March 26, 2002

Well, we’ve heard about the weather in Ohio. We’ve heard about the school closings. The weather here is almost as atrocious and the wee-little lime-green leaves on the trees are hanging on for dear life in the wet snow and wind, which blows them almost to the point of getting ripped off. Last night, someone’s window went flying down to the sidewalk below because of the winds. When I heard it, I woke up and hoped it wasn’t one of ours. Our door and windows have been rattling nonstop. The wind and gray weather have been howling for the past four days. I walked past the bazaar this morning and some of the corrugated metal booths were overturned from the wind. There was one guy in the bazaar – the fish guy. Everyone else was staying home. So much for “chestit prolet!” – “happy spring!” The past few days have been days begging for naps and reading books. But instead I have found myself busy, lesson planning and putting together the English journal/newspaper, written by the English students at my school. This is now the third edition and I have more articles than I’ve ever had before. And some of them are really good. So I’ve spent a lot of time in front of this screen, putting the newspaper together. There is one good thing about this weather – our terrace is now serving as our refrigerator. A couple nights ago, I was chipping away at the monster of ice in our freezer when I began to hear a slight hissing sound. Then it got louder. Then I saw a white cloud of freon(?) shooting out at me. I hoped that maybe the fridge would still work, but soon the ice began to drip and I knew I had some explaining to do to the maintenance workers at my school. I told my director this morning and he grinned at me . . . it’s going to be “skupo” (expensive). Yup, and considering the teacher’s still haven’t gotten paid for a few months, I’m going to try and have to get some help from the PC. I’m glad to say that I haven’t broken too many things here.

Anyways, the two weeks prior to this one have been even more active. Two weeks ago, we were at our COS (completion of service) conference and officially began to bring to a close our service here. We talked about going home, future possibilities, and all the rigmarole that we have to go through to get our documents in order. Two years is a long time, and when we began to take into account all the things that have happened here, it actually feels like we did something. It was good to hang out with our group of volunteers and hear what they’re planning on doing when they return. It’s a unique feeling to come to this point in our service . . . I mean, we’ve made it. Not completely, of course, but we’re to the point where we’re almost finished with our assignment. I’ve taught about 250 students during the two years here. I’ve seen students begin, knowing no English whatsoever, to the point where they can have a conversation with me. I certainly can’t take all the credit because they have many of other English teachers, but I know they will feel more comfortable talking to native speakers in the future. Many of them were confused why I made them call me Mr. Miller instead of Josh because “all the other Americans before you, we called them by their first names.” Even despite that, the mayor last Friday confused me for a student rather than as a teacher when we had lunch with him, our PC director, and my school director. *sigh* I guess I’m used to it. (He did meet me once before, by the way.)

One unique thing that has happened during this experience is something I didn’t expect to happen. I’ve learned how to let go a little more. As much as I hate that phrase “let go” and all the religious and pseudo-religious cliches it implies, I’ve been able to work here with a sense of detachment. I’ve been able to observe a lot of things. I’ve been an addition to this society, not a vital part of it. And I think that’s the way it should be. I still remember when we were first gathering to leave the States, in Chicago, a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) told us some last-minute advice. He said something along the lines of, “your work will probably have more of an impact if people forget your name.” Certainly I know that there will be people here, who will remember us in 40 years, and we will remember them also, but our impact should be empowering to the people who live here. I can’t think of more empowering thing than education. I think I came into PC with the attitude of trying to make a change. But, as it has been said by so many earlier volunteers, the one who was changed most, it seems, was me.

On Friday, last week, my school had its annual holiday. This holiday is the name day of “Peyo Yavorov”, the Bulgarian poet who our school is named after. Last year, I entered the theater in the center and was ushered to the row for the teachers. The whole theater was packed and the kids were cramming the aisles too. It was the same way this year, too. Bulgarians love to celebrate their holidays and everything all of a sudden looks up on these days. To summarize the celebration: It’s about two hours long, with everything done by the students. Dancing, singing, skits, jokes, and various presentations. The students pick the music and keep the whole show going with musical interludes from American, Russian and Bulgarian bands. It’s loud. All the 8^th graders – the runts of the school – have to go through the ritual of doing a performance in front of the whole school. But the best thing is that there is so little inhibition. The kids just get up there, in front of an audience of about 500 other kids and let it all hang out. I’m afraid to say that most American teenagers wouldn’t be so uninhibited. There are plenty of laughs, some great and not-so-great entertainment, and it’s just a hodge-podge of performances. I remember last year how much I was struck by how sexist almost all of the skits were. This year they’re just as sexist, but it doesn’t bother me as much. Plus, one kid lit up a cigar on stage as he was telling us a story. It got some whoops and hollers, but it was part of the skit and the director was there, laughing along.

This Friday, we’re getting on the night train to Istanbul and we’ll spend a week in Turkey. To be honest, we’re pretty traveled-out at this point. We were tempted to return to Greece, which we loved, but we’d kick ourselves if we never made it to Turkey. Kate and I have a pretty good way of traveling together and like to make up our minds at the last minute about where we’ll go. We’ve sort of gotten used to traveling to a different country every six months or so while we’ve been here. It’ll be strange not to do that when we return to the States. I guess there are a few states we still need to explore . . .

- Josh