving coins on some of the icons, my colleague, her daughter and I left to get a coffee in the café.
I could just imagine the look on my mom’s face if I asked in the middle of Sunday mass if we could leave and get a coffee. But here it here it seemed normal, as people were coming and going into the church throughout the whole mass. In the café, I resolved a bet I had previously made with my colleague. What kind of measurement system does England use? Quick, anyone? The answer: both. According to several websites, England uses both metric and customary in different circumstances. We called it a draw and promised to treat each other to a coffee. As we left the café to return to the mass, I noticed not only my shaking hands from my third cup of espresso but also the people gathering around the town’s water fountain.
Back at the church, the mass continued. It is quite a different experience attending an Orthodox service. It would be an ADD kid’s worst nightmare. Not only were people coming and going throughout the whole thing, but people were walking around lighting candles, talking, singing, laughing, laying money on the icons and kissing portraits of the saints and the holy family.

The church was also full of the smell of fresh baked goodies that people had brought to celebrate the day. As it was a Friday, the church was full of mostly cute, little, hunched-over баби (grandmothers) with their head scarfs and canes. In the middle of this, the priest was delivering his sermon. Finally, he blessed the food that the churchgoers had brought and told the people that the celebration was moving to the center. We left the church and milled around front, trying the dishes that everyone had bought.
In the center the people gathered around the water fountain. Standing on the edge of the fountain were the young boys ready to jump in for glory and frostbite.

Again the priest delivered another sermon and blessed the fountain. The moment was near. The boys tensed. The crowd moved closer to the fountain. With a quiet splash the priest tossed a large cross into the fountain.

If the cross had been made of solid gold, I doubt the boys could have jumped in faster. They wrestled a little and finally one boy came up with the glistening cross. He and the others jumped out quickly and ran to the priest for their small prizes. And just as quickly as they had jumped into the fountain, they ran home, in search of warm clothes and a fire. After things had calmed down, the crowd once again surrounded the priest to be sprinkled by holy water, to kiss the cross and be blessed.

After my colleague received her blessing, we started the walk back to the house anxious to warm up and eat stuffed grape leaves, pig fat, winter salad and, of course, raikia. Another day in the village that will never be forgotten. Happy Yordanov Den everyone!

new year's resolution part I

2006-01-06T18:06:00.000+02:00

Good thing one of my New Year’s resolutions isn’t to be more prompt. I usually don’t make New Year’s resolutions because I think we should be constantly trying to improve ourselves. But this year I felt like I would give it a shot and see how it works out. So here it goes… Basically, my resolutions fall into two categories. This year will be the year of the Two F’s for me: Friendship and Faith.

Friendship. I have learned a lot about friendship in 2005. I have learned a little more about what true friends are and I have learned how important they are. My friends and family from home have been integral in me adapting to my present circumstances. Though they do not know it, every little gesture they made towards me has been magnified over the many miles that separate us. Whether it is the weekly phone call I receive from my mom, talking to my father and stepfather on Google talk, talking to Jeff and Jessica on Google talk, the random conversations with my cousins, the packages from my brother and Meghan, the many emails from Dartmouth friends, the Christmas card and peanut butter cookies from the Clancy’s, all these actions have helped me to stay a happy, and mostly optimistic young man. Though I am slow getting back to all of them, I appreciate them more than I show.

I have also learned from my new friends. Since I have arrived in Bulgaria, I have made many, many friends. I have a host family in Krichim that love me and put up with me when I am moody and tired. They feed me, shelter me, give me raikia and love me more than would seem possible considering our differences in language and culture. I also love my friends Desi and Tsvetana in Plovdiv and Krichim who first had incredible courage to speak to a total foreign stranger in a tongue they do not feel completely comfortable using. Then they have continued to show courage by staying with me for 8 months now.

In Bobov Dol, I have been equally blessed. I have a town full of people who feed me, look after me, invite me to their homes, villages and excursions to the pool, or mountains. They greet me on the street and have a generosity that I have never before experienced. I want to especially mention Galya, my big sister here in town. I am also lucky enough to have her as my counterpart. She tells me when I am doing something stupid, helps me when I need it, makes me have fun when I would rather sleep and makes me laugh when I feel like killing every child younger than 18. Also my language tutor Gergana and her husband Spaz, my colleagues Snejana and Mitko. And my other friends Martin, Stefka, Vecelika, Maggie, Sonya, Vasco, Kraci and all the others.

I also must mention the other volunteers I have met. My training site members became like my American family away from home. And they showed me that love doesn’t have to take a long time but can happen over two months. Though I don’t see other volunteers as often, they have been there when I needed them, and they have commiserated with me when I felt overwhelmed. Especially my friends Sarah and Liz; they have been there on Google talk when I felt particularly low.

Not everything has been peachy though. I have learned what false friends look like. I have learned that some people are only meant to come into your life for a short time and though they teach you a lot about you and things much, much greater then you, they leave just as quickly as they came into it. I will always treasure what I have learned from them, but I am saddened that we could not be for each other what we needed.

All these experiences have made me value friendship more than ever before. I used to think that friends were important but in the end I was more important then these people who move in and out of your life. Hey, I also used to think that Carrot Top was funny, we all make mistakes. I now realize that real friends don’t really leave your life. Though you might not talk to them for a long time or see them, though you may forget their birthdays, or even call them mean names, when it really comes down to it, they are there for you. All you have to do is ask.

So my first New Year’s resolution is to be a better friend. I have been blessed with such good friends and family, that I have all too often taken them for granted. Living alone, in a foreign land, I have learned not to take anything for granted. I have been forced to rely on the goodwill of total strangers. In these times I see how truly lucky I am. I never want to lose the friends I have. These special people are in my life for a reason and to lose them would be a tragedy. I wish they could all meet each other, they would have a great time. I resolve to spend more time growing my friendships and understanding these people on a more profound level. If that means I have less time to prepare for work, or eat a big meal or even sit home and watch “Friends” so be it, I prefer the real Friends I have.

Part II: Faith. Stay tuned.

bushism of the day

2006-01-06T07:53:00.000+02:00

This is the man we have as Commander- in- Chief? Are you kidding? "As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself—not here at the hospital, but in combat with a cedar. I eventually won. The cedar gave me a little scratch."—After visiting with wounded veterans from the Amputee Care Center of Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas, Jan. 1, 2006

internet goes down

2006-01-05T14:59:00.000+02:00

Sorry to all my friends and family for the last couple of days. I haven’t been ignoring you, my internet was down. Hope you are doing well. And I’ll be sending out e-mails out as soon as I get a chance!

that amazing drip, drip, drip

2006-01-05T14:49:00.000+02:00

Considering how much of it I drink, I figured I should find out how it is made. Today I did. Rakia. My experience in Bulgaria would not be the same without it. For those uninitiated, rakia is a national alcohol, most closely resembling brandy. It is used to celebrate a variety of occasions, ranging from weddings, the purchase of new furniture, name days, birthdays, having guests, being guests, New Years Eve, New Years Day and the day after New Years Day and simply watching Big Brother. It can be bought in a store but the best and strongest kinds are made at home.

