In exactly a week I will be headed back to Sofia for my final close of service activities - mostly signing off on documents. However, this is also a time for reflection. I filled out my final Volunteer Report Form and my Description of Service recently, and this has put into numerical terms (no easy task) the things I have done here. It is exceptionally hard to number what I have done here. The Peace Corps has told us since day 1 that, as youth development volunteers, we will most likely not see most of the fruits of our labor.
That is especially true with my work at the Detski Yasli (Preschool) here in Preslav. My last day at the Yasli was today, and it was representative of my entire experience there. The children there can call me by name (Bati Greg - "Brother Greg"), and are excited when I play with them and spend time teaching them basic skills. However, when I leave it is as though I am a non-person. The children do not need me there, and yet I still have had some sort of impact on their development.
Youth development, by nature, is a very vague and immaterial assignment. We YD volunteers often joke about "developing the youth," as if that were a concrete and specific task to achieve. In reality, we just do what we think is best for the children. In this country, there is a severe lack of motivation among child care workers. Many times people are employed at child care institutions because it is available and "easy" work, rather than out of a sincere desire to work with the children. For these workers, "developing the youth" is often the last thing on their mind, which makes our work all the more frustrating.
At the Yasli, this was especially evident. With a background in child development I was eager to teach the children there some basic reading skills and some other things. The employees all but laughed at me the first time I brought the subject up, telling me that since they are so little they can not achieve or learn anything. In fact, it is at this stage of development at which the foundations of development are formed, making this time one of the most vital stages in a child's life. I have had some success in teaching basic skills to the children there - namely teaching the children how to count and in some social skills. It was when I started doing this that the staff perhaps realized that spending the time to teach the youngest children (rather than simply watch them) might have a positive impact.
In my opinion this is what youth development is really all about. Not only are we assigned to help the youth, but also to help develop the capacity of the people who work at these institutions. A large part of my work here is uncountable, since it is mainly in just having conversations with people about the abilities and strengths of the children I work with. Even a chance encounter with a neighbor is a "youth development activity," as the subject of the children I work with is inevitably a topic of discussion. People are often surprised when I tell them about how a preschooler I work with can count to ten and sing the alphabet. They are similarly surprised when I tell them that not all the kids I work with at the orphanage are criminals, and are in fact very nice children who perform well in school.
Much of my last week here at the orphanage will be spent in the same way I have been spending my time throughout the past 2 years. I will still be convincing the community members and staff that the children are capable of achieving wonderful things. This is evident in that I was able to teach several illiterate children (some as old as 5th grade) how to read and write, or how to do basic math - something that was never a focus before. Now, some of the orphanage workers have started working with the children one on one to catch them up. It is this achievement that I am most proud of, but the one that is hardest to describe in words and numbers. How do you put in numbers the fact that because of your work, some people might have a more positive view of at risk children and may be more willing to work with them?
I will post my Description of Service here later in order to try to show what I have done here to you all, but really they are just words. I cannot put into words the feelings I have had here and the things I have learned. How do you express in words the feeling when a child says, "You are like a father to me." This coming from a 10 year old child who hasn't seen his father in 5 years, and to a guy who has never had any parenting experience outside of a class in college. I can't tell you the emotions I went through when he told me that. The same day, another boy spit on me and threw walnuts at my face. It is because of this that I have such a hard time talking about my time here.
Perhaps someday I will be able to sort it all out, but for now all I have is the memories. I am forever a changed man for having experienced what I did here. I can only hope that I have been a positive force in the kids' lives.
Sorry that this has been a somewhat jumbled and disjointed post. As you can tell there has been a lot on my mind as I wrap up my service. I hope to write a more cohesive post soon.
Showing posts with label orphanage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label orphanage. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
There's Always Something
It’s been a long time since my last update, for whatever reason. Maybe it’s because of laziness, maybe an inability to put my thoughts into words lately, but not for lack of things to write about.
There’s always something to write about.
Several things have come and gone, some of them noteworthy enough to write a blog post about (my fitness room project coming up will get a blog post soon), some of them somewhat newsworthy but not exciting or interesting enough to have a blog post written about them (my birthday and the Super Bowl, or Kukeri which I posted about last year), and many of them not exciting or interesting at all (going about my daily life, or how I do laundry seemingly every day now).
So with all that in the mix it gets harder to work up a blog post of any substance. I like writing about things that I feel have some weight to them. I like the end result of what I write to be a fully thought out result of an observation I make, or a trip I go on, or something of the sort. And I hope the end result comes out well on the side of the reader. That is unless you readers would like me to write up a daily account that would read more like a to-do list than anything cohesive or (what I would perceive as) interesting.
The reason I was inspired to write something today was from a quote taken from a conversation I had with my coworker the other day. We were discussing an unfortunate event that happened earlier in the day. A couple of the orphanage boys skipped out on class, stole some bags and started running. They were eventually caught, but the damage was already done. The boys were scheduled to be transferred from the VP orphanage to a different one. The discussion was hardly surprising, but what took me was what she said during a pause in the conversation.
“There is always something to be angry about.”
Now I suppose this is true, but it seemed to capture the essence of working here perfectly. This is a place in which you have to pick your battles, to focus on the good things that happen, and to take every day one step at a time. Often the situation here is to forget those common pieces of advice and to expect everything from everyone all the time. When someone thinks that things should be perfect all the time, of course you’re going to be constantly angry.
However, it’s not just a reaction, but an expectation. People (including myself) have fallen into the trap of expecting something bad to happen at any time. When we have the expectation that something will get on our nerves or go horribly wrong, the chances are we will highlight it when it does. It also clouds our ability to seek out the positive things during the day. So of course, with this mindset of expecting to get angry, a host of problems arise. We identify the children we work with as being impossible to help rather than searching for their strengths and developing them (the view of most people here in town). We treat children as problems to be dealt with rather than individuals who are constantly learning and gathering information about the world around them.
And with that being said, the danger is that children develop the same view from the influence of the people they learn from - that they are problems that need to be dealt with, or could do something that will cause an anger explosion at any time. The expectation becomes that they cannot change who they are, and who they are is a bad kid who cannot do good, or is stupid, or will never do anything of consequence in their lives. The case today may have stemmed from our expectations of them as “bad kids.” The boys might as well have carried the label as a bumper sticker on their foreheads. And of course they played the part today. And of course people were angry about it.
But this is to ignore the good things that happened on the same day. This is to ignore the positive steps taken by other kids. Rather than thinking that there is always something to be angry about we should remind ourselves that something positive happens every day. More than that, children are constantly developing in positive ways that we cannot readily identify in the moment. Admittedly this is more difficult, and very hard to see day to day. That’s what makes being in this line of work so challenging, and at many times frustrating. The progress isn’t always easily evident. There may not be a clear talking point at the end of the day, while bad events are readily identifiable and easy to latch on to.
It’s just a matter of training yourself to believe that one small, hard to identify positive outweighs the gigantic negative.
Until next time...
There’s always something to write about.
Several things have come and gone, some of them noteworthy enough to write a blog post about (my fitness room project coming up will get a blog post soon), some of them somewhat newsworthy but not exciting or interesting enough to have a blog post written about them (my birthday and the Super Bowl, or Kukeri which I posted about last year), and many of them not exciting or interesting at all (going about my daily life, or how I do laundry seemingly every day now).
So with all that in the mix it gets harder to work up a blog post of any substance. I like writing about things that I feel have some weight to them. I like the end result of what I write to be a fully thought out result of an observation I make, or a trip I go on, or something of the sort. And I hope the end result comes out well on the side of the reader. That is unless you readers would like me to write up a daily account that would read more like a to-do list than anything cohesive or (what I would perceive as) interesting.
The reason I was inspired to write something today was from a quote taken from a conversation I had with my coworker the other day. We were discussing an unfortunate event that happened earlier in the day. A couple of the orphanage boys skipped out on class, stole some bags and started running. They were eventually caught, but the damage was already done. The boys were scheduled to be transferred from the VP orphanage to a different one. The discussion was hardly surprising, but what took me was what she said during a pause in the conversation.
“There is always something to be angry about.”
Now I suppose this is true, but it seemed to capture the essence of working here perfectly. This is a place in which you have to pick your battles, to focus on the good things that happen, and to take every day one step at a time. Often the situation here is to forget those common pieces of advice and to expect everything from everyone all the time. When someone thinks that things should be perfect all the time, of course you’re going to be constantly angry.
However, it’s not just a reaction, but an expectation. People (including myself) have fallen into the trap of expecting something bad to happen at any time. When we have the expectation that something will get on our nerves or go horribly wrong, the chances are we will highlight it when it does. It also clouds our ability to seek out the positive things during the day. So of course, with this mindset of expecting to get angry, a host of problems arise. We identify the children we work with as being impossible to help rather than searching for their strengths and developing them (the view of most people here in town). We treat children as problems to be dealt with rather than individuals who are constantly learning and gathering information about the world around them.
And with that being said, the danger is that children develop the same view from the influence of the people they learn from - that they are problems that need to be dealt with, or could do something that will cause an anger explosion at any time. The expectation becomes that they cannot change who they are, and who they are is a bad kid who cannot do good, or is stupid, or will never do anything of consequence in their lives. The case today may have stemmed from our expectations of them as “bad kids.” The boys might as well have carried the label as a bumper sticker on their foreheads. And of course they played the part today. And of course people were angry about it.
But this is to ignore the good things that happened on the same day. This is to ignore the positive steps taken by other kids. Rather than thinking that there is always something to be angry about we should remind ourselves that something positive happens every day. More than that, children are constantly developing in positive ways that we cannot readily identify in the moment. Admittedly this is more difficult, and very hard to see day to day. That’s what makes being in this line of work so challenging, and at many times frustrating. The progress isn’t always easily evident. There may not be a clear talking point at the end of the day, while bad events are readily identifiable and easy to latch on to.
It’s just a matter of training yourself to believe that one small, hard to identify positive outweighs the gigantic negative.
Until next time...
Friday, December 18, 2009
Greg in the News
SO recently the local newspaper did a feature on none other than yours truly. The following is a translation of the article in its entirety (and no I didn't just make up the translation). The article is pretty positive I think, if not a bit random. But hey, I'm glad that they think I'm newsworthy haha...
Gregory Herb: Now Veliki Preslav is like my home
Greg Herb is the volunteer from the Peace Corps in Veliki Preslav since last October. Greg is from the State of Florida. He has been in Bulgaria since July of 2008 and now can speak Bulgarian very well.
