Hello from Plovdiv - probably my favorite city in Bulgaria. I'm sitting in an internet cafe looking out the window at a Roman stadium that was built probably 2000 years ago. And when I say that I'm looking out at it, I mean that I'm looking directly out the window at the stands - the complex in which this cafe is located was built down into the stadium itself, something that is really unique.
Plovdiv is full of little surprises like this, being one of the oldest cities not only in Bulgaria, but also in Europe, a settlement being located here since the neolithic era. The result is a city of layers - a city built on top of itself over and over again throughout the years - each layer revealing something about the history of the place. The old town is the best example of this: a beautiful area of cobblestone streets winding through Victorian era buldings and Bulgarian national revival architecture built directly on top of an ancient Roman city. While walking through the old town, you can look down onto the old Roman city, and look up at modern art on the still busy streets lined with trendy stores, bars, and restaurants. The entire city is crowned with a beautiful amalgamation of all 3 - a remarkably preserved Roman theater set at the top of a hill surrounded by historic Bulgarian buildings that house museums and little modern cafes - not to mention one of the best views anywhere in Bulgaria, looking down at this amazing little city.
The best part? No bloks.
Needless to say, that whenever I get the chance to come out to Plovdiv, I gladly take it. This particular occasion is due to a couple of things, both of which I've been looking forward to for a while. Firstly, I'm meeting up with a bunch of friends to watch the Super Bowl. We figured that the second biggest city in Bulgaria would have at least some place at which we could tune in and watch the action, and at the very least, we'll be able to tune in through the internet in the hostel's lobby...
Secondly, Plovdiv is very close to the place at which we B24s will be attending our "In Service Conference," a week long training that marks our 3rd month of service at our sites. It will be nice to be able to exchange ideas and experiences with everyone, since this will be the first time since the Swearing-In Ceremony that our entire group will be together. We'll be staying a week at a hotel in a town called Hisar, a town that has a popular brand of Bulgarian bottled water named after it, and a lot of mineral pools and springs.
I'll be sure to keep you all updated, and I hope to put up some pictures of my favorite places in Plovdiv at some point... This has been a very busy time here in BG, and I'm not updating as much as I would like to. I think after IST more posts will be coming your way.
Until next time...
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Studeno Mi E
Sorry about the lack of any sort of update between New Years and now. I appreciated all the awesome holiday wishes from everyone, and thanks for the compliments on the blog. The lack of recent updates could be because talking about my daily routines probably isn't really that interesting. I want to start doing more culture posts, but there has been a lot of stuff going on around Preslav the past few weeks. I’ve done a bit of traveling around during the weekends. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. But there’s been another factor that I think has been taking away from my motivation to do much of anything:
I am cold.
No I’m not cold. I’m freezing. When I went to sleep last night, I turned off the heater (which I’ve done every night so far) and huddled under what is now several layers of blankets on my bed. I slept pretty well, regardless of the fact that I have started to wear a sweater, long pants, and 2 layers of socks in bed. When I woke up I could see my breath inside (which actually isn’t that rare). I looked up the temperature through the magic of the internet and it read 1 degree. I didn’t freak out until I realized that I still had the site set to Fahrenheit. That’s -17 degrees Celcius for those keeping track. This is by far the coldest I have ever been.
The outcome of this story is not only the realization that I should start leaving the heater on overnight, but also that I’m becoming accustomed to things to which I never thought I would have to become accustomed. Before I came here, if somebody told me (a Florida boy who has never lived through a snowy winter) that I would sleep through the night in an uninsulated and unheated concrete apartment while the temperature outside drops to 1 degree Fahrenheit, I would have laughed and laughed. But there I was – shivering and hunched over my laptop reading the number 1. And it wasn’t so bad.
It’s funny how things change.
People around town often ask me about life in the orphanage. Aside from the extremely annoying question “Do they listen?” (topic for a future blog post), a popular topic for orphanage related discussion has become “Is it cold there?” This kind of caught me off-guard the first time I heard it, and I answered with some form of “no of course not… they have radiators, and the windows are new,” but as I started to think about it, it’s very cold in the confines of that concrete building. In the hallways, there is some sort of breeze that comes through somehow, making everyone want to stay in either their room, the tv room, or the supervisor’s room.
But it’s not so much the physical cold. The children here have been cold their entire lives. Denied of their parents’ love by circumstances out of their control, they live a cold existence. There are children given up because their parents can’t afford to take care of them. There are children abandoned to the streets who have never even known their parents. There are children whose parents have committed unspeakable crimes, and so have been placed into a system without being told why because they wouldn’t be able to handle the truth otherwise. The kids have been dealt a hand in life from a deck stacked against them. They are cold, and they take and take and take because they have to in order to find any sense of warmth in their lives.