So today, on my vacation, I woke up at 7:00 am to join my friends in making Rakia. We went to their house in a village near Bobov Dol and started, what turned out to be a long, boring and cold process. Don’t get me wrong I had a great time, but it was because of the company, not the actually distillation process. I don’t know what I was expecting: dancing? singing? magic? In the end, it was just alcohol pouring into a pot.

To make rakia, you first need fruit. Most people use grapes. Some people make it from pears or apples, and my friends in Krichim make it from strawberries. Today we used grapes and quince. So you put your fruit of choice in a big barrel, add a lot of water and sugar and let it sit a couple of months. After this time, the fruit ferments (read: turns moldy and smells like that time I left out that bottle of apple cider in my dorm room for all of fall term…), you are ready to distill it. That’s where I came in today. My friend Spaz, Gergana and their two sons Mario and Simion brought the buckets of moldy fruit to the distiller and poured them into the big cistern. Spaz attached the right pipes, started the fire under the cistern to boil the moldy fruit, and started the hose that would bring cold water to change the steam back into liquid and, like magic, into rakia.

And unfortunately that’s it. You boil the moldy fruit juice, it turns to steam, travels through a long spiraled tube that is emerged in cold water. When the hot steam hits the cold pipe, it turns into liquid and drips out in a pot. You then take the pot and pour it into a huge bottle (note: “bottle” can be translated into three words in Bulgarian. The same with “nail.”). And Zazaam! You got rakia. So if you thought it was gonna be some amazing, life changing event, I’m sorry. It’s just dripping water. But oh man, the fun that magic water brings…

Check out my pictures!

a retraction

2006-01-01T18:42:00.000+02:00

I got duped, like the rest of the world. That kid who said he got visited by agents from Homeland Security for checking out a Mao Zedong book, admitted last week that he made the whole thing up. I am sorry I insinuated that the US government tried to derail my thesis project. Please don’t fire me. I guess it was a damn Princeton student after all!
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/12-05/12-24-05/a01lo719.htm

home sweet home

2005-12-31T15:28:00.000+02:00

I know I said I was going out with friends, and I am but I just HAD to know what they said about New Hampshire. And summoning all my native knowledge, I figured out how to answer the questions right to get NH. Most of what I found I liked. Freedom: Good. Independence: Good. "Live Free or Die" motto: GOOOOOD! The thing about Libertarians, that doesn't really fit, they aren't real New Hampshirites. But the worst part? Look at the last line, that was a low blow. I don't find jokes about the Old Man funny. Bastards. Ok well except one: "Did you hear they came up with a new name for the Old Man on the Mountain? Oh yea, what is it? Cliff."

You're New Hampshire!

You're obsessed with independence, and may even be a libertarian. For
you, freedom means doing whatever you like without worrying about the petty concerns of
others. You're a big fan of throwing out slogans that threaten those who might infringe
on your freedom. And yes, everything is set in stone for you. You built your house on the
granite. Sadly, your greatest material inspiration recently fell down and can never be
rebuilt.

Take the State Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

not quite indiana jones...

2005-12-31T15:13:00.000+02:00

Wow this is embarrassing, I’m not even a state… Well, I guess it could have been worse, I could have been a Southern State… (It was a joke, don’t post nasty comments, it was a JOKE!!)

You're Puerto Rico!

While you refuse to pay taxes, you sometimes wonder if the consequences
of this are taking away all of your potential power and influence. But every time you
think about offering to pay taxes, you realize how little cash you have on hand to begin
with. Most of the folks around you look down on you and your state of limbo, but you're
trying to play both sides of the coin to your full advantage. Out of the clear blue sky,
you just became a huge fan of the Montreal Expos.

Take the State Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Ok, last quiz, I’m going out to see some friends…

i couldn't agree more...

2005-12-31T14:12:00.000+02:00

You scored as Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones is an archaeologist/adventurer with an unquenchable love for danger and excitement. He travels the globe in search of historical relics. He loves travel, excitement, and a good archaeological discovery. He hates Nazis and snakes, perhaps to the same degree. He always brings along his trusty whip and fedora. He's tough, cool, and dedicated. He relies on both brains and brawn to get him out of trouble and into it.

Indiana Jones

75%

Batman, the Dark Knight

75%

The Amazing Spider-Man

71%

William Wallace

58%

Maximus

54%

Lara Croft

54%

Captain Jack Sparrow

46%

James Bond, Agent 007

46%

Neo, the "One"

46%

The Terminator

33%

El Zorro

25%

Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0
created with QuizFarm.com

merry christmas!

2005-12-31T01:22:00.000+02:00

My friend Tsvetana and I made Krichim's first punk snowman on Christmas Eve. It's name was Снеженайтор (Sneshanator). Unfortunately, in Bulgaria, snowmen have the same life expectancy as in America and he was quickly demolished by local hooligans. I hope you had a better Christmas than Снеженайтор. Come back tomorrow to read my New Years resolutions!

technical difficulties

2005-12-22T22:42:00.000+02:00

I lost my links. It will be back soon. Sorry if you are dying to read someone else's blog, Slate Online or Buzzflash, they'll be back soon...

frustrated with bulgarian

2005-12-20T21:38:00.000+02:00

Top Ten List of Why English is Awesome:
10. There are no rolling Rs.
9. Passive tense. At some time in your life, your butt will be saved by it.
8. Indirect object, direct object: yeah they’re the same.
7. No gender agreement (kinda like my life…).
6. The biggest vocabulary in the world!!
5. At the most, in any tense, there are only two conjugations.
4. Most of the world’s movies are produced in English.
3. What other language has “onomatopoeia”?
2. Definite article: “the.” Always. Don’t take that for granted.
1. And the number one reason why English is awesome: I totally get it!

help make us # 1!

2005-12-19T07:39:00.000+02:00

New goal for the week: I want this site to show up on the first page when you Google “Andrew Hamilton.” I know it’s not much, and I will of course pursue my continuous goal to be the best Peace Corps volunteer EVER and teach my students to love and understand English but everyone needs a hobby right? Anyway, I know this can be done. Did you know that there is even a job for this? I think it’s called a Search Engine Accelerator or something lame like that. So next question: does anyone know how to go about doing this?