In school he studied Psychology and Child Develoment at a university in the States. His mother is a teacher, and his grandfather is a college professor. Maybe from there he got his interest in education and working with children. He says that his interest is working with at-risk children - orphans, minorities, the Roma people ("gypsies"). In Bulgaria there is an opportunity to work with these children he says. Because of this, a part of his work in Preslav is at the local Home for Children. He helps with math, English, and reading. There is competition in sports, and participation in art. They learn life skills which are very important for them in his opinion. He works in small groups of about 5-10 children. He tries to get every child to participate in at least one group every week. In his opinion, the children are not very aware of of the dangers of the use of narcotics, of human trafficking, of prevention of HIV/AIDS, of alcohol and nicotine addictions.
"The orphanages in America are different from the local kinds," describes Greg. "The children are placed in smaller houses and more volunteers work with them. The children are placed with foster parents more, and they are more comparable to these SOS Villages in Bulgaria. In America, only children who do not have parents or who have parents but that absolutely cannot care for them can stay in orphanages. There are many organizations that work with these children and make many things possible for them, such as finding a new home, because this is very important for them" says Greg.
Other than the orphanage, he works also with the children at the preschool. He teaches them how to begin to speak words, to know the different colors, and different skills such as washing hands for example.
"Now Preslav is like my home. I have many friends here," says Gregory. He says that sometimes it is hard to be far from home but that his loved ones know that his work is here, and that they support him.
One of the many skills of Greg is cooking. He cooks alone in his apartment, and cooks soups, moussaka, and other Bulgarian cuisine. "Here there are great fresh vegetables. In America, there are more preservatives and less fresh food," says the volunteer. On the topic of Bulgarian television, Greg says he follows "Survivor" and "Dancing Stars" but does not like the soap operas.
For Christmas, the American plans to meet in the mountains with his other colleagues. He hopes there will be snow, so that there will be a good holiday feeling...
--------------------
I'm not sure why they put in the part about me cooking and watching Bulgarian TV. I think it's because Bulgarians are not accustomed to seeing people my age living by themselves, much less supporting themselves alone. Anyway, that's the impression people have of me here apparently...
In the same newspaper, a project that I am helping with is described, and I will get to that in the next blog post...
Gregory Herb: Now Veliki Preslav is like my home
Greg Herb is the volunteer from the Peace Corps in Veliki Preslav since last October. Greg is from the State of Florida. He has been in Bulgaria since July of 2008 and now can speak Bulgarian very well.
In school he studied Psychology and Child Develoment at a university in the States. His mother is a teacher, and his grandfather is a college professor. Maybe from there he got his interest in education and working with children. He says that his interest is working with at-risk children - orphans, minorities, the Roma people ("gypsies"). In Bulgaria there is an opportunity to work with these children he says. Because of this, a part of his work in Preslav is at the local Home for Children. He helps with math, English, and reading. There is competition in sports, and participation in art. They learn life skills which are very important for them in his opinion. He works in small groups of about 5-10 children. He tries to get every child to participate in at least one group every week. In his opinion, the children are not very aware of of the dangers of the use of narcotics, of human trafficking, of prevention of HIV/AIDS, of alcohol and nicotine addictions.
"The orphanages in America are different from the local kinds," describes Greg. "The children are placed in smaller houses and more volunteers work with them. The children are placed with foster parents more, and they are more comparable to these SOS Villages in Bulgaria. In America, only children who do not have parents or who have parents but that absolutely cannot care for them can stay in orphanages. There are many organizations that work with these children and make many things possible for them, such as finding a new home, because this is very important for them" says Greg.
Other than the orphanage, he works also with the children at the preschool. He teaches them how to begin to speak words, to know the different colors, and different skills such as washing hands for example.
"Now Preslav is like my home. I have many friends here," says Gregory. He says that sometimes it is hard to be far from home but that his loved ones know that his work is here, and that they support him.
One of the many skills of Greg is cooking. He cooks alone in his apartment, and cooks soups, moussaka, and other Bulgarian cuisine. "Here there are great fresh vegetables. In America, there are more preservatives and less fresh food," says the volunteer. On the topic of Bulgarian television, Greg says he follows "Survivor" and "Dancing Stars" but does not like the soap operas.
For Christmas, the American plans to meet in the mountains with his other colleagues. He hopes there will be snow, so that there will be a good holiday feeling...
--------------------
I'm not sure why they put in the part about me cooking and watching Bulgarian TV. I think it's because Bulgarians are not accustomed to seeing people my age living by themselves, much less supporting themselves alone. Anyway, that's the impression people have of me here apparently...
In the same newspaper, a project that I am helping with is described, and I will get to that in the next blog post...
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Practical...
It’s been a little while since my last post, which I feel kind of bad about since much has happened in between then and now, and especially since I left the last post with a kind of negative note. I figured I’d get back into the swing of things by showing a bit of what I’ve been doing in my work to provide a kind of contrast to the rote memorization/copy method that I think is doing damage here.
A girl doing chetichki (Note that the characters in the bottom right corner of the book are NOT actually letters)
As I’ve said before, I have a number of groups focused on developing basic skills for the children at the orphanage. I focus most on math and literacy (a fact recently covered in the local newspaper, but I will get to that another time). In these groups I have tried to provide a different method of learning from which the kids are normally exposed. In this way, my goal has been to get illiterate kids up to speed as quickly as possible so that they don’t fall further behind in their classes. In a couple of my groups, this has meant starting by teaching the alphabet to children who are as far as 5th grade. I have since moved on with these kids to associate sounds with letters, and to string these sounds into words. That most basic of reading groups is now able to understand somewhat complicated words, and we are currently working on constructing our own words.
The key here, rather than to have the kids write letters over and over again, to have the children make associations with the letters and how they fit into the grand scheme of things. Copying the alphabet may create amazing penmanship, but it does little to show the children how to use those letters practically. Likewise, memorizing the alphabet and being able to recite it upon command (while a vital skill) does little to show how those letters can be arranged in different ways to create words.
With my special needs kids, I have been emphasizing the sounds of the letters as well, and in some instances the kids can begin picking up on words that start with the same sounds. It’s not much right now but it’s a start, especially considering that their conversational skills are still not their strong point…
Recently I have noticed that a tutor has been reinforcing the sounds of the letters rather than having the kids copy the letters over and over, and is giving many of the kids one on one attention. While this may seem pretty basic to those of us who were lucky enough to have gone through a child-focused educational system, this has been a breath of fresh air for me here. It shows that there is at least a desire to have the kids learn how to practically apply the lessons they learn rather than just have it make it look like they can.
I have heard from some coworkers that there are now some after-school groups for reading and other basic topics that are open for the kids. This blew my mind when I first heard it. I was so excited to see that the kids are being given attention in smaller groups like they need and deserve. I was even more excited to see that the teachers are actually willing to spend the extra time with the kids (something that I have rarely seen in my year and a half here). Education is not simply a 9-5 profession but a desire and a need to ensure the success of the next generation. This isn't a scientific observation, but I'm willing to wager that the success of a class is directly proportional to the amount of support given by its teachers and care providers. I know that there is a huge potential here amongst the kids in Bulgaria that's just now starting to be tapped. It's exciting to me that the child care professionals in this country are realizing this. And I’m so glad I can be a part (however small) of that ever-important realization…
Until next time…
A girl doing chetichki (Note that the characters in the bottom right corner of the book are NOT actually letters)As I’ve said before, I have a number of groups focused on developing basic skills for the children at the orphanage. I focus most on math and literacy (a fact recently covered in the local newspaper, but I will get to that another time). In these groups I have tried to provide a different method of learning from which the kids are normally exposed. In this way, my goal has been to get illiterate kids up to speed as quickly as possible so that they don’t fall further behind in their classes. In a couple of my groups, this has meant starting by teaching the alphabet to children who are as far as 5th grade. I have since moved on with these kids to associate sounds with letters, and to string these sounds into words. That most basic of reading groups is now able to understand somewhat complicated words, and we are currently working on constructing our own words.
The key here, rather than to have the kids write letters over and over again, to have the children make associations with the letters and how they fit into the grand scheme of things. Copying the alphabet may create amazing penmanship, but it does little to show the children how to use those letters practically. Likewise, memorizing the alphabet and being able to recite it upon command (while a vital skill) does little to show how those letters can be arranged in different ways to create words.
With my special needs kids, I have been emphasizing the sounds of the letters as well, and in some instances the kids can begin picking up on words that start with the same sounds. It’s not much right now but it’s a start, especially considering that their conversational skills are still not their strong point…
Recently I have noticed that a tutor has been reinforcing the sounds of the letters rather than having the kids copy the letters over and over, and is giving many of the kids one on one attention. While this may seem pretty basic to those of us who were lucky enough to have gone through a child-focused educational system, this has been a breath of fresh air for me here. It shows that there is at least a desire to have the kids learn how to practically apply the lessons they learn rather than just have it make it look like they can.
I have heard from some coworkers that there are now some after-school groups for reading and other basic topics that are open for the kids. This blew my mind when I first heard it. I was so excited to see that the kids are being given attention in smaller groups like they need and deserve. I was even more excited to see that the teachers are actually willing to spend the extra time with the kids (something that I have rarely seen in my year and a half here). Education is not simply a 9-5 profession but a desire and a need to ensure the success of the next generation. This isn't a scientific observation, but I'm willing to wager that the success of a class is directly proportional to the amount of support given by its teachers and care providers. I know that there is a huge potential here amongst the kids in Bulgaria that's just now starting to be tapped. It's exciting to me that the child care professionals in this country are realizing this. And I’m so glad I can be a part (however small) of that ever-important realization…
Until next time…
Friday, November 20, 2009
Chetichki
This blog post has taken me about a year to gather into anything worth writing, mostly because I’ve been trying to understand the reasoning behind it for approximately that long. I’m still not too sure I understand it fully, and this post might come off as sounding very critical and/or negative. However, I feel like it’s something very important – maybe one of the most important aspects of the education system here in Bulgaria – and I think it says a lot about my work here.
When I arrived here in Preslav, I had no idea what I would be doing and only a vague sense of who I would be working with. I had some ideas, but didn’t really know how to implement them. In fact, I spent a good part of my first 6 months just feeling out the situation here and trying to understand what was happening around me. I had started some groups, mostly revolving around English, since that’s all I could really do at the time, and a math group. I had some art and sports going as well. However, there was something odd happening and I couldn’t really put my finger on it. Most of my kids were way behind in classes, yet could pretend like they were working perfectly. They would fill pages and pages of notebooks with homework that didn’t mean anything. A typical homework help session would involve me walking around the room as several children copied words from a textbook, or pretended to write notes, roughly looking like this: “alguprRDH dahduDHNNn. ..dhgaBBkd, LHDabfnk.” As you might imagine, this was somewhat alarming to me.
