celebrity? where?

i was just rereading a sampling of my blogs when i noticed that my photos of the kids i met at camp all have one thing in common: I'M IN ALL OF THEM.

alas, i suspect it will merely be a small amount of time before my celebrity status wears off. then, hopefully, i will have less audacious, more candid, blog post-friendly and to-the-point photos without me in them to put up for you all.

i am so tired. i will write again soon. i hope everyone is well, wherever you might find yourselves.

to commence the beginning of my random, favorite picture-posting, pulled from the recent archives of what's left, *ahem- a story for another blog, perhaps* of the photos on my computer:

august 2007
miyajima, japan

a peaceful and serene hiding spot on the tiny island near hiroshima, japan.

here's to lists!

it dawned on me today that my blog is curiously lacking pictures of my town, aside from the massive compilation of rosy sunsets i am managing to ascertain. thus begins my effort to post more photos that are relevant to the life i am living every day... or on somedays, avoiding.

i am noticing that as i sit down to write blogs this week, again and again i am tempted to cop out of writing decent prose in favor of making lists. i once had a professor in college who loved making lists, and i aced her classes because i was pretty good at memorizing her lists of test material. as it turns out, i am also pretty crazy about making lists even though sometimes i think they are just annoying. sorry for those of you who share this opinion.

today, i want to make lists of mundane, day-to-day things that would bore you all to death. because it has been a rough couple of days, i want to make lists of things that just tick me off... which is really tempting, though i will save you all from having to read that list. i want to make lists of funny oddities that pop up in my head and practically beg me to share as i chuckle to myself about them. frankly, i am too lazy to write this week. so, here goes with a list of things i am pondering while i чакам за неща да направям, that is 'wait for things to do...'

or maybe while i wait for the motivation to find things to do... who knows at this point.

below lies the grand list of things i am thinking about today, august 20th, 2008.

1. i am thrilled my water is back on. i was able to deduce that the water drought was an unfortunate consequence of questionable 'roadwork' in the center of town.

2. i have an acquaintance here who is overly persistent in inviting me to coffee... annoyingly so. what's more annoying is that getting coffee with her, which is typically a three hour ordeal, is most certainly good for my language learning. i admit it. BUT, she is not one of the most popular people in the town... and i have been cautioned about spending time with her. so, i am suffering from this moral dilemma. do i accept the invitations, begrudgingly, to practice the language and risk tarnishing my sterling (read: virtually non-existent/still developing/ forever 'american' (whatever that means)) reputation? or do i start conjuring up a list of "gosh, i'm sorry i am so busy doing these things..." and create really fascinating tasks to complete like scrubbing my bathroom floor or daily bird-watching expeditions on my balcony to justify that i am too busy for said engagements?

3. here's another tid bit... i cannot help but remind myself that i did not come here to be the most popular person in town. if i am to ever effectively work with the roma people in my town (who are definitely not real popular) i should probably get over this 'wanting to please everyone' mentality. get over it. ok, pep talk over. but, seriously, Jesus extended a hand and a listening ear to the unpopular people, too, right? turns out i was paying attention all those years at the catholic school.

4. one thing i am still trying to get used to is the fact that seemingly NOWHERE in this country is there adequate change to break my 20 leva bills. i mean, not in my town, not at bus stations, not even in the capital! for example, while i was in the capital, i purchased some much needed items mentioned in the previous blog- tabasco sauce, avocados, you know, really important things like that. the total of these pertinent items was maybe 11 leva and change. i handed the clerk a 20 leva bill, to which i was given a really nasty look. the look translated as 'what, do you think i ACTUALLY have change for that? you MUST be ridiculous!' she promptly handed my 20 back to me and watched as i first scrounged through my wallet and then finally had to ask my friend for 2 leva to cover my costs.

i suppose i should have known this would be the case in a place where atms dispense 5s and 10s...these are the types of cultural idiosyncrasies i should be piecing together by now. but come on- to have someone make you feel like it is YOUR fault that they cannot make change is just absurd. seriously? i forgave this growing annoyance when i lived in a village of 1000 people, but i wonder...how do stores here make any money if they never have enough change to break 10 and 20 bills? 3 million people live in the capital! that is just nuts. ya, i said it!

addendum: let me not forget to mention that credit cards are accepted virtually nowhere here, too (except, presumably in high-end retail stores... like gucci). so, if all you've got is a twenty, you're alone, and there's no change to be given, looks like you're flat out of luck with your hopes of purchasing avocados and tabasco sauce.

5. edit: i felt as if the original information posted under no. 5 suggested opinions of mine that i rushed to a bit too hastily. the original data has been deleted for my own sanity.

6. i think there are more flies here.