"it's a small world after all"

2005-12-18T22:50:00.002+02:00

As much as I hate the Disney ride, I think it is an apt description of what I have come to realize lately. The world is small. Though we number in the billions, humans are connected in amazing ways. And why not? We are more alike than we are different. Though as an anthropologist I have tended to look at the differences between people, in actuality I end up finding more similarities.
First, musical connections. Tonight, I had dinner at a colleague’s house. I was dreading going out: we had a bad snow storm today, it was a depressing Sunday, shut in my apartment all day making lesson plans. But I got on my hat, gloves, scarf, thick wool socks, new Bulgarian boots and jacket and walked into the cold. When I got to my colleagues apartment, before I even got in, I could hear the 80’s hard core rock pulsating from within.
This isn’t the first time I have encountered this. I only knew two Bulgarians before I came to Bulgaria, both of them were from college. One of them roomed with a team mate of mine. His name was Ognan and he was a scary fellow. Long black hair, lots of Megadeath T-shirts, black leather gloves, you get the picture. And I thought it strange. This guy comes all the way from Bulgaria, and he is obsessed with 80’s heavy metal. But once I came here, I realized it wasn’t an aberration. Bulgarians, men especially, love heavy metal. I am a big Punk fan myself (enough so to be that kid in high school with spiked green hair, but that’s for another posting…) but this music is too much for me. I feel like ol’ grandpa Andy, “why can’t you play your music at an appropriate level?”
But back to my visit. So there I was outside my colleague’s apartment as Slayer pounded my temples. I stepped inside, preparing myself for a night of “Headbangers Ball.” Fortunately, my colleague’s husband turned down his music, but not before showing me his collection. I kid you not, he had hundreds of CD’s. I asked him later what were his favorite bands and he listed off “Megadeath, Slayer, Sepultura, AC*DC, Pantera, Metallica” and too many others to mention. My colleague’s husband and Ognan aren’t alone in their adoration of this music. Many Bulgarians are infatuated with, if not 80’s Heavy Metal, then at least 80’s music. My host brother in Krichim is a huge Metallica and, oddly enough, Chicago fan. Let me tell you, after a few Rakiyas there is nothing better than belting out “You Are my Inspiration” into the early morning.
Another weird connection: work. My colleague’s husband works for a factory just outside of Bobov Dol that makes liquid oxygen and nitrogen (which now that I think of it kinda makes me nervous. Aren’t those really combustible? Like mushroom cloud combustible?). Anyways, the company is called SIAD and from the first time I saw the logo on a truck I thought it looked like the logo of a factory I used to work for while I was in college. So in my best Bulgarian, I took a long shot and asked him if he knew Praxair, this company I used to work for. He said, “oh yeah, SIAD used to be called Praxair.” So I told him about my old job, and my colleague laughed and said, “you two are colleagues.” It made me smile: here I am living seven time zones away from home having dinner with a guy who works for a factory in his hometown, that also has a factory that I used to work in, in my hometown. It was like when I spoke with another colleague who used to be in the Bulgarian Army during the Communist Era. We were on a bus somewhere and he commented, “here is where we used to train with the Warsaw Pact to fight NATO.” And I realized that there were places back home where my father had trained with NATO to fight the Warsaw Pact. At the same time, my father and my colleague were training to kill each other.
I don’t have a succinctly defined opinion on globalization. I think that we should strive to preserve cultural diversity but at the same time I think we must strive to connect our human race. I think here in Bulgaria, though things are going slowly, we are moving in the right direction. After 50 years of isolation, Bulgaria is moving away from isolation. Though 80’s death metal still grates on my nerves, I was happy to get invited tonight to a rock concert in the summer. I am also glad that I am now working with my colleague instead of wondering if someday I will have to kill his son. And though every time I hear that song it brings back bad memories of getting stuck on that damn ride and hearing “it’s a small world- it’s a small world- it’s a small world” over and over again, it truly is a small world after all.

the US plot to derail my senior thesis, uncovered

2005-12-18T11:28:00.000+02:00

A student at the other Dartmouth (UMASS-Dartmouth) was recently visited from agents from the Department of Homeland Security for requesting a book by Mao-Tse Tung through the college’s interlibrary loan system. Apparently this book was on some watch-list and he was investigated because he had spent “significant time abroad.” Is two years abroad “significant time”? And the agents brought the book to the interview and left without giving it to him. You know, now that I think about it, there were books I needed from the interlibrary loan system in college for my thesis and I could never get them. I thought it was because some lazy idiot at Princeton had just forgotten to return it, but maybe some federal agent in his office somewhere was leafing through Conrad Anderson’s original version of life in Ireland, holding on to just to piss me off. Oh man, I hope it gave him paper cuts…
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/12-05/12-17-05/a09lo650.htm

andy starts recycling

2005-12-16T23:49:00.000+02:00

I’m in a writing funk. A friend emailed me and told me I was a good writer and that I should give up my plans to go to grad school and just travel to weird places and write. I wish he hadn’t done that. Now I can’t write. So until I can get out of this funk, I will post old stuff. I wrote this about a year ago, September 15, 2004 to be exact…

I was inspired yesterday by a story I heard on NPR. The big talk on Capital Hill the last couple of days has been whether or not anti-depressant drugs can cause suicide in adolescents. One of the parents talking had found his 12 year-old hanging from a rope in the garage. He said how he didn’t want to fight or say anything that would risk stirring up all those emotions, but he felt that his daughter’s memories were making him lobby for a change.
It seems like a great hook for a story. A man, a quiet man who peacefully keeps to himself, is reluctantly forced to fight a battle of some kind. It would be a better story if it was a battle he knew he could not win, where fighting the battle is what’s important. Kind of like the native tribes fight against the US government. I think most of them knew deep down that they wouldn’t win, but they tried nonetheless. They were left with only two options: sit around and become slaves, or fight and die. Sometimes simply fighting the battle is what is important. Win or lose, this man, this father is dealing with his loss and the memories of his loved one.
It’s like a cowboy (Think: “High Noon”) hiking up his gun belt, pulls down his hat and walking out the door to doom. It’s like that dream where I put on a plastic helmet and old metal canteen, roll up my sleeves and march out my front door to face the Nazi Panther division attacking my neighborhood. Is it the “kill or be killed” motivation? No, that’s when you are backed up against the wall and are forced to fight your way out. That’s too easy, too simple. You fight or you die, end of the story. No, rather I am talking when you have the choice not to fight. You will keep on living, actually life might not be that bad. But you will always know something is different, something is diminished.
I think we all must do this. We all must fight against the memories, the inevitable, the “dying of the light.” Like in that last scene of “For Love of the Game.” The main character Chapel is an aging major league pitcher in possibly the last professional game of his life. It is the last inning and he is mere pitches away from pitching a perfect game. And at that moment on the mound he realizes what he is fighting against. Losing the love of his life, age, injuries, the end of summer, the end of his career, and the end of the franchise. All things that are beyond his control. He could just pack it in and say “goodnight, good year and good life.” Instead he keeps fighting because he knows that simply by fighting he is making baseball and the world just a little bit better. It is an amazing thing when people know that they are going to fail, usually at great costs to themselves and yet still try because losing it all is better than living with only some of it.