But it wasn’t the fact that they weren’t writing anything meaningful that was alarming to me. It wasn’t the fact that they didn’t know how to read, and it wasn’t the fact that the children didn’t know anything was wrong. Only now do I realize what was causing the sick feeling in my stomach. The supervisors, the tutors, the teachers… all of the child care workers were actively encouraging it. I slowly realized the system was not to teach children how to write, just how to make it look like they were writing.
I would ask the children what it was they were writing, and some would shrug their shoulders, some kids pointed to a random word in the textbook, and some would just flat out lie and say they were writing something that wasn’t even remotely related to anything. One child had filled a page up with nothing but his name, beautifully written in perfect cursive script, all the instances of which blurred together and connecting as if it were one long, flowing penmanship exercise.
And now I know that basically, it was.
This year, I have a somewhat deeper understanding of the situation, since I have observed the youngest kids start first grade at the beginning of the year, and have been tracking what they are up to. What I found just flat out astounded me. I had known for some time that the children here don’t learn how to read or write until they reach first grade. It had been frustrating to me to be told that I couldn’t teach the kids at the preschool some basic reading skills because of “the system” in place (I have since gone ahead and done it anyway). It wouldn’t have been as big a deal if I didn’t know the method.
In the first grade, starting about the 3rd week or so, the children start a process called “Chetichki,” roughly translated to “little readings” or something of the sort. Chetichki consist of different patterns of lines and circles, mostly meaningless, that the children are to copy over and over again until they have perfectly recreated the original pattern. The theory behind this method is to prepare the children to learn how to write actual letters and to write in nice cursive script almost immediately. I have 6 first graders that I work with in the orphanage, and all of them spent most of their homework time painstakingly copying these chetichki. If one was wrong or out of place, they would have to start over and do the pattern again. Mostly, the patterns looked very little like letters. Why the children don't skip this altogether and start by learning how to write the actual letters has just recently become clear to me. The system has been created based on appearance instead of substance.
Eventually, the children do start learning the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet. However, the method stays the same. The children are assigned pages and pages of perfect Cyrillic writing, and in the end they have something that you could hang on a wall, but nothing that has actually gotten into their minds. No development has taken place, just copying. When I ask the children what letter they have written, or what sound it makes, they mostly cannot give the correct answer.
There is a huge illiteracy problem in the orphanage. I have spent the better part of my time there teaching several children how to read their own language. In the beginning I discarded all pretentions of teaching little kids English, or catching them up in literature, or even helping as a tutor. Mostly, I have been teaching the very basics of reading and math. And what is amazing to me is that in almost every circumstance, every kid in these groups has been able to write perfectly. If this was a penmanship competition, I’m sure that one of my kids would take first place. Unfortunately it isn’t, and having perfect handwriting doesn’t mean anything if you can’t understand what it says. It seems that the best way to become literate through this system is to either pick it up the very first time before the teacher moves on to the next lesson or to have constant parental reinforcement outside of school to supplement the lessons. Often, the children at the orphanage are not afforded either opportunity. The children who do actually learn how to write are discouraged from doing so freely and creatively because they might make a mistake. Great work might be rejected because it doesn't look good.
Yet this method is perfect for the schools here. It allows them to grant very high grades to children for little work or little absorption. It allows schools to keep the same number of children in each grade so that they are granted the same amount of funding. It’s why there are 5th graders who can’t read the word “Az” (me), or who can’t identify the letter H (Cyrillic n). It’s why kids can copy pages of math tables and not be able to count to 5 properly. It’s why the achievement gap in Bulgaria is as huge as it is. Because in many instances the objective is to make it look like the kids are achieving rather than actually making sure they are.
Overall, during my time here I have realized that the real challenges in this country lie in where its leaders have placed its priorities. There’s no lack of resources, but they are going to the wrong places. There’s no lack of teaching methods, it’s that the methods aren’t working. The children leave school with the appearance of a vast library of knowledge, but no practical way to apply it. There is no shortage of teachers, but there is a shortage of passion to teach. It’s why when I ask my kids what they dream of being when they grow up, nobody says the President of Bulgaria. Almost everyone answers a taxi driver or a waitress.
It sounds dumb, but everything starts in the beginning. If the priority is to teach and have the children absorb and develop, the child will be successful. Literacy and passion for learning emerge and flourish at a young age. If the priority is to make it look like the child is working - the emphasis on appearance rather than achievement - the system has failed before it even gets off the ground.
Until next time…
When I arrived here in Preslav, I had no idea what I would be doing and only a vague sense of who I would be working with. I had some ideas, but didn’t really know how to implement them. In fact, I spent a good part of my first 6 months just feeling out the situation here and trying to understand what was happening around me. I had started some groups, mostly revolving around English, since that’s all I could really do at the time, and a math group. I had some art and sports going as well. However, there was something odd happening and I couldn’t really put my finger on it. Most of my kids were way behind in classes, yet could pretend like they were working perfectly. They would fill pages and pages of notebooks with homework that didn’t mean anything. A typical homework help session would involve me walking around the room as several children copied words from a textbook, or pretended to write notes, roughly looking like this: “alguprRDH dahduDHNNn. ..dhgaBBkd, LHDabfnk.” As you might imagine, this was somewhat alarming to me.
But it wasn’t the fact that they weren’t writing anything meaningful that was alarming to me. It wasn’t the fact that they didn’t know how to read, and it wasn’t the fact that the children didn’t know anything was wrong. Only now do I realize what was causing the sick feeling in my stomach. The supervisors, the tutors, the teachers… all of the child care workers were actively encouraging it. I slowly realized the system was not to teach children how to write, just how to make it look like they were writing.
I would ask the children what it was they were writing, and some would shrug their shoulders, some kids pointed to a random word in the textbook, and some would just flat out lie and say they were writing something that wasn’t even remotely related to anything. One child had filled a page up with nothing but his name, beautifully written in perfect cursive script, all the instances of which blurred together and connecting as if it were one long, flowing penmanship exercise.
And now I know that basically, it was.
This year, I have a somewhat deeper understanding of the situation, since I have observed the youngest kids start first grade at the beginning of the year, and have been tracking what they are up to. What I found just flat out astounded me. I had known for some time that the children here don’t learn how to read or write until they reach first grade. It had been frustrating to me to be told that I couldn’t teach the kids at the preschool some basic reading skills because of “the system” in place (I have since gone ahead and done it anyway). It wouldn’t have been as big a deal if I didn’t know the method.
In the first grade, starting about the 3rd week or so, the children start a process called “Chetichki,” roughly translated to “little readings” or something of the sort. Chetichki consist of different patterns of lines and circles, mostly meaningless, that the children are to copy over and over again until they have perfectly recreated the original pattern. The theory behind this method is to prepare the children to learn how to write actual letters and to write in nice cursive script almost immediately. I have 6 first graders that I work with in the orphanage, and all of them spent most of their homework time painstakingly copying these chetichki. If one was wrong or out of place, they would have to start over and do the pattern again. Mostly, the patterns looked very little like letters. Why the children don't skip this altogether and start by learning how to write the actual letters has just recently become clear to me. The system has been created based on appearance instead of substance.
Eventually, the children do start learning the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet. However, the method stays the same. The children are assigned pages and pages of perfect Cyrillic writing, and in the end they have something that you could hang on a wall, but nothing that has actually gotten into their minds. No development has taken place, just copying. When I ask the children what letter they have written, or what sound it makes, they mostly cannot give the correct answer.
There is a huge illiteracy problem in the orphanage. I have spent the better part of my time there teaching several children how to read their own language. In the beginning I discarded all pretentions of teaching little kids English, or catching them up in literature, or even helping as a tutor. Mostly, I have been teaching the very basics of reading and math. And what is amazing to me is that in almost every circumstance, every kid in these groups has been able to write perfectly. If this was a penmanship competition, I’m sure that one of my kids would take first place. Unfortunately it isn’t, and having perfect handwriting doesn’t mean anything if you can’t understand what it says. It seems that the best way to become literate through this system is to either pick it up the very first time before the teacher moves on to the next lesson or to have constant parental reinforcement outside of school to supplement the lessons. Often, the children at the orphanage are not afforded either opportunity. The children who do actually learn how to write are discouraged from doing so freely and creatively because they might make a mistake. Great work might be rejected because it doesn't look good.
Yet this method is perfect for the schools here. It allows them to grant very high grades to children for little work or little absorption. It allows schools to keep the same number of children in each grade so that they are granted the same amount of funding. It’s why there are 5th graders who can’t read the word “Az” (me), or who can’t identify the letter H (Cyrillic n). It’s why kids can copy pages of math tables and not be able to count to 5 properly. It’s why the achievement gap in Bulgaria is as huge as it is. Because in many instances the objective is to make it look like the kids are achieving rather than actually making sure they are.
Overall, during my time here I have realized that the real challenges in this country lie in where its leaders have placed its priorities. There’s no lack of resources, but they are going to the wrong places. There’s no lack of teaching methods, it’s that the methods aren’t working. The children leave school with the appearance of a vast library of knowledge, but no practical way to apply it. There is no shortage of teachers, but there is a shortage of passion to teach. It’s why when I ask my kids what they dream of being when they grow up, nobody says the President of Bulgaria. Almost everyone answers a taxi driver or a waitress.
It sounds dumb, but everything starts in the beginning. If the priority is to teach and have the children absorb and develop, the child will be successful. Literacy and passion for learning emerge and flourish at a young age. If the priority is to make it look like the child is working - the emphasis on appearance rather than achievement - the system has failed before it even gets off the ground.
Until next time…
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Svinski Grip!
In case you haven't heard, the whole world is ducking under cover from the swine flu. Schools everywhere are closing, and people all over are, in general, losing their minds. In Bulgaria, as always, things are the same but different. Schools everywhere are closing, people are freaking out, but instead of complaining about the lack of vaccines (or whether vaccines should be administered, don't even get me started), people here deal with it in a bit of a different way. Almost everyone I know has holed themselves up in their house or little cement block room, refusing to come out until the threat has passed. The usual way the flu (or "grip" in Bulgarian... awesome) is dealt with is a good dose of isolation and by hurling jokes at it. In fact one tv station just called it "pianski grip" (drunken flu). That'll get 'em!
