30 November 2010

Thanksgiving Activities

Celebrating Thanksgiving in Bulgaria was excellent. In addition to the paper turkeys and decorations at the office, I had “Thanksgiving” themes for both of my adult English classes. In the beginner class, we played Bingo and ate pumpkin cookies with cream cheese frosting and I talked a bit about the holiday. In the advanced class, we read a short story about the first Thanksgiving, discussed what we’re thankful for, and unscrambled the lyrics to “What a Wonderful World.”

Then, I traveled to another volunteer’s site to help with her Thanksgiving Day project. Quite a few PCVs, plus some American missionaries, and an Austrian, helped with the festivities at the Internaht where she works. Then, we made an awesome dinner and ate, in keeping with tradition, until we could hardly move.

The experience at the Internaht was intense. An Internaht, aka Boarding school, is a specialized institution for minors who have committed antisocial acts and crimes. The kids were so excited to have us be there. In the morning the kids helped make pumpkin bread, bake cookies, and put together Native American headdresses. It was pretty incredible to see these ‘tough’ teenagers, eager to glue feathers on a hat or to put an apron and help in the kitchen.

After lunch, we showed a short presentation on America, the organizing volunteer had put together and went on a scavenger hunt around the village. Before the games could start, each kid had to write something they were grateful for on a paper leaf, which was then put on a large tree cut out in the main hall. I’m sure this is a common thing in schools and other such places around Thanksgiving, but here, in this setting, it was really something else. It was a perfect way to spend the holiday. At the end of the day we went back to host volunteer’s house, cooked, and ate until we could hardly move.

One task of the scavenger hunt was to have the kids give away some of the pumpkin bread they cooked to someone in the village. These kids don’t have much in the way of material things, so I imagine that the act of ‘giving’ isn’t something they frequently do. I don’t know about the other groups, but the group of kids I was with spent a while on this item. They ended up dividing the bread and walking all over town to give it away to a greater number of people. It was great.

20 November 2010

Paper Turkeys

It is almost Thanksgiving! Feeling as if I may have caused some disappointment by not organizing a big Halloween activity, I wanted to make sure to celebrate Thanksgiving. I decorated the office, made construction paper turkeys with the kindergarteners, and am planning parties for my beginner and advanced English classes. Yay for holidays!

Funeral

The somber dirges played during funeral processions are easy to hear from my office window. Despite not being heavily populated, the age demographics of Chiprovtsi are such that these events are not uncommon. Often, my colleagues and I stand and watch as loved ones of the deceased proceed slowly through town to the gravesite.

Close family members lead the procession, carrying flowers and a cross for the grave. The hearse, an old VW van with its rear doors open, follows, displaying the open casket inside. Behind the van, a crowd of mourners grows as people join while it winds through the town. Several older men, one with a drum and symbol and a few with horns are the last to pass by, providing a constant soundtrack of slow, sad music for the walk to the graveyard.

I attended my first Bulgarian funeral this week for one of my colleagues’ relatives. Even though I joined the mourners near the edge of town, we still had a kilometer or so to walk. The predominately elderly crowd seemed unperturbed by the uneven road to the cemetery or the uphill return. They continued, arm in arm, at a steady pace.

An Orthodox cleric presided over the approximately 30 minute ceremony. When we began to leave the cemetery, close family members of the deceased, hurried from the graveside to an open vehicle trunk full of food which they began to pass out to mourners. I was surprised that those in the deepest state of mourning were now hurrying to treat the rest of his, but was told that by taking the bread, you must say a prayer for the deceased, asking God to forgive his sins.

The differences between this funeral, in a small town in Bulgaria, and those I’ve attended in America were significant. Joining around 75 mourners—friends and family of decade long relationships—to escort the deceased to his final resting place was a beautiful experience. It was so different from the individual line of cars that drive to an American cemetery. The deep roots of people who raise their children in the same homes in which they were born and know each other for decades is so different from anything I’ve experienced. This shared and interwoven history, combined with the foreign rites of an Orthodox sacrament, made the funeral a unique experience to witness.

Hablo Inglés

Teaching English has become a big part of my day-to-day life. I’m visiting the kindergarten twice a week (an activity I delayed starting, but now is becoming a favorite) to sing songs and dance. We’ve mastered ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes’ and ‘Hokey Pokey.’ I tried a Christmas song and ‘Old MacDonald’s,’ but without a dance to go along, they quickly grew bored. I’m planning on splitting up the adults and children of one of the two 90 minute evening classes I teach, and began working with the English teacher at the school on a pen pal exchange with an American school.

I also do a lot of random English stuff like helping high school kids edit applications to summer language programs and translating basic phrases for the tourist information center. I never thought of teaching as something I’d enjoy, but I do. It’s probably easy to love teaching when all of your students want to learn, aren’t assigned homework, and don’t get tested. But still, it’s incredibly rewarding to watch a person go from not understanding something at all to knowing it and being confident in that knowledge. I love it when I run into a student from one of my classes and he or she uses something we’ve studied to greet me.