наздраве! (cheers!)

2005-12-14T07:00:00.000+02:00

I wanted to put this up earlier, but school has been kicking my butt this week. Here is a picture of my Krichim family last Saturday night as we got ready to eat. Mladen, my host brother, wanted me to point out that we are all in one room because it is too expensive to heat other rooms. He said we were like all the forest animals in the old man's mitten.

should i go or should i stay?

2005-12-13T19:47:00.000+02:00

Well the secret is out. The Peace Corps and I are deciding whether it is best for me and my mission here to move to another city. And it is turning out to be one of the hardest decisions of my life.
On one hand, the reasons to leave seem fairly straight-forward. Since I have arrived, the description of my job has done a 180. I originally came here to team-teach with a Bulgarian counterpart with a school director who was very excited to have me. My purpose was to be a native speaker to help the students with speaking, pronunciation, and general practice along with transfering skills to Bulgarian counterpart. Shortly before the school year started, however, my counterpart left for a better job and my director was replaced by another. And while two replacement teachers have come (and subsequently left after a few days), I am now teaching alone.
My kids are crazy. Literally. A month ago a student came in with a pizza and sat down in my class, all ready to wash it down with a bottle of beer. Yesterday I took a knife away from a student. He was brandishing it at other students and I decided to draw a line at open weapons in my class. Only one of my four classes as any functional use of English and one class is so unmotivated, some students refused to draw a picture in class. One girl opted to take a failing grade rather than draw.
And the working conditions are a little less than ideal. We have just lost two beloved teachers because the 13th class refuses to come to class. My colleagues hate the new director and refuse to work with her. I am caught in the middle, I feel weird going to the director with a problem even though at times I know I have to.
But on the other hand, the people in my town are awesome. My town is full of caring people who love me. My neighbors always have a kind word for me and I am always getting invited over for a meal or a coffee or rakia. People in town talk to me and invite in for a coffee or give me free body spray. I have a class of prisoners who think I am pretty cool though a little odd.
And things keep happening here that make me think that maybe I am meant to be here. I don’t want to sound overly God-preachy, but I feel like I am being watched over here. Take yesterday for instance. Yesterday was one of the hardest days I have had here. I gave a test first period which is a nightmare. Then I had two classes with 7th grade (the ones who won’t draw), and 8th and 11th, who are usually acceptable, were loopy. I also got a Christmas package from my mom. It had my presents and peanut butter cookies. And as I walked back to my apartment, eating peanut butter cookies and missing home, I started tearing up. I missed my family, my friends and the thought of Christmas in New Hampshire. I haven’t felt closer to packing it all in than I did then. I promised myself that I wouldn’t cry on the street but wait until I got to my apartment. Then something happened. One of my students came up and started talking to me. This was the same student who busted into one of my classes with a giant long balloon between his legs and pretended to whack off. But yesterday he was a different person. He was polite, interested about America and me. I arrived at home and forgot about crying.
I got lunch and headed into town to make some Xeroxes for my bratty 8th graders. When I got to the bookstore-café, I decided to buy some tinsel and wrapping paper. I talked with the cashier. And the women in the café, overheard us and invited me for some coffee. After an hour of her talking way too fast and me smiling and saying stupid stuff like "really?", "uh-huh," "then what did she say?", she promised to bring in some canned fruits for me today. After I metioned that I love pumpkin banitsa (traditional Bulgarian pastry), she also promised to bring in some of that too. I went home and called a neighbor, and asked to come over and share my cookies with them. She enthusiastically said yes, and I spent the rest of the night drinking wine, watching Big Brother, talking about Chalga singers and participating in various feats of strength. I would like to note here that I won the push up competition with 60 at one time.
I went home, a little sweatier, a little more drunk but a lot happier. And that’s how it usually ends up. The school day goes miserably. I feel like a babysitter, like a failure, like I am wasting my time teaching kids who don’t want to learn. I think how I could better serve Bulgaria, teaching at a language school where my native understanding of English could be more beneficial. Instead I continue to teach kids basic English even though any Bulgarian teacher could that as well as, or even better, than me. But by the end of each day something happens that makes me forget all that and makes me feel like I have friends and even family here. My close friend Desi told me that I will prosper here and I am taking strength in her words and her faith. I wonder, however, if me prospering is enough. Sure I can make a lot of friends and maybe, just maybe find a way to not go crazy. But would it be better for my mission if I was somewhere else where I could use my strengths as a native speaker and actually participate in some skills transfer with Bulgarian colleagues? I don’t know the answer to that. And until I do, I will continue to mull this decision over.

out like a fat kid in dodgeball

2005-12-08T23:19:00.000+02:00

I will be gone until Sunday, December 11, visiting my Bulgarian family in Krichim. Have a good weekend!

creativity gets andy in trouble again

2005-12-08T23:17:00.000+02:00

     One of my prisoner students two weeks asked me to make a lesson on dating and talking to girls. Always looking for ways to spice up my lessons I thought, “why not? This could be fun.” Today I finally got around to making the lesson and presented it to them. Now I made it a little racier than I would if I was giving this lesson to, say, my seventh grade class, because they are hardened criminals, after all (even though it is only a matter of time before some of my 7th grade students become criminals…). But I realized I went a little too far as I stood in front of 11 men and recited the lines to Hot Chocolate’s “You Sexy Thing”:
Oh kiss me you sexy thing
Touch me baby, you sexy thing
I love the way you touch me darling
You sexy thing
     Next time I will stick to the book…

Dunkin' Donuts in Bulgarian is: Dunkin' Donuts!