Meanwhile, the sheer numbers of people coming down with flu is staggering. The ministry of health has declared several regions within the amount needed to declare an epidemic. The others are under a "wide circulation of the virus" (and God knows what that means). As a result, many schools (including the ones in Preslav) have been shut down, including the preschool I work at, under the amazing title of "swine flu vacation." These closures are due to a rule that states schools have to close if 30% of the students don't show up. In addition, hospitals are turning away cases because they can't handle them all. At the orphanage, special rules have been put in place: can't have large gatherings of kids in one space, children should be confined to their rooms, staff is recommended to wear paper masks. This has put a little bit of a dent in the range of activities that I can do there, but we're still hanging in there. Tomorrow we'll be rebooting the life skills classes for the older kids, and since the kids can't do much else, we should actually have a good turnout (gotta look on the bright side).
Speaking of the bright side (and getting away from the grip), Halloween this year was a huuuge success... well at least in comparison to last year's, which involved bobbing for apples and costume wearing, neither of which quite went as planned. This year, the kids learned to say the phrase trick or treat in exchange for candy, and instead of costumes we did scary faces and masks. What came after was the true success though I think. After coming in possession of quite a few toothbrushes and toothpaste, I thought a bit of an educational activity could be thrown in there. The kids learned the proper way to brush their teeth, when and how, and they were actually into it! This was fantastic since the hygeine situation at the dom is for the most part appalling. It was one of those moments that made me feel really happy about what I'm doing right now. The kids are even saving the brushes!
Another high spot was the annual Halloween party in Veliko Turnovo. I went as Flo Rida, the much celebrated rapper from my much celebrated home state. I even had my own bling made from cardboard and tinfoil, which didn't quite come across, but still... Other highlights included the entire Ghostbusters squad, David the Gnome, and the cast of Mad Men. Needless to say it was a memorable time, and, to make things better, allowed many of us to avoid the grip explosion in our towns (not a big deal in Turnovo).
For now, I'll be doing what many others are doing - hiding out when I can, and trying to avoid coming down with this ridiculous virus. On the plus side, in my recollection I have never had the flu before, and I'm not planning on getting it now...
Until next time...
Meanwhile, the sheer numbers of people coming down with flu is staggering. The ministry of health has declared several regions within the amount needed to declare an epidemic. The others are under a "wide circulation of the virus" (and God knows what that means). As a result, many schools (including the ones in Preslav) have been shut down, including the preschool I work at, under the amazing title of "swine flu vacation." These closures are due to a rule that states schools have to close if 30% of the students don't show up. In addition, hospitals are turning away cases because they can't handle them all. At the orphanage, special rules have been put in place: can't have large gatherings of kids in one space, children should be confined to their rooms, staff is recommended to wear paper masks. This has put a little bit of a dent in the range of activities that I can do there, but we're still hanging in there. Tomorrow we'll be rebooting the life skills classes for the older kids, and since the kids can't do much else, we should actually have a good turnout (gotta look on the bright side).
Speaking of the bright side (and getting away from the grip), Halloween this year was a huuuge success... well at least in comparison to last year's, which involved bobbing for apples and costume wearing, neither of which quite went as planned. This year, the kids learned to say the phrase trick or treat in exchange for candy, and instead of costumes we did scary faces and masks. What came after was the true success though I think. After coming in possession of quite a few toothbrushes and toothpaste, I thought a bit of an educational activity could be thrown in there. The kids learned the proper way to brush their teeth, when and how, and they were actually into it! This was fantastic since the hygeine situation at the dom is for the most part appalling. It was one of those moments that made me feel really happy about what I'm doing right now. The kids are even saving the brushes!
Another high spot was the annual Halloween party in Veliko Turnovo. I went as Flo Rida, the much celebrated rapper from my much celebrated home state. I even had my own bling made from cardboard and tinfoil, which didn't quite come across, but still... Other highlights included the entire Ghostbusters squad, David the Gnome, and the cast of Mad Men. Needless to say it was a memorable time, and, to make things better, allowed many of us to avoid the grip explosion in our towns (not a big deal in Turnovo).
For now, I'll be doing what many others are doing - hiding out when I can, and trying to avoid coming down with this ridiculous virus. On the plus side, in my recollection I have never had the flu before, and I'm not planning on getting it now...
Until next time...
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Balchik Beach Days
About a week after the Archaeology Camp I helped supervise the kids’ annual trip to the beach. This year we went to the town of Balchik, a town located underneath a shelf of cliffs near the town in which I saw the Rockfest a couple of months ago. The town itself is beautiful, being the location of a vast system of botanical gardens. Back in the 1800s, this region was owned by Romania, and Balchik was the summer home of the queen. She built the botanical gardens and castle there as a way to reconnect with nature and to develop her own spirituality. After Bulgaria gained control of the area, they preserved it and turned it into a sort of national park.
Throughout the gardens, religious symbolism abounds, especially in the grand centerpiece of the gardens – a perfectly kept tree-lined stream, and leading over one of the cliffs into a waterfall that leads into the sea. In fact, a major theme around the gardens is the flow of water, symbolizing the passage of time and our journey through life, not to mention its life giving properties. The garden was also home to a giant collection of cactii from around the world, a winery, and a ton of great examples of Bulgarian revival architecture. When viewed together there was a great feeling of being somewhere in the Mediterranean, perhaps on a small Greek island in the Aegean Sea...
The kids spent each morning on the tiny beach in Balchik (more a set of stairs leading into the water due to the rocky coastline, though at low tide there was a small strip of sand). They were given free access to their monthly stipend every day, which they promptly spent on ice cream, corn, chips, temporary tattoos, and a whole host of other things, within the first couple of days (they stayed for 10 days). This is actually pretty common for many of the younger kids at the orphanage. The children receive 30 leva every month. As soon as the money hits their pockets, they head out on a spending rampage, often spending most of the cash within a day on anything they can find and afford. Sometimes, the kids will fill a grocery basket with as much stuff as possible, and then have the store clerk remove anything they can’t afford. The theory behind this behavior is that anything not consumed within a day will be stolen from them.
Anyway, I think my time in Balchik was really energizing and gave me a good opportunity to hang out with the kids and also to get to know the staff a bit better. The kids had a blast swimming in the sea, exploring town, and playing games (not to mention being away from town for a bit). The botanical gardens has made my list of favorite places in Bulgaria (even if the road up to it is cluttered in useless souvenir stands). The place is so well preserved and well kept, and the beach area reminded me a bit of Bayshore Boulevard back in Tampa – a long stretch of sidewalk along a picturesque bay. The beach was lined with pleasant, little cafes and restaurants, and there was just an overall laid back vibe around the town that is hard to find on the Black Sea. I hope to make it back there sometime.
Balchik also served as a convenient starting point for my trip to Romania with friends, my first time out of the country, and my longest period of vacation yet (a week). More on that later.
Until next time...
Throughout the gardens, religious symbolism abounds, especially in the grand centerpiece of the gardens – a perfectly kept tree-lined stream, and leading over one of the cliffs into a waterfall that leads into the sea. In fact, a major theme around the gardens is the flow of water, symbolizing the passage of time and our journey through life, not to mention its life giving properties. The garden was also home to a giant collection of cactii from around the world, a winery, and a ton of great examples of Bulgarian revival architecture. When viewed together there was a great feeling of being somewhere in the Mediterranean, perhaps on a small Greek island in the Aegean Sea...
The kids spent each morning on the tiny beach in Balchik (more a set of stairs leading into the water due to the rocky coastline, though at low tide there was a small strip of sand). They were given free access to their monthly stipend every day, which they promptly spent on ice cream, corn, chips, temporary tattoos, and a whole host of other things, within the first couple of days (they stayed for 10 days). This is actually pretty common for many of the younger kids at the orphanage. The children receive 30 leva every month. As soon as the money hits their pockets, they head out on a spending rampage, often spending most of the cash within a day on anything they can find and afford. Sometimes, the kids will fill a grocery basket with as much stuff as possible, and then have the store clerk remove anything they can’t afford. The theory behind this behavior is that anything not consumed within a day will be stolen from them.
Anyway, I think my time in Balchik was really energizing and gave me a good opportunity to hang out with the kids and also to get to know the staff a bit better. The kids had a blast swimming in the sea, exploring town, and playing games (not to mention being away from town for a bit). The botanical gardens has made my list of favorite places in Bulgaria (even if the road up to it is cluttered in useless souvenir stands). The place is so well preserved and well kept, and the beach area reminded me a bit of Bayshore Boulevard back in Tampa – a long stretch of sidewalk along a picturesque bay. The beach was lined with pleasant, little cafes and restaurants, and there was just an overall laid back vibe around the town that is hard to find on the Black Sea. I hope to make it back there sometime.
Balchik also served as a convenient starting point for my trip to Romania with friends, my first time out of the country, and my longest period of vacation yet (a week). More on that later.
Until next time...
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Arch Camp!
Last week, another volunteer and I coordinated a camp involving kids from each of our orphanages. The plan was to have 10 kids from her orphanage in Dren, and 10 from mine here in Preslav staying together in the Preslav orphanage and doing archaeologically themed activities at the ruins and museum in town. With the help of about 7 other awesome volunteers, we spent the week going to the museum, playing lots of games, and exploring the area. It was about a half a year in the making and underwent countless last minute revisions due to schedule conflicts and general confusion, but we finally pulled it together.
The days leading up to the camp involved a lot of running around and coordinating different organizations to help out with the activities we had planned. At the same time, the camp was being changed from 5 days to 7 days to 4 days, back to 7 days, and then to 5 days again, before we finally settled on 4 days of activities and then a sort of free day. This system worked out pretty well, not only because the kids from Dren would be able to get back easier, but because it would allow us to plan fuller days of activities.
Day 1: Museum Day and the Scavenger Hunt – We got all the kids together for the first time outside of the orphanage and played some games like the human knot and duck-duck-goose. We then walked up to the museum where we got a talk from one of the archeologists in residence there, as well as a tour of all the exhibits (including one housed in a vault behind a foot thick metal door). After looking around a bit, we started the day’s main activity, the museum scavenger hunt, in which the kids were to look through the exhibits for certain things and the team with the highest amount of points wins. The kids got really into it, and we actually went over our planned allotted time. The museum actually asked to have copies of the scavenger hunt for future visitors, so I would say it was an all around success. While we were sitting around counting points at the end, everyone was kind of bummed that nobody found one of the clues on the list – a pony. Just as everyone was almost done counting, guess what pulls up… that’s right a pony and mother horse pulling a cart together. Everyone went crazy, and it was the perfect cap to a hugely successful activity. After that, the kids had a picnic in the park and we spent the rest of the day playing sports and doing arts and crafts and things with the other kids.
