July 3, 2001

So we’re spending this week getting ready for our camp that starts on Sunday. We got our grant money for the camp, which will be focusing on visual arts and the environment. And we’re buying all the materials this week and trying to get things in order before the whole thing begins. Actually, Kate and I won’t be doing a whole lot during the camp. It will be mostly local Bulgarian artists and environmentalists working with about 25 students from Silistra. We’ve been able to facilitate the whole thing by co-writing the grant with the counselor from my school. She’s made all the contacts with the artists and we’ve basically been organizing meetings to plan the thing and they’ve taken it from there. The people we have working with us are fantastic. And we’ve been able to pull off the whole camp for a relatively small amount of money. It just wouldn’t be possible for it to happen without outside help. Today, when I handed some of the grant money to our counterpart to buy some materials she made the comment that the 550 levs, about 200 US dollars, is how much she makes in three months. And she won’t be getting paid probably for the next two months. All the teachers from our schools probably won’t receive paychecks until August or September. The municipal government pulled the same thing last summer. Now that the teachers have taught the whole school year without going on strike as they threatened to at the beginning of the school year, the government can decide not to pay them and the teachers have nothing to threaten them with during the summer – at least not until school begins.

I’m finally done with school. Last week I tested the 8^th class students who had just taken an intensive year of English. They took about 35 classes of English every week. They were tested in every possible way in order to enter the Language High School. I and two other teachers sat in the classroom as students entered the room by pairs. One student would wait while the other would speak about some topic of his or her choice for about 5-8 minutes. Many of them chose to speak about Egyptian mummies or religion, or something like that. A lot of other students chose similar topics, like the Bermuda triangle, Stonehenge, and other mysteries. All these weird American mystery television shows make it here and peak their interest. One of my students from another class believes that America is covering up many secrets about UFOs and other such things. Did you ever notice that when movies about UFOs are made in America, it’s like they only visit America?? What about the rest of the world??? Anyways, back to the testing – they sat down and then just began to spout off these presentations with no notes or any help. Most students could probably speak it in their sleep. I was really impressed with some of them, but hearing these expressionless presentations for about five hours straight exhausted me. My favorite presentation was about why we should laugh – he talked about the laugh clinic somewhere in America. After the pair presented their speeches, they would have to pick a piece of paper with a situation, for example, inviting someone to a party and declining or something like that. They had four minutes to prepare and then they had to present a dialogue with at least eight sentences or phrases each. Some turned out to be pretty funny. A couple girls just giggled their way through the whole thing and we were glad to see their laughs and smiles at that point. They were all so nervous. At some points, the teacher would pick out some grammatical error that I would just ignore and you could see the nervous meter go up about ten points on their face. She had gotten them so afraid about not passing the exam that most of them were walking a thin line between success and despair. The truth of the matter is that she and I both knew all the students before they came in and we knew how well they spoke. The third teacher was really the only objective evaluator since she hadn’t taught them all year. There were a few students who didn’t pass the whole of the exams, of which the oral exams were only a part of the whole examination process. My 8^th class students were really enjoyable to teach because many of them knew so little English at the beginning of the year. During the first couple weeks, last September, whenever I opened my mouth and those scary English words came out, they got a frightened look on their face that took about two months to go away. By May they had had so many English classes, that my words weren’t so scary anymore and, in fact, they were just about fed up with the English language. Over the next four years they’ll still be studying English, but much less – about eight classes a week from this point on. This is the language high school and there are many more high schools in Silistra – the technical school, the mathematical school, the arts school, and a couple others, but I don’t know exactly what their specialties are.

And tomorrow is July 4^th. Next year won’t be back for the 4^th of July again. We were in training last summer on July 4^th, and Kate was sick. (She got better the next day, in case you were concerned . . .) Someone prepared the local pizzeria in Dupnitsa, the town that we trained in, to welcome about 50 Americans for their national holiday. We all piled in the pizzeria and they made little American flags for us. But driving to a local park somewhere in America and putting down a blanket with a picnic and waiting until dark for the fireworks to begin sounds really good to me. The summer heat, the relaxed attitude of everyone, the lying on your back and watching the fireworks explode over your head, even the crowds, walking in and around, looking for an open space in the grass, sounds good to me. The thump of the firework shooting off and the streak of spark as it races up to the sky is a sight and sound that is a great memory to have.

-Josh