“I could find another dream / one that keeps me warm and clean / but I ain’t dreaming anymore, no, I’m waking up” read the lyrics of one of one of my favorite songs by The Drive-By Truckers, one of my favorite bands around right now. They have this ability to write lyrics that take simple moments in peoples’ lives and craft amazing stories from them. For that, they get a lot of hits on my iTunes…
This particular lyric, however, has taken on a new meaning for me over the past couple of months. This dream of mine that I’m living is much more than I could have ever imagined. I come away from work in the cold orphanage every day only to walk into a cold house, dirty from the kids’ often grubby hands (not to mention the fact that sometimes I physically can’t take a shower because my bathroom is freezing and I forgot to run the boiler), and drained, but somehow it seems worth it every day. It’s not just a dream that I’m now living… I really feel that I am finding my notch in this world, and seeing how lucky I am to have been dealt the cards I’ve been dealt over the years.
I find myself complaining sometimes that I have to wash clothes by hand, or that I don’t have central heating, or that I have to wait weeks for packages to get into town, but mostly as a joke. “These are the sacrifices I make in the Peace Corps” I say… The fact is that even as I found out that I spent the night without heat as the temperature outside neared 0, it doesn’t really even matter in the grand scheme of things... It's not so bad.
It’s funny how things change.
Until next time…
I am cold.
No I’m not cold. I’m freezing. When I went to sleep last night, I turned off the heater (which I’ve done every night so far) and huddled under what is now several layers of blankets on my bed. I slept pretty well, regardless of the fact that I have started to wear a sweater, long pants, and 2 layers of socks in bed. When I woke up I could see my breath inside (which actually isn’t that rare). I looked up the temperature through the magic of the internet and it read 1 degree. I didn’t freak out until I realized that I still had the site set to Fahrenheit. That’s -17 degrees Celcius for those keeping track. This is by far the coldest I have ever been.
The outcome of this story is not only the realization that I should start leaving the heater on overnight, but also that I’m becoming accustomed to things to which I never thought I would have to become accustomed. Before I came here, if somebody told me (a Florida boy who has never lived through a snowy winter) that I would sleep through the night in an uninsulated and unheated concrete apartment while the temperature outside drops to 1 degree Fahrenheit, I would have laughed and laughed. But there I was – shivering and hunched over my laptop reading the number 1. And it wasn’t so bad.
It’s funny how things change.
People around town often ask me about life in the orphanage. Aside from the extremely annoying question “Do they listen?” (topic for a future blog post), a popular topic for orphanage related discussion has become “Is it cold there?” This kind of caught me off-guard the first time I heard it, and I answered with some form of “no of course not… they have radiators, and the windows are new,” but as I started to think about it, it’s very cold in the confines of that concrete building. In the hallways, there is some sort of breeze that comes through somehow, making everyone want to stay in either their room, the tv room, or the supervisor’s room.
But it’s not so much the physical cold. The children here have been cold their entire lives. Denied of their parents’ love by circumstances out of their control, they live a cold existence. There are children given up because their parents can’t afford to take care of them. There are children abandoned to the streets who have never even known their parents. There are children whose parents have committed unspeakable crimes, and so have been placed into a system without being told why because they wouldn’t be able to handle the truth otherwise. The kids have been dealt a hand in life from a deck stacked against them. They are cold, and they take and take and take because they have to in order to find any sense of warmth in their lives.
“I could find another dream / one that keeps me warm and clean / but I ain’t dreaming anymore, no, I’m waking up” read the lyrics of one of one of my favorite songs by The Drive-By Truckers, one of my favorite bands around right now. They have this ability to write lyrics that take simple moments in peoples’ lives and craft amazing stories from them. For that, they get a lot of hits on my iTunes…
This particular lyric, however, has taken on a new meaning for me over the past couple of months. This dream of mine that I’m living is much more than I could have ever imagined. I come away from work in the cold orphanage every day only to walk into a cold house, dirty from the kids’ often grubby hands (not to mention the fact that sometimes I physically can’t take a shower because my bathroom is freezing and I forgot to run the boiler), and drained, but somehow it seems worth it every day. It’s not just a dream that I’m now living… I really feel that I am finding my notch in this world, and seeing how lucky I am to have been dealt the cards I’ve been dealt over the years.