Day 2: Ruins and the dig site – We walked to the ruins of the citadel of Preslav just outside of town where there was a huge team of archaeologists digging for artifacts. The archaeology major in our group (the volunteer who coordinated the camp with me) was freaking out because of the haphazard digging methods at the site. One of the methods was to throw a whole bunch of dirt from the site into a pile and run a metal detector over it. Another involved chipping away fragile wall-looking areas with a pick axe. Good job, guys… Anyway, the kids were able to ask the archaeologists questions, and we even got the head professor to come out and talk to the kids about what was going on at the site. From there we walked up to another section of ruins where they actually let people climb up into a reconstructed area of the old fortress. The kids really got a kick out of that and played around for a bit. We then reached the last part of the ruins, the golden church of Tsar Simeon, where we rested for a bit and played some good old American football.
Day 3: The hike to Patleyna…. Sort of – We had planned to have everyone in the camp come hiking with us up to Patleyna (which I wrote about in a previous entry). However, several of the older children and the 2 supervisors refused to come with us because they thought it was too long. So we left without them. Apparently the activity the orphanage people thought up for them was to clean the building, so the people who went on the hike were pretty happy. The kids seemed to really enjoy the old 10th century monastery up there, and we even got to poke around at the newer monastery, where we found a bit of old Communist propaganda (“The party of Lenin is our vanguard!”). The kids that came with us also had a great time at the miniature zoo they have up there which featured doves and peacocks. I think some of the kids were actually kind of scared of the peacock since they hadn’t really seen anything like it before. Tired after a couple of hours walking round-trip, we finished out the day with some group games, baseball and volleyball. Baseball was especially interesting, as the kids were really getting into the home-run derby setup we started. After a couple hours of playing, the man who runs the stadium comes in shouting at us and telling us we have to leave. Confused, since we were being very good, and the kids were having a great time, we asked him why we had to leave. His answer was that we were making holes in the ground with the bats. Bewildered, we decided not to argue and left…
Day 4: Capture the flag and Time Capsule – We started off the day by going up to the stadium to play some relay games. We played a game featuring spoons and ping pong balls (which they weren’t that into) and did the dizzy-bat relay (which they were into, but we ended a bit prematurely as a lot of kids were falling all over the place). We then went to the park and introduced capture the flag, a game that the kids had never heard of before. They really enjoyed it, and the kids were actually filling their roles on the team quite well (i.e. prison guards acting like actual prison guards). It seemed that the game had reached a standstill, when one of the teams tried for a huge push and ended up getting a lot of their team captured, allowing the other to go in and take the flag pretty easily after about 10 minutes. I think this game was one of the most successful things we did and definitely one of the highlights. The kids from my orphanage are already asking when we’re going to play it again. During the afternoon, we made a time capsule, in which the kids wrote down their favorite memories from the camp and what they envision for themselves 20 years in the future. We then took pictures in front of the monument in the center of town, effectively putting a cap on the main portion of the camp.
Most of the volunteers left on Friday morning, but the supervisors took all the kids out to the fortress in Shumen to continue the archaeology theme. I saw the kids from the other place as they were leaving and may had made new friends and didn’t want to leave. So all in all, after all the hard work and stress, the camp was pretty successful, and we’re planning on doing something similar again next year. The supervisor from Dren actually invited our kids out there for next year, so we’ll see what we can get together. I know I learned a lot about how to run a successful camp, what works, and what fails miserably. I think that next time we’ll skew for a bit of a younger group as well. All in all, it was a great time, and while I’m glad it’s over, I’m also glad we were able to put together a successful camp (without many resources) that created new friendships for the kids and gave them some great experiences.
Until next time…
PS... Andrea took these pictures. My camera is once again out of commission... Thanks~
The days leading up to the camp involved a lot of running around and coordinating different organizations to help out with the activities we had planned. At the same time, the camp was being changed from 5 days to 7 days to 4 days, back to 7 days, and then to 5 days again, before we finally settled on 4 days of activities and then a sort of free day. This system worked out pretty well, not only because the kids from Dren would be able to get back easier, but because it would allow us to plan fuller days of activities.
Day 1: Museum Day and the Scavenger Hunt – We got all the kids together for the first time outside of the orphanage and played some games like the human knot and duck-duck-goose. We then walked up to the museum where we got a talk from one of the archeologists in residence there, as well as a tour of all the exhibits (including one housed in a vault behind a foot thick metal door). After looking around a bit, we started the day’s main activity, the museum scavenger hunt, in which the kids were to look through the exhibits for certain things and the team with the highest amount of points wins. The kids got really into it, and we actually went over our planned allotted time. The museum actually asked to have copies of the scavenger hunt for future visitors, so I would say it was an all around success. While we were sitting around counting points at the end, everyone was kind of bummed that nobody found one of the clues on the list – a pony. Just as everyone was almost done counting, guess what pulls up… that’s right a pony and mother horse pulling a cart together. Everyone went crazy, and it was the perfect cap to a hugely successful activity. After that, the kids had a picnic in the park and we spent the rest of the day playing sports and doing arts and crafts and things with the other kids.
Day 2: Ruins and the dig site – We walked to the ruins of the citadel of Preslav just outside of town where there was a huge team of archaeologists digging for artifacts. The archaeology major in our group (the volunteer who coordinated the camp with me) was freaking out because of the haphazard digging methods at the site. One of the methods was to throw a whole bunch of dirt from the site into a pile and run a metal detector over it. Another involved chipping away fragile wall-looking areas with a pick axe. Good job, guys… Anyway, the kids were able to ask the archaeologists questions, and we even got the head professor to come out and talk to the kids about what was going on at the site. From there we walked up to another section of ruins where they actually let people climb up into a reconstructed area of the old fortress. The kids really got a kick out of that and played around for a bit. We then reached the last part of the ruins, the golden church of Tsar Simeon, where we rested for a bit and played some good old American football.
Day 3: The hike to Patleyna…. Sort of – We had planned to have everyone in the camp come hiking with us up to Patleyna (which I wrote about in a previous entry). However, several of the older children and the 2 supervisors refused to come with us because they thought it was too long. So we left without them. Apparently the activity the orphanage people thought up for them was to clean the building, so the people who went on the hike were pretty happy. The kids seemed to really enjoy the old 10th century monastery up there, and we even got to poke around at the newer monastery, where we found a bit of old Communist propaganda (“The party of Lenin is our vanguard!”). The kids that came with us also had a great time at the miniature zoo they have up there which featured doves and peacocks. I think some of the kids were actually kind of scared of the peacock since they hadn’t really seen anything like it before. Tired after a couple of hours walking round-trip, we finished out the day with some group games, baseball and volleyball. Baseball was especially interesting, as the kids were really getting into the home-run derby setup we started. After a couple hours of playing, the man who runs the stadium comes in shouting at us and telling us we have to leave. Confused, since we were being very good, and the kids were having a great time, we asked him why we had to leave. His answer was that we were making holes in the ground with the bats. Bewildered, we decided not to argue and left…
Day 4: Capture the flag and Time Capsule – We started off the day by going up to the stadium to play some relay games. We played a game featuring spoons and ping pong balls (which they weren’t that into) and did the dizzy-bat relay (which they were into, but we ended a bit prematurely as a lot of kids were falling all over the place). We then went to the park and introduced capture the flag, a game that the kids had never heard of before. They really enjoyed it, and the kids were actually filling their roles on the team quite well (i.e. prison guards acting like actual prison guards). It seemed that the game had reached a standstill, when one of the teams tried for a huge push and ended up getting a lot of their team captured, allowing the other to go in and take the flag pretty easily after about 10 minutes. I think this game was one of the most successful things we did and definitely one of the highlights. The kids from my orphanage are already asking when we’re going to play it again. During the afternoon, we made a time capsule, in which the kids wrote down their favorite memories from the camp and what they envision for themselves 20 years in the future. We then took pictures in front of the monument in the center of town, effectively putting a cap on the main portion of the camp.
Most of the volunteers left on Friday morning, but the supervisors took all the kids out to the fortress in Shumen to continue the archaeology theme. I saw the kids from the other place as they were leaving and may had made new friends and didn’t want to leave. So all in all, after all the hard work and stress, the camp was pretty successful, and we’re planning on doing something similar again next year. The supervisor from Dren actually invited our kids out there for next year, so we’ll see what we can get together. I know I learned a lot about how to run a successful camp, what works, and what fails miserably. I think that next time we’ll skew for a bit of a younger group as well. All in all, it was a great time, and while I’m glad it’s over, I’m also glad we were able to put together a successful camp (without many resources) that created new friendships for the kids and gave them some great experiences.
Until next time…
PS... Andrea took these pictures. My camera is once again out of commission... Thanks~
Friday, August 7, 2009
The (New) Old Ball Game
It was after my second outing to the beautiful city of Vratsa that I experienced baseball in Bulgaria for the first time.
In the thick of the election campaign for the Bulgarian Parliament, some volunteers and I had a free night in Vratsa, with which we took the rare opportunity to eat some delicious Chinese food. After that, we happened upon an outdoor concert being thrown by GERB (The Bulgarian Party for European Integration) including all the finalists of this year’s Music Idol (the Bulgarian equivalent of American Idol). It is fascinating for me to witness the many political parties in Bulgaria (it is said that there are hundreds) fight for votes using any means necessary. GERB’s campaign was particularly blatant in its vote-fishing, using its resources and star power to throw extravagant concerts, between whose acts politicians came out and yelled things such as, “Like what you hear? Vote GERB!” There are billboards around everywhere with not so subtle reminders. “Remember who built the new children’s complex for you?” says one... “Vote for us.” Still another, for ATAKA, simply reads, “The people love him,” and showing the party’s leader accepting a kiss on the hand from an old baba.
Anyway, the next day I headed out to the tiny village of Dren to help out another volunteer teach kids baseball at her orphanage for a couple of days. We started right away on the first afternoon, pitching and catching, and the kids picked it up really quickly. Even after several hours, the kids were clamoring for more. The next day we introduced batting and even attempted to play a little game. The kids seemed to do great and had a good time. Our final game got rained out, but I think the weekend was a success and a good foundation on which to build a team. Besides, it was a good excuse to cook up some Mexican food – a very rare treat, as it is extremely difficult to find in Bulgaria.
The camp also gave me an opportunity to try out some methods for teaching baseball at my own orphanage here in Preslav. Similarly, we started out just pitching and catching (even though we don’t have many gloves). Once again, the kids picked it up almost immediately, and they even started practicing catching fly balls by bouncing balls off the high concrete walls of the gigantic block building.