7. i nearly had a run away avocado just now. i have been devouring each delicious bite of avocado on bread with cirene, and was just preparing such a scrumptious meal when i was scooping out every last morsel of avocado and the whole thing, pit included, sprung itself onto the floor in a desperate escape attempt. blasted avocado. worry not, friends, because i was able to save most of the avocado and slab it onto the already-lathered-with-the-best-cheese-ever bread and am now shoving it in my mouth as i type this. i am hoping it will calm my shaking body, nervous and twittery from previously drinking an extra tall coffee while sitting at the cafe with the aforementioned acquaintance.

8. oh ya, can you tell that i have had too much coffee? i feel absolutely spastic.

9. one of the toughest parts of my daily routine is walking outside and sticking my trash into trash bins crowded by people from my town scouring them for treasures in the form of food.

10. st, you'll get a kick out of this one. my dad said he recently spent twenty minutes of his life watching a documentary on this country. he spotted it on television and thought it would be interesting to see the sights of the village and landscape depicted in the show. turns out, though, that the documentary was about MOSQUITOES here as opposed to the beautiful scenery or traditional village life. haha. an entire documentary (which he did not finish watching) dedicated to highlighting the unique and captivating lives of the very blood suckers you despise. he said twenty minutes was about all he could take before switching from the brain-sucking, though no doubt informative, show about the mosquitoes whom you've befriended here. perhaps ' mosquito aficionado' can be added to the list of possible options for post-pc life. and, maybe there are more mosquitoes in here, too.

rant of peculiar (this country)-isms and other things is now officially over.

enjoy the preliminary pictures of my town. more to come. the road to the post office...
my school from afar
the trash bins
my apartment building is the one on the left

the capital

a blog about a trip to the capital, but with fewer words and more pictures.

quickly, a brief update on life:

-i still have no water
-i had to hunt down 4 different people to get my internet paid for (and therefore, working) this morning. it is nice that the municipality has offered to cover my internet, but if they aren't going to pay for it without reminders from me, then i would much rather pay for it on my own...
-my faucet is still not 'fixed' though i have been able to prop it up into place with a coffee mug and a sponge.
-i really loved visiting the capital. i got to do the following things there...

*buy tabasco sauce and avocados
*eat sushi
*feel anonymous in a big city
*see a film (half of which was in french with this country's subtitles...fun)
*go to a karaoke bar in the basement of the big university library
*with a really cool group of people from all over working in an NGO aiming to deinsitutionalize orphanages and help place kids with special needs in nice homes. cool objective, cooler people.
*learn the inner-workings of the labyrinthine tram system
*spend a few days outside of my town




and now, pictures! nearly twenty dollar sushi

the karaoke bar in the basement of the national library at sofia university

i wonder what snafu is in this language

ha.

the faucet of my kitchen sink just fell off.

in a loud, obnoxious clamour, too.

i imagine, now, that the water will just run down the wall if i pull up on the lever thingy, rather than down into the tall, temporary tower of dirty dishes from yesterday (also known as my sink).

but, i can't really say for sure what the water could do... because i have no water again today.

in vain, i attempted to suspend the faucet apparatus with dental floss, which i have seen work for repairing toilets that don't flush... but alas, i will have to navigate my way through this snafu in this language. maybe i should look at it as a good excuse to learn new words- for 'faucet', 'water spraying everywhere... maybe' and 'piece of junk won't reattach'. okay, kidding about the last.

off to the capital for a few days. will write again soon.

i understand... even though i never really will

i spent a good part of my day today perusing blog sites. i bumped into quite a few blogs kept by other currently serving volunteers, people i have known from other walks of life and a particularly interesting one of a female marine who had recently served in iraq. i think i was searching for something, stories of other lives, other places, i am not quite sure what exactly... and this woman's detailed accounts, observations, remarkable pictures and hilarious commentary on such a wide variety of places and people, on iraq sucked me into her overwhelming archive of blogs from her time spent overseas. something about it hit very close to home.

what i did not expect to find was a link to many other blogs written by servicemembers during their tours in iraq and posts worldwide. she mentioned one specific blog in a post just days before she was deployed to iraq: a blog of a soldier who had been writing about his experience in the 'sandbox'. she recalled that she had been reading this blog regularly until one day the posts just stopped. after several weeks, she returned to the site to find that the soldier had been killed.

the internet proves again and again to be such an amazing resource. it is an instrumental outlet for communication that enables such profound insight into a world that i will never experience, into a world that she knew she was going to experience, and into the details of a life he was living in iraq. what struck me most was this passage, the opening words of this soldier's very last post...