2005-12-07T18:34:00.000+02:00

This really has nothing to do with anything but I was in Sofia last week and went to a Dunkin' Donuts. I haven't had a donut in 7 months and I was with a group of Americans, so we went. They had hazelnut coffee and boston creme donuts. I was very happy... Hmmmmm, donuts.

down and then up again

2005-12-07T18:31:00.000+02:00

     I have begun to take life as it comes. Some days at school are great and I have dreams of starting a career in ESL teaching, traveling around the world, turning on people to the magical world of English. Then I have other days like today that make me want to go home and call in sick tomorrow.
The new colleague I talked about so glowingly on Monday has decided to take a teaching position in Kyustendil, her hometown. So it looks like Mr. Hamilton will again be teaching alone. I also gave tests today to two of my classes, which I hate doing. On one hand it makes for an easy lesson plan: “give test.” But on the other hand it makes my day about, hmmm, 100 times more stressful. In Bulgaria, cheating is very prevalent. It is an almost accepted practice. All my Bulgarian friends have admitted to, at some point in their academic careers, cheating on tests. And when I say cheating, they do things American students haven’t even thought of. Coded hair twirling, notes in tissue packages, and notes in, ah-hem, nether regions…
Every time I give a test I make two copies. It’s a feeble attempt to stop the ocean, but it cuts down slightly on the (overt) cheating. Every time I do it, I get a chuckle out of the student who is shocked: “Hey, he has a different test!” I like that the Bulgarian for yes is “da” because I can say, “duuuuuuhhhh,” and it just sounds like I am saying “yes.” Anyway, the kids were horrible today, even my very best student was giving answers to the student behind her. And this was with my Bulgarian colleague in the room. I took away about three tests but I feel like a hypocrite doing that because I know every student is cheating, these unlucky saps were just those who were sloppy enough to get caught.
I left school feeling pretty depressed. Not only did I have to be Mr. Disciplinarian-asshole to my classes but I was losing the person who gave me hope this week. I walked home stewing.
When I arrived at my block, I ran into a neighbor from upstairs, Sonya, who always has something nice to say to me. I asked her what she was doing and she said that she was going on a picnic with some other neighbors (interesting side note: “picnic” in Bulgarian is “picnic.” sweet.). Feeling that company would do me good, I invited myself along and ran to the store to buy some sweets and beer for the picnic.
Even though I felt kinda like a sleaze doing it, inviting myself along was one of my better ideas. There were six of us and we went into the woods around our block and had a huge fire and cooked shish kabobs. There was plenty of rakia, wine and beer and good food. The shish kabobs were made from some kind of pig product that tasted like buttered meat. Very good, it made me glad to be a meat eater.
     But the best part was just being there enjoying a simple pleasure with people who didn’t care that I had invited myself along. They didn’t care that I couldn’t understand most of what they were saying. They feed me, joked with (and at) me and allowed me to forget about the day. Afterwards, I spoke with Sonya, and told her that I had a horrible day at school but had a great time at the picnic. She smiled and said, “this is life.” I could have hugged her, because I rarely hear things as true as that. When I am on my deathbed, gasping for my last breaths, I won’t remember that Hristo didn’t know how to conjugate “to wake up” in the third person. I won’t remember that Zdravka cheated right in front of me. But I will remember that first taste of that pig product and I will remember hearing “Uncle” Ivan calling me a bright guy when I correctly said that we were cooking like stone-age men in Bulgarian. Life is full of good and bad. In the end, the crap doesn’t matter. Sure, right now it seems like EVERYTHING, but given time and distance I will forget it. I don’t think I will call in sick tomorrow, because even though I hate the bad, I don’t want to miss the good.

things begin to look up

2005-12-05T21:07:00.000+02:00

Often, just when I think I can’t handle it here, things happen that tell me to hang on just a little bit longer. Today was like that. It was my first day back to school in over a week and I started the day in a deep funk. I was dreading going to school and facing those kids once again. Not only have I been gone for a while but I am giving all my students a test at the end of the week and so this week is full of review games and practice tests. I knew they were going to be crazy today and I was not excited about that. Before school I said a little prayer, just a simple thing. I wanted Him to walk with me today because I knew I couldn’t handle it on my own.
I had 12th grade first and though they were not happy about having a test, nor were they enthused by my games, they were patient and didn’t make my day any more miserable. After that class, I was called into the director’s office. Sitting on the couch was a woman I didn’t recognize. From what I gathered from the director, this woman was the new English teacher. This was quickly confirmed when the woman started speaking English. I almost started crying with joy right then and there.
For those who don’t know, an English teacher from my high school (the teacher I was supposed to team-teach with, in fact) left right before the year started. I was given all his classes and have been teaching the classes by myself, with my limited teaching experience and even more limited Bulgarian. I didn’t know when I first accepted this gig that out of 4 classes, 3 have no functional English. So I have been pulling my hair out trying to teach these students basic English, without a book and with little support (I have to thank my counterpart Galya here. She has given me a tremendous amount of support. But overall the school has been unable to help me).
So today when this woman came, Mrs. Ivanova, I could have kissed her. I didn’t though. We went to my classes and she met the students. Of course they were the little devils that they always are and because my lessons were mostly review games, they were even crazier. I was afraid that Mrs. Ivanova was going to either run away and never return to Bobov Dol or else think I was a horrible teacher. Only time will tell what she does.
As it stands now, she and I will team-teach these classes. I can’t describe how happy this makes me. Under this structure, she can discipline and explain grammar in Bulgarian and I can plan the lessons and activities. It is great. I look forward to having another person there in the foxhole with me. It won’t make everything perfect, but at least it will even up the odds a bit.
On top of that, last Wednesday was my name day. It was Saint Andrew’s Day and here in Bulgaria, name days are a huge deal. They are even bigger than birthdays. I was bummed that on my name day I was with Americans who really could have cared less about it. When I arrived in school today, however, I learned that my colleagues had not forgotten. They presented me with a beautiful silver cross that they had all pitched in to buy. I was so happy and thankful. I spoke with another English teacher and he said that the gift was out of appreciation for all the things I had done. I felt very special.
I have been an Atheist for a long time. Things have happened since I arrived here in Bulgaria, however, that have made me believe in God once again. Today was another one. Here I was, at the end of my rope, feeling like I couldn’t do it anymore. Out of desperation, I asked Him to walk beside me because I knew I was going to fall. And seemingly sent from Heaven was this new teacher, here to help me to teach. On the same day, I receive a silver cross, from my colleagues in appreciation of all the hard work I have put in. I don’t want to sound all preachy ( I hate when people get like that) but I will say that tonight before I go to sleep, I will say a little prayer of thanks to Him for helping me hold on just one more day.

getting it done

2005-12-04T22:22:00.000+02:00

People can say I "hijacked" the whole pie crust rolling mission but the truth is I stepped up and got it done! And I have proof! And look carefully, I did it all with a beer bottle. Who says beer is just for breakfast?!

