May 26, 2001

It feels like we’ve been traveling like Bedouins lately. This weekend we’re here in Silistra. Last night was the senior “ball”, which Kate and I were invited to. It turns out that only six of my students were there, out of about 100 or so other graduating students. The rest of my students decided to skip out on the ball and head up to Budapest for their senior excursion. Sort of disappointing, but it was fun nonetheless. The ball is like senior prom in the States, except that on every table there’s wine and booze and most of the kids were smoking. Nothing out of the ordinary for Bulgaria. Sure, the kids were pretty loosened up by midnight or so, but that’s celebrating in Bulgaria. We didn’t see it get out of control. Kate and I were thinking what would happen if American seniors showed up to their prom to see wine on their tables . . . what would happen? The seniors were coming around to the teacher’s tables, offering toasts and asking teachers to dance. Teachers gave marks for students who were voluntarily embarrassing themselves in front of everyone by trying to sing some popular songs. The winners got pens . . .

During this past week was a holiday for two Bulgarian men, Cyril and Methodius, who created the Bulgarian alphabet, which is now used for Russia, among other languages. The Cyrillic alphabet is a strong point of pride for Bulgarians. This day is also a day that celebrates education in general and the seniors graduated at the theater in the center of town. There was no school and all the schools in Silistra paraded themselves to the Center, leading themselves with banners and flags. It was exciting to be part of such a big celebration. Each school was announced by some people behind a microphone and a band played on as we passed. After the parading, my school, “Peyo Yavorov”, gathered in the theater to award and congratulate the graduating seniors. While the awards were serious at this event – best math student, best English student, etc., etc., the awards given at the “ball” were for Mr. & Miss Gossip, Mr. Dull, Mr. & Ms. Extravagant and other funny awards.

Last weekend we were in Jason’s town, Kierkovo, a wee-little town (700 people) on the Greek border in the Rhodope Mountains. It was Jason’s birthday and a good-sized group of PCV’s showed up in to celebrate. (Check out the pics.) It’s quite a different place from Silistra (40,000 people) – everyone knew Jason and his business. Kate and I can walk down the street in Silistra without being noticed, but everywhere we went with Jason people stopped to say hello and we are probably still the talk of the town. We hiked up a hill to an abandoned village and made camp there for the night. It had been abandoned about fifteen years prior, though people in Kierkovo still keep up, so to speak, some of the homes. All that seems to mean is keeping some type of lock on the door. In the village was an old mosque, which we never succeeded to enter. In this part of the country, Turkish is spoken just as fluently as Bulgarian, if not more. In one old home was a room that looked like someone just got up and left about thirty years ago. We found a notebook from 1969, with notes from French class . . . oui oui. Then we made another trip down to pick up more food and passed along a ridge that overlooked a valley and a ridge of mountains that is the Greek border. We tried to get home on Sunday, but we were all foiled when the bus driver took his son’s football team to a match and didn’t come for the 10am to Kurdjali. We eventually made our way back to Sofia, but Kate and I missed our night train back to Silistra, so we spent a night in Sofia with the volunteer there. I missed class the next day (darn!). We got a little of our train ticket refunded, and had to take the grueling bus ride back. It wouldn’t be so bad if there weren’t generic techno music being played at varying levels of volume for six hours over the speakers on the bus.

We recently saw the movie “Duets” at a theater in our town. In case you didn’t see it, it’s about American people finding some measure of meaning in their life through the saving grace of karaoke. After seeing the movie, I realized just how unique America’s search for its soul, is. The after-effects of capitalism gone crazy, in strip-malling America into oblivion, is somewhat portrayed in the movie, but it is absolutely irrelevant here in Bulgaria. So many of my students blindly worship anything American and people here automatically associate America with greatness. Most people here haven’t experienced yet the side effects of a successful free economy and consuming the world’s resources with a voracious appetite. First you need to take care of the basic necessities – food, shelter, clothing, etc. While those are available here, their dependability is always in question. A Bulgarian rarely leaves his/her job simply because he or she isn’t being paid – to do that would risk having a job at all. It seems to me that after some level of security is felt then one is able to ask the bigger questions in life. Not that those questions don’t ever come into a Bulgarian’s mind, but what is the more immediate need – to ensure food for the family or contemplate one’s place in this world? So many people here, just as many people in America, long for a life without insecurity. And for us Americans who have grown up in such a rich country, we can easily see the disadvantages of living in a Disneyfied world. But it is still incredibly tempting to many people in the world. And when I try to explain this to a Bulgarian, I get a disbelieving laugh.

-Josh