"during bad or uncertain times, time itself doesn’t stand still or slow down, it’s more like it spreads out, like each minute has its own personality and some of those personalities really want you to get to know them. that happened with me today, probably with a few of us."

gosh, do i know this feeling.

somewhere deep inside of me i can imagine the soul of this person trailing off into a distant place, contemplating the porous boundaries of uncertainty, counting each minute as it goes by, witnessing how life morphs so ostensibly, so inevitably and absolutely in front of one's own eyes. i think of how long it takes to get to know someone, how long it would take to get to know each minute- i think of what an arduous, yet potentially enriching process it could be and i understand. i shudder at how raw it feels to be so alive, to live and walk through the minutes, not the hours, days or months, the minutes. and all the while the physical body obediently marches onward to somewhere unknown and unresolved.

i am floored to read this because it means someone else understands. someone else is talking about it.

this uncertainty, this understanding of how time dances or crawls by us in the presence of such uncertainty, resonates so deeply within me. and i think to myself, this is why i am here.

this sky

i am unabashedly in love with the sky here. i know it is the same sky i left at home, but there is a tangible difference, a laziness about it, as if it enjoys yawning through the day, freely gliding from one hour to the next. i am seduced by its simple beauty, unable to tear myself from watching it simmer away each night in brillant splatterings of colors like it did, here, last night.

one day at camp, i let the kids look through the hoards of photographs on my camera. one particularly memorable kid could not get over the amount of pictures i had of various sunsets throughout this country. he thought it was just plan 'silly' and laughed out loud at me for 3 or 4 minutes. he was also the kid who laughed the loudest when i would not understand something in the language, or would answer incorrectly when i thought i really knew the right words to use when replying to his dozens of questions. i so loved his laugh that i could not be upset, and maybe my love of sunsets is absurd. but i just don't care.


this sky

this
sky
where we live
is no place to lose your wings
so love, love,
love.

-hafiz

a good friend had this poem on one of his blog posts, and i loved it so much i had to recycle it here. it is so relevant to this experience. it speaks to a faith in the workings of the universe that i do not understand, but am willing to trust in the midst of so much unknown.

today, i met with my new friend, a student and the best english speaker in the town, (i will call him 'g') and we ate домашна торта (homemade cake) instead of studying the language, as we originally intended. once the cake was completely devoured, we dove into a bit of language studying. i was reminded today that to teach is to examine what we already know. and sometimes, we may not know how to explain, to describe, to conceptualize that which we know already when we are forced to. it is good to begin the unwinding of this knot now, before i begin teaching, as i suspect it will creep up on me given enough time.

the paradox, though, is that i think teaching is more about learning. and this is when life starts to look pretty rosy for me because i know that this experience really is a privilege for me and that i will probably take more away from it than i am able to give. but how quantifiable is that really? and who is keeping track?

this language is, undoubtedly, a challenging language to master, but i am determined to learn more regardless of the pace i must work at.

'g' speaks remarkable english for someone who has lived in this tiny town his whole life. we are able to have conversations about incredibly broad topics, which is wonderful because he is the kind of kid you really want to get to know. he has such a kind and pure heart. he reminds me that amidst the cloudiness of living in this new place, there are people with whom i can build relationships and friends to be had. in the end, i wonder if my time here isn't really about the lasting relationships, the connections made on behalf of people who grow to learn and understand each other.

or, perhaps, i like this idea because it takes the emphasis off the results of teaching and places the importance of being here on spending time with people. which, coincidentally, i am much better at doing than teaching.

i am excited to see how this part of the adventure unfolds.

дънгара мънгара!!!

that's "tra-la-la" to you in english (or dungera mungera).

i have finally resurfaced after 12 days of camp, tucked away in, perhaps, the most exquisite corner of this country. i have finally caught up on sleep after 12 days of being woken up by the camp pain-in-the-ass kid who sang "dungera mungera" while rolling his arms in front of him, sometimes streaking in nothing but his skivies down the hallways at 8am. i feel somewhat out of place, again, returning 'home' to a place that does not yet feel like home after 12 days of life that looked a whole lot different from life here in my town. i have returned with many new friends, lessons learned, and a hearty spirit and am thankful to always be trudging forward in some way or other. there is so much to say, so much spilling out of my heart and mind, and so i undertake this endeavor, if unorganized and a bit manic.



i cannot believe today is already august 10.

12 days is such a strange amount of time for a camp. in so many ways, the 12 days was a welcome break from the idleness of life in my town. and in many other ways it was a bizarre, abysmal stretch of time in some alternate place, some alternate experience far removed from the solitude and isolation of living in my town. as a kid, i don't remember going to camp, aside from the 'retreats' with the catholic school that were maybe three or four days in length. 12 days at camp, for me, felt like embarking on quite a journey because:

A) i felt like a little kid setting off for their first camp
B) in another language
C) with unfamiliar people and... kids

anyhow, i survived and am happy to report that i learned some very important lessons. i am still digesting much of the past week and a half, so bear with me as i attempt to convey this somewhat surreal experience through words.

