February 26, 2002

Our COS (completion of service) conference is in a couple weeks. With the official conference that marks the beginning of the end for us volunteers who will be going home in the coming months, I’m beginning to reflect on what this has all meant – our PC experience, that is.

When we arrived in Bulgaria I was 25 years old. When we return in June, I will be a few months shy of 28. I’m looking at the pictures of our family we have hung on our walls. They’re pictures that we probably wouldn’t choose today to hang on our wall if we were living in the States. They’re now older pictures, not really reflecting all the change that has taken place in our families. Some people have different haircuts and if we took a family picture today, our baby niece would be in there somewhere too. In some of the pictures, I look much younger – at least to me – and it’s amazing to me that they’re only three years old.

When we first arrived in this apartment, it was nighttime. We had no decent food at the moment, so we opened some tortilla chips and salsa that was sent to us from our parents. That was our dinner. We sat, trying to imagine living in this little apartment with a terrible view for two years. I was fascinated to be living in a real, communist block. If I had been in this apartment fifteen years ago, I would have been in a dangerous place. I wanted to take a time trip back about twenty years to see the people that lived in this place. What did they think about America? Were they scared by the prospect of the USA and the USSR nuking the world away? I looked out at the surrounding blocks, peering through two other blocks to a grape vineyard, not realizing for another three months or so that that was Romania. I thought Silistra bordered Romania only by the Danube. I played with a short-wave radio that was left here on which it was written, made in the USSR. We went to sleep on our bed, which has since gained a few more poking springs, listening to the quiet, muffled sound of life in Silistra, Bulgaria through our floors and windows.

I went to the opening day of my high school, scared to death. Hundreds of teenagers were gathered at an outdoor disco/pool on a warm, sunny September afternoon. The director and some students led the program and soon came the part when they introduced the new teachers. They had a student translator there for me and, even though I understood the questions, which amounted to what is your favorite music and favorite saying, I waited for the student to translate for me. It was then that I realized that I was much more than me to the students; I was a symbol of something important to them. None of them knew me at all but applauded and shouted encouragingly, unlike any other new Bulgarian teacher that was introduced before me. I’ve been reminded about that over and over again during our time here. The perspective that Bulgarians have helped me gain on my own country is unique. I don’t know where else an American can understand what it truly means to be American other than outside of his or her country. Our freedoms and riches are beyond many people’s wildest dreams and our responsibilities because of our freedoms and riches are undeniable.

As teaching became more familiar and the pattern of Bulgarian life became a part of me, the days started to melt together. It was much the same as life back in America, except different, much, much different. Training was so intense and our days so ordered and scheduled, that once we got to site, it’s like our lives came to a comparative crawl. I wasn’t complaining, and I was mainly interested in just soaking up the culture that surrounded me. I wasn’t prepared for the negativity that I encountered. But as soon as I started to feel that all those negative comments, which surrounded me were absolutely right, someone would prove them wrong. A teacher would sit down with me in the teacher’s lounge and be truly interested in me and how our lives are going here. Another teacher, whom I’ll never forget, told her colleagues to shape up and not lose hope. When our teachers rarely get paid on time and it seems there is no improvement of anything over the period of years, it’s certainly easy to lose hope. But it seems to me that the people, like this woman, who faithfully does her work while persuading her colleagues to do their share, are the ones who will need to be thanked when Bulgaria can finally say, “we have succeeded.”

I don’t think I’ll ever hear the word “opportunity” in the same way. During my first year of teaching here, my favorite topic for oral tests was listening to my students’ opinions about leaving Bulgaria for more opportunities, whether perceived or real, or staying here to build up what they already have. “Opportunity” is a much more common word in Bulgarian. “Possibility” and “opportunity” are actually the same word in Bulgarian; so one word gets a lot more mileage than two. About the age of 16, maybe 17, the reality of the limited opportunities in Silistra seems to hit students here like a brick wall. Graduation seems not so far off anymore and the question, “What am I going to do?” maybe begins to eat away in the back of their minds. I perceive more cynicism. While most teenagers begin to see the world in more personal and immediate terms at about this age, I see far more cynicism than I did in the States. So many American kids grow up in a sea of opportunities and it can be overwhelming without help. But the one thing that I’m absolutely and unashamedly in love with about America is that you always have an opportunity to make or remake yourself in whatever way you want. What a privilege it was for me to spend nearly two years in college, wondering what I wanted to study before I actually decided. And now I’m here, taking advantage of yet another opportunity that is available to many Americans. (I’m still wondering about a lot of things . . .) Two of my students from last year were awarded an opportunity to live and study in the States for a year. My hope is that they will return more in love with what they left and more determined to build it up.

I have many more reflections to write about but I’ll stop here for the evening.

-Josh