I find myself complaining sometimes that I have to wash clothes by hand, or that I don’t have central heating, or that I have to wait weeks for packages to get into town, but mostly as a joke. “These are the sacrifices I make in the Peace Corps” I say… The fact is that even as I found out that I spent the night without heat as the temperature outside neared 0, it doesn’t really even matter in the grand scheme of things... It's not so bad.
It’s funny how things change.
Until next time…
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Chestita Nova Godina
Happy New Year!
Here in Bulgaria, New Year’s is by far the most popular and festive of the days in the holiday season. Even all the symbols that are usually associated with Christmas, like snowmen, Christmas trees, and bells have a big “ЧНГ 2009!” slapped over them. It’s most likely a holdover from Communist times, when religious expression was discouraged. Even so, it makes for a pretty awesome celebration these days…
I spent most of my time on New Year’s Eve at the orphanage, where I played games inside and watched a movie with the younger kids until their dinner time. The kids were treated with a “special meal” (special in the sense that it was food that most people would consider a normal meal, so a big deal for the kids), consisting of kyuftes (spiced sausage patties), chicken, and a traditional yogurt and cucumber salad, all of which they were excited about and scarfed down in no time.
Here in Bulgaria, New Year’s is by far the most popular and festive of the days in the holiday season. Even all the symbols that are usually associated with Christmas, like snowmen, Christmas trees, and bells have a big “ЧНГ 2009!” slapped over them. It’s most likely a holdover from Communist times, when religious expression was discouraged. Even so, it makes for a pretty awesome celebration these days…
I spent most of my time on New Year’s Eve at the orphanage, where I played games inside and watched a movie with the younger kids until their dinner time. The kids were treated with a “special meal” (special in the sense that it was food that most people would consider a normal meal, so a big deal for the kids), consisting of kyuftes (spiced sausage patties), chicken, and a traditional yogurt and cucumber salad, all of which they were excited about and scarfed down in no time.
After dinner with the younger kids, it was time to go upstairs for the older kids’ celebration. They had already eaten their big meal, and the party was underway, with loud chalga music blasting throughout the halls. There was kyuchek (Roma dance that is basically like belly dancing mixed with pelvic thrusting) and horo (traditional Balkan circle dance) for hours.
Today, actual New Year’s Day, I woke up to the sounds of even more firecrackers and cheering outside the window. Then a stream of kids with what can only be described as “elaborately decorated sticks” started showing up at my door. This tradition is much like Trick-or-Treating in the States, in that kids show up and you give them a small gift or some candy or something. It’s different in that instead of dressing up in costumes to do this, they hit you with a stick and then demand that you give them something. In return, they give you good luck wishes for the new year. A good time for everyone involved!
Next week it’s “back to the grind” and I’ll have my full schedule once again (preschool in the morning, dom in the afternoon, and horo class or tutoring or band practice at night). School starts back up on the 5th, and all the kids that left the orphanage for the holiday season will be back. I’ll be starting my groups back up, and probably starting back at square one because of the long break. No big deal… It’s the season for starting over anyways. Everyone gets a clean slate. Everyone gets another chance.
Честита нова година! Много здрав и късмет и да дойдат много повече весели години!
Until next time…
Then the big moment came – the clock struck midnight and the real madness began. When I say the new year started with a bang, I don’t mean in the cliché metaphorical sense. No… I mean it was a battleground out in the streets with kids, and sometimes their parents, tossing firecrackers at each other and then screaming like mad to get out of the way. There was a massive fireworks display in the center, much more than I expected from this sleepy town of 6000ish. I’m pretty sure that the smell of gunpowder will hang in the air at least until next new year.
Today, actual New Year’s Day, I woke up to the sounds of even more firecrackers and cheering outside the window. Then a stream of kids with what can only be described as “elaborately decorated sticks” started showing up at my door. This tradition is much like Trick-or-Treating in the States, in that kids show up and you give them a small gift or some candy or something. It’s different in that instead of dressing up in costumes to do this, they hit you with a stick and then demand that you give them something. In return, they give you good luck wishes for the new year. A good time for everyone involved!
Next week it’s “back to the grind” and I’ll have my full schedule once again (preschool in the morning, dom in the afternoon, and horo class or tutoring or band practice at night). School starts back up on the 5th, and all the kids that left the orphanage for the holiday season will be back. I’ll be starting my groups back up, and probably starting back at square one because of the long break. No big deal… It’s the season for starting over anyways. Everyone gets a clean slate. Everyone gets another chance.
Честита нова година! Много здрав и късмет и да дойдат много повече весели години!
Until next time…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