personal rant or andy needs a nap

2005-12-04T22:20:00.000+02:00

Tonight I am going to bed very tired. It’s like any typical Sunday night I guess but for some reason tonight feels different. I’ve been in a rut all week. I should have been happy. I had a week away from classes, I got to talk with people who speak my language, I got to sleep on a good mattress, and I didn’t even have to cook. But no, for some reason I felt dead. I didn’t want to participate in anything and I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I was like a walking deadman. Last night, Saturday night, I fell asleep at 9:00 pm and slept in this morning until 9:00 am. I am a lazy slug.
I think something happened. Maybe it’s being alone so long. Being here in this little town, talking to people at certain (low) level in a hard language, has made me begun to think at this level. I have had to slow down my ability to explain myself to fit into Bulgarian words I know. Even when I speak with Bulgarians who know English, I have to simplify what I say. This starts to wear on you after a while. You don’t see it in your day to day activities. I mean, when you use most of the Bulgarian you know to keep kids from throwing stuff, or running out of class or hitting each other, your inability to form complex, personal narratives really doesn’t bother you. But when you spend a week with people who can understand you, well at least when they are sober, you begin to notice that you have changed.
Last week and this weekend I felt bad about myself. I felt boring, uncommunicative and wrapped up in myself. And maybe I am normally. But I must find some patience in myself. I am kinda like a cripple here, limping around with my Intermediate High Bulgarian (just got a language test, go me!) trying to be the same ol intense Andy but unable to explain that tonight I feel a “little grouchy.” I am tired of feeling bad about that. Tomorrow I will wake up and go to school and teach kids who have been without English for a week and will probably be bouncing off the walls. And I will get wrapped up in my day to day activities again. And this feeling will pass, I know. But right now I am tired, and I want things to be easier. Times like this it is hard to feel like a warrior.

Thanksgiving (Observed)

2005-12-03T02:30:00.000+02:00

Just got back to Bobov Dol after a week long conference in Bankia. Here is a picture from Saturday in Razlog where six other volunteers and I celebrated Thanksgiving. I hope you all had as much fun as us. And look in the lower left hand corner, we even had pumpkin pie. Of course, I had to teach the girls how to roll the pie crust but that is neither here nor there...

mini-vacation

2005-11-27T10:51:00.000+02:00

I will be in Sofia all next week, working hard, without kids. Hope you all have a great week and get to spend time with friends. Take care!

bones, jewels and massacre

2005-11-25T12:02:00.000+02:00

Yes, I’m a nerd but this stuff is really interesting… The archeologist who is conducting this dig has to have bodyguards because he helped convict a bunch of grave robbers and now they want to kill him.

Mass grave yields Mayan secrets
A grisly discovery deep in the Guatemalan jungle may cast new light on one of the ancient world's most beguiling mysteries - the collapse of the Mayan civilisation. A grave containing some 50 bodies, buried in royal finery and bearing the marks of a vicious death, has been perplexing experts since it was unearthed earlier this year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4450528.stm

well, at least I have a better life than maegen...

2005-11-25T00:33:00.000+02:00

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	6.4
Mind:	6.3
Body:	8.6
Spirit:	5.4
Friends/Family:	3.3
Love:	2.1
Finance:	6.1
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

And the worse part is what they kick you when you are down...
"Your love score is very low, indicating trouble. There is love out there for you. Seek the advice of wise people on how to go about finding it. Do not lose hope. " I wasn't losing hope till I took your stupid quiz, assh-le. What the Hell did I do wrong to make them say "Your life score leaves room for improvement "? Damn, I need to stop spending so much time on the internet...

happy thanksgiving, bulgarian stylin'

2005-11-24T23:58:00.000+02:00

Today is Thanksgiving Day. For someone far away from home, in a country where they don’t even know what Thanksgiving is, today could seem like a downer. But fortunately today I was able to experience what Thanksgiving is all about: people coming together and helping each other, not because they have to, or because they are seeking some kind of payment, but simply because they want to.
      This week has been a rough week for me. I haven’t been getting a lot of sleep, my classes were exceptionally unruly and yesterday I lost a great colleague because the 13th grade doesn’t want to show up for class. So yesterday and today the last thing I wanted to do was host a huge party for Thanksgiving. Today all I wanted to do was teach my classes at school, teach my classes at the prison and take the evening off and relax. Instead, I invited everyone I saw to a big party at my apartment to celebrate a day that few knew about.
     To throw a wrench into the works, I had classes until 1:30, I had to be at the prison from 3:00 to 6:00 and people were coming over at 7:00. That gave me about two hours to bake banana bread, cook mashed potatoes, squash, deviled eggs, dip, salad, prepare a meat and cheese dish and, of course, buy all the ingredients for all that. I knew I had a lot to do, but I believed, like I do all too often, that I could do it all by myself. Luckily, my counterpart here, Galya, offered to come over with her sister after my lessons at the prison and help.
     They picked me up after my lessons and drove me to my apartment. They gave me a huge bag of goodies too, canned fruit, vegetables, sauces, things that you absolutely must have in Bulgaria to get through the winter. As soon as we arrived at my apartment we got to work. After five minutes, a teacher from another school in town arrived, and five minutes after that, two of my students arrived*. Like an army they converged on my tiny kitchen. They didn’t question why, they only asked what they could do. Wielding knives and derogatory comments about my masculine culinary skills, they peeled potatoes, diced onions, mixed salads, boiled squash and beat eggs. By the time my other guests arrived, I actually had things on the table and it almost had the feeling of a real Bulgarian “Na Gosti.”
At first I was ashamed that here were five supposed guests working in my own personal sweatshop. But I soon realized that they didn’t see anything wrong with this. I have heard again and again, after experiencing incredible acts of generosity here, that I needn’t worry about it, that’s how people are here. And yet still I resisted that. How can people who work all summer preparing canned fruits and vegetables for the winter, give them to me like they were nothing? How can people who make about $120 a month, buy me lunches, dinners, coffees without blinking an eye? How can people who work all day, go visit someone else’s home, roll up their sleeves, and work as hard as if they were the hosts?
I don’t know why they are like that here but they are. They humble me. I have money here, the Peace Corps certainly doesn’t let me starve, but the Bulgarians I have met give and give and give till they have nothing left. They have a great sense of what it means to look after ones neighbor. If you need help they are there, with a hammer, some homemade tea, Rakia, or whatever you need. And the only expectation they have is some vague notion that if they were in the same situation, someone would be there to help them.
Tonight, on Thanksgiving, I am thankful to be learning this: to give without expecting. It goes beyond that though, this giving is more than just redistribution of commodities, it is really sharing love. So for all my friends and family stateside, I love you and miss you. Eat some turkey and drink some eggnog for me and be happy knowing that I am loved here.