We’ve started batting, and progress has been a bit slower on that, but there are already a couple of superstars in the making who continually get hits. Currently, the kids aren’t quite getting the concept of a catcher, but we’re getting there. At the end of the day, the kids don’t want to stop playing, and that’s a great feeling. My sitemate is getting in on the action as well, so it’s a good time for all in town. We were even in the regional newspaper, as baseball is apparently a significantly novel activity for the locals. We constantly get curious passers-by wondering what the heck is going on and asking questions.
Hopefully at some point we can get a full team together and working soon so we can get in on the amazing volunteer league, in which kids from several towns in this region play, all coached by Peace Corps members. However, for now the kids are still just working on the basics, little by little. Many of the kids are still waiting and trying eagerly for their first hit…
In the thick of the election campaign for the Bulgarian Parliament, some volunteers and I had a free night in Vratsa, with which we took the rare opportunity to eat some delicious Chinese food. After that, we happened upon an outdoor concert being thrown by GERB (The Bulgarian Party for European Integration) including all the finalists of this year’s Music Idol (the Bulgarian equivalent of American Idol). It is fascinating for me to witness the many political parties in Bulgaria (it is said that there are hundreds) fight for votes using any means necessary. GERB’s campaign was particularly blatant in its vote-fishing, using its resources and star power to throw extravagant concerts, between whose acts politicians came out and yelled things such as, “Like what you hear? Vote GERB!” There are billboards around everywhere with not so subtle reminders. “Remember who built the new children’s complex for you?” says one... “Vote for us.” Still another, for ATAKA, simply reads, “The people love him,” and showing the party’s leader accepting a kiss on the hand from an old baba.
Anyway, the next day I headed out to the tiny village of Dren to help out another volunteer teach kids baseball at her orphanage for a couple of days. We started right away on the first afternoon, pitching and catching, and the kids picked it up really quickly. Even after several hours, the kids were clamoring for more. The next day we introduced batting and even attempted to play a little game. The kids seemed to do great and had a good time. Our final game got rained out, but I think the weekend was a success and a good foundation on which to build a team. Besides, it was a good excuse to cook up some Mexican food – a very rare treat, as it is extremely difficult to find in Bulgaria.The camp also gave me an opportunity to try out some methods for teaching baseball at my own orphanage here in Preslav. Similarly, we started out just pitching and catching (even though we don’t have many gloves). Once again, the kids picked it up almost immediately, and they even started practicing catching fly balls by bouncing balls off the high concrete walls of the gigantic block building.
We’ve started batting, and progress has been a bit slower on that, but there are already a couple of superstars in the making who continually get hits. Currently, the kids aren’t quite getting the concept of a catcher, but we’re getting there. At the end of the day, the kids don’t want to stop playing, and that’s a great feeling. My sitemate is getting in on the action as well, so it’s a good time for all in town. We were even in the regional newspaper, as baseball is apparently a significantly novel activity for the locals. We constantly get curious passers-by wondering what the heck is going on and asking questions.
Hopefully at some point we can get a full team together and working soon so we can get in on the amazing volunteer league, in which kids from several towns in this region play, all coached by Peace Corps members. However, for now the kids are still just working on the basics, little by little. Many of the kids are still waiting and trying eagerly for their first hit…
Until next time...
Friday, May 22, 2009
Days of Graduation
I have to say, Bulgarian graduation celebrations ("Abiturenski") are pretty awesome.
Today, at random intervals, groups of kids would start chanting numbers - "First, second, third..." all the way up to twelve at which point they go crazy and yell really loud. This is for each grade they've passed. Now that they're graduating they have the authority to go the whole distance. This makes it kind of awkward for people who aren't there yet (or who didn't graduate), since they have to drop out of the chant at the grade that they are at or that they made it to. This is a good incentive to stay in school... No one wants to be that guy who has to stop at 10. Well maybe some kids.
At the same time, there are cars passing by at like 2mph covered in balloons and honking constantly. Some of them at their windshield wipers on and the washer fluid running, getting people on the sidewalks wet as they drove by. I've seen this before after weddings, but it's a whole different story when there are several multiple cars all doing it at the same time.
We had a small party at the orphanage with cookies and bezalkoholno (soda - lit. "without alcohol"), and the kids were all decked out in their new suits and dresses. There are 5 graduates from the orphanage this year, and they are all awesome kids who will definitely move on to do great things. I'm going to miss them too, since I've kind of leaned on them (especially in the beginning) to establish myself there.
After the graduation ceremony, the kids will be shouting all night long, the horns will be blazing, and at least for one night, the graduates will run the town. The festivities will continue until morning comes, when the tradition is to walk up to your school one last time and watch the sunrise together as a class. Then everyone goes their separate ways. This is a tradition that is definitely better than its American counterpart, and shows a great amount of solidarity with classmates and friends. It's a special end to a night that means so much more here in Bulgaria than I feel graduation night means in America, since graduating high school is a significantly more rare occurrence here. In America it's usually just something that's expected. Maybe that's why the parties didn't seem as cool.
Until next time...
Today, at random intervals, groups of kids would start chanting numbers - "First, second, third..." all the way up to twelve at which point they go crazy and yell really loud. This is for each grade they've passed. Now that they're graduating they have the authority to go the whole distance. This makes it kind of awkward for people who aren't there yet (or who didn't graduate), since they have to drop out of the chant at the grade that they are at or that they made it to. This is a good incentive to stay in school... No one wants to be that guy who has to stop at 10. Well maybe some kids.
At the same time, there are cars passing by at like 2mph covered in balloons and honking constantly. Some of them at their windshield wipers on and the washer fluid running, getting people on the sidewalks wet as they drove by. I've seen this before after weddings, but it's a whole different story when there are several multiple cars all doing it at the same time.
We had a small party at the orphanage with cookies and bezalkoholno (soda - lit. "without alcohol"), and the kids were all decked out in their new suits and dresses. There are 5 graduates from the orphanage this year, and they are all awesome kids who will definitely move on to do great things. I'm going to miss them too, since I've kind of leaned on them (especially in the beginning) to establish myself there.
After the graduation ceremony, the kids will be shouting all night long, the horns will be blazing, and at least for one night, the graduates will run the town. The festivities will continue until morning comes, when the tradition is to walk up to your school one last time and watch the sunrise together as a class. Then everyone goes their separate ways. This is a tradition that is definitely better than its American counterpart, and shows a great amount of solidarity with classmates and friends. It's a special end to a night that means so much more here in Bulgaria than I feel graduation night means in America, since graduating high school is a significantly more rare occurrence here. In America it's usually just something that's expected. Maybe that's why the parties didn't seem as cool.
Until next time...
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Slushat Li Detsata?
By far one of the most frequent questions I hear from people around town when the conversation inevitably shifts to working with children in any capacity is, “Do the children listen?”
Ever since I have arrived here at site I have heard this question at least once a week, and I wince a little every time I hear it. For a while I never understood why it got to me so much, but after a while I realized that this question (to me) epitomizes everything I find wrong with the system and methods of child care in this country. Now I’m not saying that there’s nothing good about child care in this country. Truth be told, I have met several great teachers and child care providers during my time here who are having a positive influence on the children they work for. However, when I hear Bulgarians every week telling me about how the school system is failing and how children have no interest in learning, it makes me think a little about why. The question reveals a lot...
The first problem is that the question addresses the concerns of the child care worker rather than the needs or even the problems of the child. This is reflected in the fact that often, the system of child care here is more concerned with itself or with its employees than with the children it works with. I cannot tell you how many times I have wondered exactly how many people here are working with children because they have to, or because they want to. Thus the question transforms a potential shortcoming of the worker into the fault of the child. I have heard stories of when children are dancing on tables in class ending in, “Ne slushat” – “They are not listening.” OK… what have you done, or what are you going to do to address this? Are the children unruly in class because they aren’t listeners, or because your classroom management skills are lacking? What is the punishment or the incentive to behave? More often than not, there isn’t one.
The second problem is that the question is really meaningless. It doesn’t address anything. Or rather, it addresses so many different things that it loses its meaning. I have heard the question used to ask: “Are the children well-behaved?”, “Do they pay attention to you?”, and even, “Turkish and Roma kids can do things?” When can you tell if the children are “listening” if the question itself isn't even consistent? Many times, the question doesn’t refer to discipline, but also the overall behavior of the child. For example, you may hear in response to a child at the Yasli who won’t stop crying, “Ne slusha” – “He/she is not listening.” Is this a case of a 2 year old refusing to pay attention to you, or is it a common reaction to being away from parents?
Sometimes the question even refers to the abilities of the children. At the orphanage I hear stories about kids who are slacking off in class ending in, “ne slushat” (They don’t listen). Though this should be the topic of another post, it is this situation that is perhaps most frustrating for me. I hear the question posed like this all too often in reference to the kids at the orphanage, many of which have been moved through the system without learning how to count or read. Are they not interested in class, or are they not participating because they can't understand what you're teaching and don't have a way to catch up? Or is it because they can't afford the textbooks you're using in class? Or is it because most of the people in town have given up on them and treat them as criminals or mentally challenged? Perhaps simply saying they aren’t listening is easier than acknowledging the shortcomings of the system.
My answer to the question has usually attempted either some clarification, or just “Yes, they listen.” This often prompts some surprise on the part of the asker, either because they aren’t used to have a question directed back at them in response, or because the expected answer is always “no.” When I proudly tell people around town that my kids are great - the children at the orphanage who can’t read or have had behavior problems, the little boy at the Yasli who cries for hours because he misses his mommy, the group of kids I pass by every day who hang out and pretend to build houses out of sticks instead of going home after school – I get looks of bewilderment, or the look that says, “Yeah, right.”
Sometimes I just want to say to them… “The kids are listening. Are you?”
Until next time…
Ever since I have arrived here at site I have heard this question at least once a week, and I wince a little every time I hear it. For a while I never understood why it got to me so much, but after a while I realized that this question (to me) epitomizes everything I find wrong with the system and methods of child care in this country. Now I’m not saying that there’s nothing good about child care in this country. Truth be told, I have met several great teachers and child care providers during my time here who are having a positive influence on the children they work for. However, when I hear Bulgarians every week telling me about how the school system is failing and how children have no interest in learning, it makes me think a little about why. The question reveals a lot...