Gardens & Garbage

My counterpart and I are working on a composting project. Since many homes have large gardens and a large portion of garbage is organic, composting is an obvious way to increase environmental responsibility, reduce waste, and help people help themselves. Beginning with a ‘flagship composter,’ built and maintained by children at the school, our plan is to demonstrate how easy and inexpensive (free) composting is. Later, we hope they will help us share information by teaching their families at home and through weekend workshops. I’m working on translating and condensing a ton of information into a small information brochure, but would love any advice or thoughts on this project. Also, does anyone know where I can order red worms in Bulgaria?

13 November 2010

Mom & Dad visit Bulgaria!

Mom and Dad in front of the Municipal building where I work

It was great to finally have my parents in Bulgaria! Although it’s only been a few months (6!!!), I love my life here and really want to share it with them. Their visit was busy and way too short.

I took the early bus from Chiprovtsi to Kravoder to spend a few hours catching up with my Bulgarian host family before we drove to Sofia to meet Mom and Dad. I still can’t believe how lucky I was to have had such a wonderful host family. Living with strangers in new country without a shared language could be a really challenging experience, but they made me feel so comfortable from the beginning. Plus, they were super patient and helpful with language learning. Before departing for the airport, they loaded up their car with grapes, homemade wine, buffalo yogurt, apples, canned goods, extra blankets and pillows, flowers, and, of course, banitsa to transfer to my parent’s rent-a-car at the airport.

Dressed in traditional Bulgarian costume and holding a giant purple plant, I stood in front of the arrivals gate for about an hour while my parents were held up at passport control. It was lovely. I think it was assumed I was there as greeter, like the girls with leis in Hawaii. Most of their visit was spent in Chiprovtsi, with a few day trips to the surrounding areas. I really wanted to show them what my life here is like. I think it was successful: they helped in my advanced English class, ate a lot of banitsa, and were confused about the head nodding.

We na gosti’d with colleagues and friends every night except two (I had to have a chance to demonstrate my Bulgarian cooking skills with palachinki and pumpkin banitsa), participated in traditional dancing at the cultural center, and explored some of the areas nearby. It was great to share things like getting water at Varshets, Rakia, lighting candles in Klisurski, the museums and hiking in Chiprovtsi with them. The weather was amazing, sunny and in the 50s or 60s everyday. The domestic animals and homemade wine were among the biggest hits with my parents. We must have hundreds of pictures of donkeys pulling carts, sheep and goats walking around town, and various home wine systems. My dad is set on making wine at home and I think they both want to start na gosti-ing regularly in Louisiana. These are some of my favorite pictures from their trip.

Chiprovtsi Waterfall

Mom's impromptu post-dinner weaving lesson

Dad dancing the horo

Host mom and Mom at the airport

12 November 2010

Belogradchik & Magura Caves

The Belogradchik Fortress, built into the giant rocks sticking out of the ground, dates from the 1st – 3rd century. The Romans built the oldest sections of the fortress directly in to the rocks to be used for surveillance and as part of their defensive blockade in the northern Balkan Mountains. It was expanded during the Second Bulgarian Kingdom, then captured by the Ottomans in 1396. The Ottomans also added to the fortress, which was used in suppressing Bulgarian uprisings. Belogradchik is about an hour by car from Chiprovtsi.
The Magura Caves are also located in Northwest Bulgaria, about 30 minutes from Belogradchik. The halls in the cave were huge, with impressive stalagmite and stalactite formations like those I saw in the Ledenika Caves near Vratsa. Magura also has 2800 year old paintings made from bat guano. Pottery and other evidence of human use from the early Bronze Age have been found in the cave. It remained in use by Thracians during the Bronze Age and Roman rule.

01 November 2010

Theater/English

I went to the theater in Montana with my language on Thursday. I love that the movie theater closed because it wasn't profitable, but live theater is so popular. The show we saw was packed. It was my second time attending a play in Bulgaria. “Easy Dying” was much more comprehensible to me than the one I saw in Sliven. Although, the other play was certainly entertaining, the conceptual plotline and intangible set—there was an imaginary garden and the actors who randomly broke into song, discussed Gatsby, quoted Shakespeare, and ribbon danced—were a bit too abstract for my level of language comprehension. This play, however, I understood (at least some parts…thankfully, the characters, two crotchety old men, talked a lot about food).

My tutor and I went to the theater following a special lesson for her 6th grade class. She teaches English at a language school. The school has classes in two shifts-a morning group and an evening group-so this lesson was at 6 pm. I think it would be difficult to go to class in the evenings and create a strange schedule for the teachers, but the students in her class were great. They were super talkative and interested in American life. I was a bit nervous, about leading the lesson—29 kids is a big class and I didn’t know any of them—but, the ‘icebreakers’ I had prepared were unnecessary, they began launching questions faster than I could answer them almost right away.