*When my students arrived I felt like I had to make some excuse for the craziness that was my apartment. I welcomed them and said “it’s a crazy house!” One of my students smiled at me and said simply, “but it’s happy.”

democracy, calf stomach and cheap wine

2005-11-21T22:24:00.000+02:00

I always considered myself anti-capitalist. I hate the idea that we live in a society where seemingly the most important thing is our ability to make money. It makes me sick when I think that people measure each other’s worth by the car they drive, the clothes they wear, the computer they have or the size of their TV. Naturally, because I am so anti-capitalist I was drawn to “the other side”; I thought “hey, maybe communism isn’t really that bad.” A conversation I recently had shed some light on something I thought I wanted.
November 10th was the 16th anniversary of the fall of communism in Bulgaria. On that day a colleague asked me if I wanted to go to the local механа (Bulgarian tavern) for some wine and шкембе чорба (tripe soup). Never one to pass up wine and stomach soup, of course I said “да.” We dug into the soup and the cheap wine “Меча Кръв (Bear Blood)” and the conversation turned to the state of Bulgaria and how the kids in our school are absolutely crazy. I asked my colleague how things were like during communist times and whether he liked things better now or then (my reasoning was that one thing a dictatorship is supposed to be good at is maintaining order). He smiled and said “now. I like freedom.” He went on to say, with hand gestures mimicking a horse with blinders on, that when he was my age he only could do what the communists wanted him to do. (I like this man, but I am afraid he thinks I understand Bulgarian only accompanied with extravagant hand gestures…)
The difference between now and then is that even though things were more orderly during Communist times, it was only because everything was controlled by others. If he wanted to visit a family member in Петрич, a town located near the border with Greece, he had to ask permission from the Communist party and receive signed papers stating it was ok. My colleague studied economics in school. He wasn’t allowed to freely study Adam Smith, Keynes, or Ricardo; students in economics learned about them but only in the context that they were completely wrong. Not only travel and education, but even personal habits were controlled. As my colleague described it, if you had long hair, you went to jail! Bell-bottoms, jail! Beatles records, jail!
I was shocked by this. Of course, I had known that Soviet-style communism had strict controls on everything but to hear this from a man who had spent most his life without choosing what to study, how to wear his hair, even what he could listen to, made me very sad. But he also made me very proud. I asked him what was the first thing he did when freedom came to Bulgaria. He told me ran for mayor of his village and won. After 50 years of being told by a bureaucrat in Sofia who was in charge of his village, this man took advantage of democracy and became the village’s first freely elected mayor. Something so simple, in his voice, took on the proportions of being elected president of the United States. He also went back to school and relearned economics, this time learning what he wanted. He now runs the Junior Achievement Program in our school teaching young people how capitalism works in the real world.
I still am not in love with capitalism, but I have found a renewed appreciation of democracy. Sure it may be messy, and every once in a while we elect an idiot, and all too often the majority thinks they are the only ones that matter, still there is something to say for freedom. Freedom to listen to what we want, read what we want and go where we want. I felt very lucky to find appreciation in these little things. For once, the conversation was more interesting then the soup.

the democrats finally get a backbone

2005-11-19T09:17:00.000+02:00

“I like guys who got five deferments and (have) never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done.”
John Murtha (Democrat Congressman from Pennsylvania, and decorated Vietnam Veteran) responding to Vice- president Dick Cheney’s claims that those who question the presence of US troops in Iraq are unpatriotic. The “five deferments” comment refers to the fact that Vice-president Cheney received 5 deferments during the Vietnam War which allowed him to stay at home in the United States while others were required to fight.

just like new hampshire...

2005-11-19T08:39:00.000+02:00

First snow in Bobov Dol! I am happy to report I woke up this morning to about an inch of snow on the ground. As this picture from my terrace shows it is very beautiful right now. I am glad that the snow has come because that means that snowboarding can't be that far behind!

one part tea, three parts ракия. repeat.

2005-11-15T20:33:00.000+02:00

My senior thesis advisor was a big Medical Anthropologist. He has devoted his life into studying the way cultures react to illnesses. If you ever get a chance to read any medical anthropology work you should, it is fascinating to see how differently groups of people can react to the same set of diseases. These last couple of days have showed me a little insight into the way Bulgarians react when their crazy little American gets a cold.
First I’ll explain what I had in American terms. I had a cold. I figured I got sick from either my students or Friday night when I went to the Disco. I had a huge headache, the chills, sore throat, a whole lotta mucous, I lost my appetite, an awful hacking cough and was very tired. I could feel the cold beginning on Friday night, I didn’t eat anything on Saturday, felt worse Saturday night and then Sunday morning, the cold broke and I thought I was going to die. On Monday, I was feeling better but called into work because I needed more sleep and a day without students. I took a couple Ibuprofen, some tea with honey and lemon juice, and some decongestants. I didn’t check my temperature because I figured, “what difference would it make? I would treat it exactly the same way.” My plan of attack was to just wait it out. I thought it would pass. And it did. I did not call a doctor.
Now for the Bulgarian response. It seems that my friends believe that colds come from cold temperatures. Colds can come from changing temperatures or simply from being cold and wet. Neighbors asked me when I was underdressed, and some thought it was from my long, cold walks to school. Another neighbor said it was from Friday night when I went to visit her and only wore a t-shirt. Another neighbor said that I should keep all my doors within my apartment open so that the whole place will be one temperature and I won’t have to go from a hot living room to a cold kitchen. This could get me sick. One of my 24 year old neighbors, however, saw me looking half dead and laughed, saying, “имаш ново гадже, нали? (Well, you got a new girlfriend, don’t you?).” At the time, I was not in the mood for joking. But now I realize that his comment may suggest another concept of the cause of illness: having a new girlfriend, and kissing her, can give you an illness. Maybe he and his generation are thinking of colds in a different way. Of course, I don’t have a new girlfriend, but that was part of the joke too. Now that I think of it, he’s a pretty mean guy.
Treatments for colds vary greatly. Most often it is something social. As an American, I am accustomed to being left alone when I am sick. I figure all I need is some rest, relaxation and peace. Not here. I think I was more active this weekend than any other time. I went over two neighbors, had coffee with a Bulgarian colleague in a café, and had four guests over to my place. Guests brought sweets, hot milk mixtures, two dinners (on the same night), and tea with cognac and honey (twice). Though I didn’t feel like it, we talked and talked and talked until I felt like I was going to pass out.
Tea with honey, lemon and cognac or brandy was an often repeated remedy. So was a kind of compress to put on your throat. It involves homemade brandy, crushed olives, scarves, boiled and applied to the throat. One person who told me this, even though she was suggesting it, didn’t know exactly why it worked. Sounds very much like Western Culture: we always suggest some medicine but do we really know how aspirin works? Another suggestion was one I had never heard of: fill up a bucket with very very hot water and a handful of salt. Then you stick your feet in it and wait till you get very chilly. I don’t understand this one but I think I missed something in the translation…
Here, people take a more cautious approach to sickness. It is a much bigger deal. If you are sick, you are always treated like you are dying. You must see the doctor, you must go to the hospital. You must go home and rest. Take plenty of medicine. Take plenty of time off from work. I was hesitant about taking Monday off, but everyone was expecting me to take Tuesday, or even Wednesday off too. My first period class didn’t show up today because they were sure I would not come in.
So I got sick and now I am better. Who has a better explanation and treatment? I don’t know. But I do know that I was underdressed Friday at my neighbors place and on Friday I was freezing after taking a very cold shower. And maybe I should have taken today off because I still have a nasty cough, and I nearly feel asleep in the teachers room between classes. And maybe that tea with brandy really did work…

goin guesting!