The first problem is that the question addresses the concerns of the child care worker rather than the needs or even the problems of the child. This is reflected in the fact that often, the system of child care here is more concerned with itself or with its employees than with the children it works with. I cannot tell you how many times I have wondered exactly how many people here are working with children because they have to, or because they want to. Thus the question transforms a potential shortcoming of the worker into the fault of the child. I have heard stories of when children are dancing on tables in class ending in, “Ne slushat” – “They are not listening.” OK… what have you done, or what are you going to do to address this? Are the children unruly in class because they aren’t listeners, or because your classroom management skills are lacking? What is the punishment or the incentive to behave? More often than not, there isn’t one.
The second problem is that the question is really meaningless. It doesn’t address anything. Or rather, it addresses so many different things that it loses its meaning. I have heard the question used to ask: “Are the children well-behaved?”, “Do they pay attention to you?”, and even, “Turkish and Roma kids can do things?” When can you tell if the children are “listening” if the question itself isn't even consistent? Many times, the question doesn’t refer to discipline, but also the overall behavior of the child. For example, you may hear in response to a child at the Yasli who won’t stop crying, “Ne slusha” – “He/she is not listening.” Is this a case of a 2 year old refusing to pay attention to you, or is it a common reaction to being away from parents?
Sometimes the question even refers to the abilities of the children. At the orphanage I hear stories about kids who are slacking off in class ending in, “ne slushat” (They don’t listen). Though this should be the topic of another post, it is this situation that is perhaps most frustrating for me. I hear the question posed like this all too often in reference to the kids at the orphanage, many of which have been moved through the system without learning how to count or read. Are they not interested in class, or are they not participating because they can't understand what you're teaching and don't have a way to catch up? Or is it because they can't afford the textbooks you're using in class? Or is it because most of the people in town have given up on them and treat them as criminals or mentally challenged? Perhaps simply saying they aren’t listening is easier than acknowledging the shortcomings of the system.
My answer to the question has usually attempted either some clarification, or just “Yes, they listen.” This often prompts some surprise on the part of the asker, either because they aren’t used to have a question directed back at them in response, or because the expected answer is always “no.” When I proudly tell people around town that my kids are great - the children at the orphanage who can’t read or have had behavior problems, the little boy at the Yasli who cries for hours because he misses his mommy, the group of kids I pass by every day who hang out and pretend to build houses out of sticks instead of going home after school – I get looks of bewilderment, or the look that says, “Yeah, right.”
Sometimes I just want to say to them… “The kids are listening. Are you?”
Until next time…
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Boyadisvane na Yaitsa
The Easter season is here, and the people around town have been reminding me that it might be the biggest holiday in Bulgaria. I don’t deny that – there is a ton of stuff going on around Preslav, and will continue for a while after this. Today we kicked off the festivities by painting Easter eggs at the orphanage.
Painting eggs is pretty popular in the States. Here in Bulgaria the tradition of using eggs as an Easter symbol is taken to a whole new level. Starting on Easter and continuing for a week after, I am told that there will be “egg wars” in which two boiled and painted eggs are knocked together, and the winner is the egg that doesn’t break. I love this country.
Before....
So there's a tradition here in Bulgaria during the egg painting. After the first red egg is done, someone takes it and draws a cross on everyone's forehead with the red paint. I can now check "Have a hot egg dragged across my forehead" off the list of things I have to do in my life.
The kids were pretty into it. (Also, note the shirt that says "Police American Football" on it... It's the little things here that I love the most).
One of my awesome coworkers getting into the mix:
Out to dry...
Painting eggs is pretty popular in the States. Here in Bulgaria the tradition of using eggs as an Easter symbol is taken to a whole new level. Starting on Easter and continuing for a week after, I am told that there will be “egg wars” in which two boiled and painted eggs are knocked together, and the winner is the egg that doesn’t break. I love this country.
Before....
So there's a tradition here in Bulgaria during the egg painting. After the first red egg is done, someone takes it and draws a cross on everyone's forehead with the red paint. I can now check "Have a hot egg dragged across my forehead" off the list of things I have to do in my life.
The kids were pretty into it. (Also, note the shirt that says "Police American Football" on it... It's the little things here that I love the most).
One of my awesome coworkers getting into the mix:
Out to dry...
So now I am officially ready for egg wars... Tonight there is a sort of midnight mass at the Church in town , and a big traditional celebration there. Tomorrow I’ll let you know how that goes…
Monday, April 6, 2009
New Camera, Spring Break, and 50th Post Extravaganza
Well faithful readers, we’ve hit a big milestone. This is my 50th post here on Greg in Bulgaria. There’s been some interesting moments and a lot of good times, but it’s not nearly over yet. The updates will keep on coming until there’s nothing left to say. Luckily, there’s a whole lot left, so stay tuned!
This weekend I headed out to the nearby city of Shumen on a mission. I needed a new camera. As you may know, my old one broke during the Kukeri trip and so it has been in the shop for the rest of March. Well, I got it back, and they were able to fix some of the things. However, most of the buttons remained out of service (including the zoom in/out button, review button and menu button). They informed me that to make over the whole camera back to fully working condition would cost more than a new camera. So I went to the TechnoMarket in Shumen (the BG version of Best Buy) and picked up a good little Samsung. I’m able to share photos again, and just in time for some interesting things around town too… Lucky you!
The kids are all out for Spring Break here in Bulgaria, which is awesome for them, but means more work for me… yay! Actually, it’s a lot of fun hanging out with the kids on break. Plus, we have fewer children in the orphanage during vacations. Here in Bulgaria, some families can send their children to live at an orphanage if they cannot afford them, with the option of taking them back during vacation times. This leaves the children who actually don’t have parents at the orphanage during these times. A little over half of the children stay, which lets me spend more time with them, and also relieves some of the stress of working with 80 children at a time.
Spring Break seemed to come at the absolute perfect time. Trees and flowers are in bloom. The Sunday market lasts longer. Cafes have started putting tables outside. People are actually walking around and act like they’re happy to be outside. Lovely. It’s consistently warm here now, allowing us to start some sports and outdoor activities at the nearby basketball court and the local stadium. Every day, it’s been above 60 degrees – ideal for running around with the kids.
Even though I won’t be getting a good chance at a long break for a while (probably not until summer), I’m really looking forward to the coming weeks and months, and am feeling very motivated. I have plenty of interesting activities to hold me over, and a lot of plans I’m getting ready to start following through on. Even so, I really can’t wait to get out and explore the areas around Bulgaria. A few other volunteers have already taken excursions into Turkey, Greece, and Romania. There’s plenty of time left to see it all though… definitely enough to carry a good 50 more posts!
Until next time…
This weekend I headed out to the nearby city of Shumen on a mission. I needed a new camera. As you may know, my old one broke during the Kukeri trip and so it has been in the shop for the rest of March. Well, I got it back, and they were able to fix some of the things. However, most of the buttons remained out of service (including the zoom in/out button, review button and menu button). They informed me that to make over the whole camera back to fully working condition would cost more than a new camera. So I went to the TechnoMarket in Shumen (the BG version of Best Buy) and picked up a good little Samsung. I’m able to share photos again, and just in time for some interesting things around town too… Lucky you!
The kids are all out for Spring Break here in Bulgaria, which is awesome for them, but means more work for me… yay! Actually, it’s a lot of fun hanging out with the kids on break. Plus, we have fewer children in the orphanage during vacations. Here in Bulgaria, some families can send their children to live at an orphanage if they cannot afford them, with the option of taking them back during vacation times. This leaves the children who actually don’t have parents at the orphanage during these times. A little over half of the children stay, which lets me spend more time with them, and also relieves some of the stress of working with 80 children at a time.
Spring Break seemed to come at the absolute perfect time. Trees and flowers are in bloom. The Sunday market lasts longer. Cafes have started putting tables outside. People are actually walking around and act like they’re happy to be outside. Lovely. It’s consistently warm here now, allowing us to start some sports and outdoor activities at the nearby basketball court and the local stadium. Every day, it’s been above 60 degrees – ideal for running around with the kids.
I’ve been running by myself, too. The Athens Marathon is slated for November 8th, and I’m planning on being there. Now that the weather has warmed up I have started training, and have fallen into a pretty good routine, upping the distance every once and a while. There’s some shorter distance races near me in the coming months, so that will help out as well.
Even though I won’t be getting a good chance at a long break for a while (probably not until summer), I’m really looking forward to the coming weeks and months, and am feeling very motivated. I have plenty of interesting activities to hold me over, and a lot of plans I’m getting ready to start following through on. Even so, I really can’t wait to get out and explore the areas around Bulgaria. A few other volunteers have already taken excursions into Turkey, Greece, and Romania. There’s plenty of time left to see it all though… definitely enough to carry a good 50 more posts!
Until next time…
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…
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Koledni Kuponi
It's been a busy week here in Preslav. People are gearing up for Koleda (Christmas), and that comes with many, many kuponi (parties). I've had the pleasure of going to many of these, and want to share some of that Bulgarian Christmas magic with you all.
The week started with the annual Christmas concert at the obshtina (municipality), featuring multitudes of kindergarteners forgetting the words to techno versions of Bulgarian Christmas carols. I didn't think it was possible (think about this: Traditional Bulgarian Christmas carols remixed into techno and sung by Chalga stars, partially in English, then having little kids sing and dance to these crazy tunes while wearing traditional costumes) but Bulgaria proves me wrong again.
My band made a rare appearance and performed a song at the concert, wowing everyone with their skills. When I say “my band,” I’m talking about the rock band that my language tutor is in, and I go to their practices every once in a while since they’re right after my tutoring sessions. They’re called “Chernoriztsite” (the Black Shirts), and they have a wide repertoire of Bulgarian rock covers, and as well as English renditions of “I Want to Break Free” and “Hot Stuff.” I’ll try to record some of their stuff and will post it later.
While at the concert I met one of the nicest people I’ve ever seen here. His name is Joe and he comes from Tanzania. He’s lived here for 15 years now, and has a Bulgarian wife and 2 kids. He invited me over for tea and while there we talked (in English!) about life here in Bulgaria. It was one of the best times I’ve had so far in Preslav, and I can tell that we’re going to have a great friendship over the next couple of years.
The next party in the lineup this week was the orphanage Christmas party. Since many of the children at the orphanage go home for holidays, we had the big celebration this week. I feel I need to elaborate a bit more on this situation. Here in Bulgaria, many of the children at the orphanages aren’t “orphans” the way we would consider them to be (that is, without parents). Instead, many times children will be sent here if their parents cannot afford to raise them, but are still permitted to go back at certain times of the year, such as during holidays or vacations from school.
Anyway, the party was a big success, and even the staff was really into it. Pretty much from the day I got here the kids told me “You’re going to be Diado Koleda (Santa).” I didn’t know how to take this at first since I’m pretty sure I don’t have the credentials for the job. The direct translation of Diado Koleda is Grandpa Christmas, and I’m nowhere close to being a grandfather, I’m not 300+ pounds, and I don’t have a white beard. Still I donned the red suit, strapped on the beard and gave my jolliest ho ho ho. It was one of the most ridiculous things I’ve done so far here, but hey the kids loved it, so I guess I did something right.
The week started with the annual Christmas concert at the obshtina (municipality), featuring multitudes of kindergarteners forgetting the words to techno versions of Bulgarian Christmas carols. I didn't think it was possible (think about this: Traditional Bulgarian Christmas carols remixed into techno and sung by Chalga stars, partially in English, then having little kids sing and dance to these crazy tunes while wearing traditional costumes) but Bulgaria proves me wrong again.
My band made a rare appearance and performed a song at the concert, wowing everyone with their skills. When I say “my band,” I’m talking about the rock band that my language tutor is in, and I go to their practices every once in a while since they’re right after my tutoring sessions. They’re called “Chernoriztsite” (the Black Shirts), and they have a wide repertoire of Bulgarian rock covers, and as well as English renditions of “I Want to Break Free” and “Hot Stuff.” I’ll try to record some of their stuff and will post it later.
While at the concert I met one of the nicest people I’ve ever seen here. His name is Joe and he comes from Tanzania. He’s lived here for 15 years now, and has a Bulgarian wife and 2 kids. He invited me over for tea and while there we talked (in English!) about life here in Bulgaria. It was one of the best times I’ve had so far in Preslav, and I can tell that we’re going to have a great friendship over the next couple of years.The next party in the lineup this week was the orphanage Christmas party. Since many of the children at the orphanage go home for holidays, we had the big celebration this week. I feel I need to elaborate a bit more on this situation. Here in Bulgaria, many of the children at the orphanages aren’t “orphans” the way we would consider them to be (that is, without parents). Instead, many times children will be sent here if their parents cannot afford to raise them, but are still permitted to go back at certain times of the year, such as during holidays or vacations from school.
Anyway, the party was a big success, and even the staff was really into it. Pretty much from the day I got here the kids told me “You’re going to be Diado Koleda (Santa).” I didn’t know how to take this at first since I’m pretty sure I don’t have the credentials for the job. The direct translation of Diado Koleda is Grandpa Christmas, and I’m nowhere close to being a grandfather, I’m not 300+ pounds, and I don’t have a white beard. Still I donned the red suit, strapped on the beard and gave my jolliest ho ho ho. It was one of the most ridiculous things I’ve done so far here, but hey the kids loved it, so I guess I did something right.
The kids spent the rest of the day tearing into the chocolates they were given, and playing around with the little toys they got, as well as proudly wearing the scarves sent over from a previous volunteer in the States.
But that’s not the end of the festivities… Tomorrow I have a staff party at the nicest of the 3 restaurants we have here in town, where I’ll break out my best horo dancing, for which I’ve been taking a class in my free time. Horo is the traditional Balkan dance in which everyone makes a circle and does a pattern of moves while going around the circle. These can be really easy (like just kicking your foot a couple of times) to really elaborate patterns involving a lot of hopping, spinning and other craziness. That’ll be another post for sure. I seem to be building up a lot of topics to post about later, but I think they’re all interesting and worth spending a separate post on when I get the time and things slow down a bit (which will be after New Years probably).
Also on the agenda is the Yasli Christmas party, for which I’ve been commissioned to be the videographer. The kids have been practicing a couple of Christmas songs, most of which they still don’t know, but it’s really cute to see them try. Pictures to come.
On actual Christmas I’ll be traveling across the country to be with a bunch of friends, so that will definitely be fun, and I’ll be spending New Years here in Preslav (which seems to be a bigger deal than Christmas here in BG) with the kids.
Until next time…
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Rodopite, Part 2
The ride from Smolyan to Stoikite through the Rodopi countryside is one of the most beautiful I’ve experienced in this country. It’s just tiny village after tiny village tucked away into little notches in the mountains, which seem to just wrap themselves around the little groups of houses. Every once and a while a little church will come along, standing alone atop a hill and looking over the valleys beneath.
Unsurprisingly, European tourists have started to notice this beauty as well, and many of these tiny villages are now home to million-euro houses from rich Germans and Brits. I was told that places in the Rodopi mountains are being sold as “the next big ski destination.” This is a bittersweet fate for the region – good in that it’s bringing jobs and money into a corner of the country that has been isolated and underserved, but unfortunate in that this often comes at the price of either tons of acres of forest, or destroying the authenticity and tradition of some of the villages. Pamporovo is an example of this. Once just a ski run in the middle of several surrounding towns, it is now a major ski destination with monstrous resort hotels catering to business travelers, advertising not only skiing, but also paintball and crappy Chinese food. A gigantic ugly tv tower now dominates one of the tallest mountains in the region, and this eyesore is visible from most places in the area.
Little Stoikite itself just became home to a brand new ski lift this summer, but is still in the category of villages that are still pretty much untouched and underserved. There are a few nice homes here and there and a couple of restaurants, but for the most part this town of around 200 keeps to itself. It seems to be as “Peace Corps” a site as you can get here in Bulgaria, a far cry from other assignments in well established cities with over 50,000 residents in them. It’s the kind of place where everyone knows everyone (and everything about everyone), in a pretty literal sense.
The local Boarding School for Truants (the place where the volunteer works) is a major presence in the town and dominates the scene. The local school is attended only by the children there, and really there aren’t many other children in the town in the first place. Despite the fact that it’s in such a small town and that it struggles for funding (like many other similar institutions in this country, including mine), it’s a nice establishment with a surprising amount of resources to work with. There is a game room, new TVs in the televisiorna (tv room), computers, a gigantic kitchen with anything a cook could ever need, and plenty of activity space.
While there, I just kind of hung back and observed her go about her daily business, occasionally lending a hand in her English class, or giving a talk to a few kids about America (and specifically Florida). I was incredibly impressed – and she has her day scheduled down to a tee. She also has a good amount of control over the kids, and they seem genuinely interested in what she wants to do. A supportive staff at the institution definitely helps, and luckily I got to sit down with the director and talk with her for a bit as well. The activities the volunteer there does give her more leverage over the kids control wise, and makes the kids themselves more motivated to be good throughout the day. She has implemented a nice, simple point system relating to these activities, and it’s having a positive effect on the kids – so positive, in fact, that the staff has approached her to try and expand it.
Ultimately, the visit gave me a ton of great ideas for my own site, and a new sense of the things that are possible in my time here. I basically retraced my steps back to site, and this gave me a lot of time to write up a lot of notes on what I wanted to do at my orphanage and how to go about doing them. It was the first time since I had arrived a month ago that I was so excited to get back and start working. My first goal has become to forge the ever-elusive relationship with the staff that will make things easier to accomplish, and will give me a person to pass the torch on to. This will be the hardest part of my assignment, and I have known this since the beginning. However, now that I have seen just how important and rewarding it can be, it has become a big focus of mine.
Overall, my visit to the Rodopis was an incredibly productive one, and the good times along the way were just a perk. I had a short stop over in Varna (3rd biggest city in BG, beach town, has a gigantic megamall) too before heading back home, but that is the subject of yet another post sometime later.
Until next time...
Unsurprisingly, European tourists have started to notice this beauty as well, and many of these tiny villages are now home to million-euro houses from rich Germans and Brits. I was told that places in the Rodopi mountains are being sold as “the next big ski destination.” This is a bittersweet fate for the region – good in that it’s bringing jobs and money into a corner of the country that has been isolated and underserved, but unfortunate in that this often comes at the price of either tons of acres of forest, or destroying the authenticity and tradition of some of the villages. Pamporovo is an example of this. Once just a ski run in the middle of several surrounding towns, it is now a major ski destination with monstrous resort hotels catering to business travelers, advertising not only skiing, but also paintball and crappy Chinese food. A gigantic ugly tv tower now dominates one of the tallest mountains in the region, and this eyesore is visible from most places in the area.Little Stoikite itself just became home to a brand new ski lift this summer, but is still in the category of villages that are still pretty much untouched and underserved. There are a few nice homes here and there and a couple of restaurants, but for the most part this town of around 200 keeps to itself. It seems to be as “Peace Corps” a site as you can get here in Bulgaria, a far cry from other assignments in well established cities with over 50,000 residents in them. It’s the kind of place where everyone knows everyone (and everything about everyone), in a pretty literal sense.
The local Boarding School for Truants (the place where the volunteer works) is a major presence in the town and dominates the scene. The local school is attended only by the children there, and really there aren’t many other children in the town in the first place. Despite the fact that it’s in such a small town and that it struggles for funding (like many other similar institutions in this country, including mine), it’s a nice establishment with a surprising amount of resources to work with. There is a game room, new TVs in the televisiorna (tv room), computers, a gigantic kitchen with anything a cook could ever need, and plenty of activity space.
While there, I just kind of hung back and observed her go about her daily business, occasionally lending a hand in her English class, or giving a talk to a few kids about America (and specifically Florida). I was incredibly impressed – and she has her day scheduled down to a tee. She also has a good amount of control over the kids, and they seem genuinely interested in what she wants to do. A supportive staff at the institution definitely helps, and luckily I got to sit down with the director and talk with her for a bit as well. The activities the volunteer there does give her more leverage over the kids control wise, and makes the kids themselves more motivated to be good throughout the day. She has implemented a nice, simple point system relating to these activities, and it’s having a positive effect on the kids – so positive, in fact, that the staff has approached her to try and expand it. 
Most importantly, it’s given the staff there some confidence in themselves, and it’s something that they continue when a volunteer isn’t there, which is the ultimate goal of any project we do here (PC buzzword – “sustainability”).
Ultimately, the visit gave me a ton of great ideas for my own site, and a new sense of the things that are possible in my time here. I basically retraced my steps back to site, and this gave me a lot of time to write up a lot of notes on what I wanted to do at my orphanage and how to go about doing them. It was the first time since I had arrived a month ago that I was so excited to get back and start working. My first goal has become to forge the ever-elusive relationship with the staff that will make things easier to accomplish, and will give me a person to pass the torch on to. This will be the hardest part of my assignment, and I have known this since the beginning. However, now that I have seen just how important and rewarding it can be, it has become a big focus of mine.
Overall, my visit to the Rodopis was an incredibly productive one, and the good times along the way were just a perk. I had a short stop over in Varna (3rd biggest city in BG, beach town, has a gigantic megamall) too before heading back home, but that is the subject of yet another post sometime later.
Until next time...
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