2005-11-14T16:23:00.000+02:00

I have yet to understand the exact etiquette for visiting friends or hosting guests here in Bulgaria. I have mentioned it before but as a Anthropology student, I am very interested in common day culture like this. This part of life in Bulgaria is very important. In Bulgarian, people “ходи на гости” which means they “go guesting.” When you visit someone you are always offered something to eat and drink. The drinks can vary from coffee and tea to beer and homemade “ракия (brandy).” The food can also range from anything from a few sweets to a whole dinner that doesn’t end until you raise your hand and say “стига, преядох! (Stop, I ate too much!).” I am never quite sure what I will get when I visit someone. Most of the time the visit lasts 3 or 4 hours and by the time I leave can barely walk from the food and brandy. Other times I am counting on the food and after 4 hours go back to my empty apartment and cook chicken nuggets.
I think that the level of food and drink you get is based on how far in advance things are planned. If someone asks you to come over to see them on Sunday and it is Thursday, you had better not eat anything all Sunday because you are gonna get stuffed. But if someone calls you and asks you to come over now, you should grab a bite of something first because most likely you are just gonna get some coffee. Under all occasions, when you visit someone, you should bring something. This can be almost anything from a few sweets from the local store, to some coke, to a homemade apple cobbler that takes you all day to bake.
Hosting guests is the trickiest thing. Being a single, young man here I feel a little weird inviting people to my apartment. I am not a very good cook. These people who I go visit cook phenomenal meals. I am not kidding. Everything is made with fresh vegetables, meats, and cheeses loaded up with plenty of oil and spices. I am afraid that they will come over and I will cook a tuna noodle casserole and they will think, “damn, I’m not having this chump over again. He couldn’t cook his way out of a wet paper bag!” I also do not have a TV. This is another big part of hosting people. Putting on the TV and sitting down and eating and drinking. Most often the TV is turned on either to Bulgarian pop folk or soccer. Also, there is a tendency not to show up. I’ll invite people over for something and then they just won’t show up. I never know what to in this situation. Should I call them? Next time I see them what do I say?
I also have a tendency to either overreact or under react when people come over. I don’t know whether to lay out a big spread with dinner, drinks and dessert or whether to just put out some coffee and biscuits. Take today for example. Two teachers from school texted me on my cell phone and told me they were coming over because I was sick from work. I cut up a couple apples, salami, cheese, put out bread and nutella, and got ready to make some coffee and tea. I put out plates, and forks and was ready. They showed up with some sweets and I thought everything was going according to plan. But they barely ate anything! I ate almost everything! I guess this was one of those “just coffee and biscuits” time. This is such a huge part of Bulgarian life that I feel like an idiot if I get it wrong. I think they were happy though. And for the most part, people know I’m an American and have no idea what I’m doing…
On a personal note, though I was sure I did have it, I did not have Bird Flu. I am a little disappointed by this. I am a glutton for sympathy and attention and I can think of no better way to get the level of attention I desire then to be the first person to contract bird flu in Bulgaria. But alas, I am okay and I will go on.

jeezus, iz eenglish krazee! or why i am amazed by non-native english speakers

2005-11-13T05:56:00.000+02:00

It’s 5:00 a.m. here in Bulgaria. I’m sick. My throat has swollen to the size of a grain of rice and I am afraid because tomorrow my only form of communication will be written notes, in Bulgarian. I hate writing in Bulgarian.
     It’s not that the Bulgarian alphabet is hard. Just the opposite. Unlike English, each letter corresponds to a different sound and that sound is always represented by the same letter. It’s a novel concept to most native English speakers. The problem is that after learning English for 23 years, my ability to differentiate sounds has been shot to Hell. Let me explain.
     In Bulgarian, there are 3 letters that always give me problems: с,з, and ц. The Bulgarian letter “с” sounds like our “s” as in “Sally.” The letter “з” sounds like our “z” as in “zebra.” And the letter “ц” sounds like “ts” as in “pizza.” But to me, these sounds often sound alike. Say them out loud and you’ll see what I mean. A native Bulgarian speaker can pick out the difference in a second. My friend Maegen lives in a town called “Разлог (Razlog).” I am always calling the town “Raslog” apparently because whenever I say what I think is “Razlog” to someone and they look at me funny. I will repeat it again, and get another strange look. Then I will say it one more time, very slowly, and they will say “oh, RaZlog!” and I then I will say “да!” and then they will laugh. At me. Another word that gives me trouble is “медицински (meditsinski)” which means medical. I am just realizing now, considering the shape I am in now, how sick is God’s sense of humor.
     But who can blame me for this inability to match sounds to letters when we take a look at English spelling. Consider these three sounds: “s,z, and ts.” (I will leave out “c” so I don’t put my fist through my monitor). It is true that usually when we write “s” and “z,” we say “s” and “z.” But as I am learning every day I teach, “there are exceptions.” We right “season” but we say “seezon.” When we write “pizza,” we say “pitsa” but when we write “pizzazz,” we say “pizaz.” We write “nose” when we say “noze.” “These” = “theez.” We write about the famous leader “Cortez” but we always talk about “Cortes.” Right now, I could go for some homemade “delishus cookiz,” but when I write to Mom I tell her I want some “delicious cookies.” Try telling a bunch of 7th graders, that “Mary has a sheep, but hazent any goats.”
     We all know, unfortunately, that this is the very tip of the iceberg (or “izberg” depending on where you are from). This is why I both am amazed by non-native speakers and hate spelling in Bulgarian. Since we learn as babies how to do this stuff we forget how difficult it is. We also learn not to differentiate between certain sounds. I call myself “Andy” with a long vowel sound for “A” but when my friends in Ireland or here call me “Andy” with a short vowel sound, I don’t notice. When we are thrown into a language that actually has a set of rules and follows them, we are screwed. We end up saying “Raslog,” and “medisinski” and dying from a horrible sinus infection because no one understood that we wanted to see a “medical sister” and not their sister named “Medisinka.” Or maybe that’s just me…

my new boss

2005-11-12T11:31:00.000+02:00

Well, apartment 17 has a new resident. I would like to introduce everyone to "кралица (princess)" or "крали" for short. Her name is pronounced like "Krali" for all you non-Cyrillic readers. I wasn't sure if I wanted the responsibility of a little kitten. One of my neighbors, though found this rascal in the coal celler, all alone and cold and the sap that I am, I couldn't say no. Here's us this morning. We'll see how this works out...