10 LESSONS I LEARNED AT CAMP

1. it is advisable to always bring the following to camp (and maybe to just about anywhere you go in this country:

**high heels, lipstick, a skirt and laundry detergent to wash clothes everyday. ha. yes, even at 'summer camp'. the teachers all joined us on hikes wearing high heels and lipstick. no joke.
**secret snacks, such as peanut butter, raisins, granola, and others for when all you get for breakfast is macaroni with a sugary syrup and feta cheese. thanks molly for that suggestion.
**toilet paper, because you just never know when you'll need it. in fact, this deserves it's own number (see section 2).
**pillow cases. and towels that don't shed lint and leave you a blue ball of fur every time you shower.
**extra hair ties, and fingernail polish remover
**water in bottles, because you just never know when you'll have to drink water coming from a mysterious spout in a rock fountain outside of the camp house
**which brings me to my next point- oral rehydration salts. thanks to one nancy hardesty, i survived the week, having thought ahead of time to bring them for instances when the mysterious water you're drinking is vetoed by your body...
**flip flops. a must.
**language dictionary, notepad, pens and trusted translator. or, a good sense of humor.

2. oh toilet paper. because you just never know when the camp is going to run out of toilet paper on day three. and then, as an inexperienced squatty-pottier (squatty-potty-er?), you are without toilet paper- well anything, really- and the water has made you sick, and you are drinking gallons of water with oral re-hydration salts that you have to walk 3 km one way to purchase bottled water for. (i won't joke about the fact that i don't have to 'haul water' as a peace corps volunteer anymore). in fact, i would suggest toilet paper AND baby wipes. because, not only is there no toilet paper, there is not soap to wash your hands, or there's toothpaste, or worse on the door handle leading you into the dreaded turkish toilet...
on a more positive note, i hear that turkish toilets (squatty potties) are a healthier way to use the restroom?

3. it is possible to attain a surprising level of comfort with people you might only have met that morning. these moments are blissful because they allow you to connect with people in a positive way when, for the other moments throughout the day, all you can concentrate on is trying to verbally understand them. the downfall is that sometimes i would find myself in situations where i longed to understand these people who i would find myself among, to have the verbal communication supplement the non-verbal understanding and rapport. these precious moments i find to be incredibly important in surroundings that are entirely unfamiliar and in a place that often just glares at me for lack of knowing what else to do.

4. on the other hand, you can smell crazy in people instantly, regardless of the fact that you understand nothing they are saying to you. its stench is so strong you begin to view your inability to understand a language as a really awesome blessing. case in point, "пипи дълги чорапи" (pippy longstockings, bulgarian-style).

5. (this corner of the country)is going to be the place that i build/buy/acquisition a home when i have more money. (like the optimism about the money parents?). it is absolutely one of the most beautiful and serene places i have ever been. and with lofts with amazing views selling for about $80,000, can you blame me for at least entertaining the idea? someday i will have this view and the ability to retreat into this amazing serenity.


6. part of me is made homesick by really strange things. while resting in the green field of grass surrounding the camp house one day during the afternoon break, i heard a plane fly over head. it has been so long since i noticed, or have heard a plane flying above me. i was immediately transported to the backyard of my parents house, where i would sun tan during the summer, listening to planes fly westward over the mountains. i have yet to feel as homesick for something as i felt in that moment the plane flew over me. homesick for something, for anything familiar. for a place where people are constantly moving and going places. generally, i adore opportunities to sit in silence, to be still and to allow myself to just be, but when these moments of longing take hold, it is a bit more challenging to embrace the moment for what it is instead of aching to be elsewhere.

7. for as much as i regard myself as someone who is not good with kids, i would like to give myself a pat on the back for toughing out 12 days with kids i have never met before. i found abundant joy and peace in spending most of my time with them, avoiding stiff and awkward converstations with the teachers, the doctors and other elders. i enjoyed struggling through the language with them, listening to them correct me and laugh at my language skills (yes, lynn, they did that with me too =), playing games with them, braiding their hair, doing hand stands in the pool with them, shopping at the local carnival for cheap goods with the older girls and letting them give me manicures. spending time with kids encourages me that there is hope amidst pessimism that life can be different.

8. it is important to think everything through before acting/speaking in front of kids. one of the first days at camp, i braided my hair without thinking of the implications it would have. the girls saw the braids immediately and i was unofficially proclaimed to be the camp hair styler. without fail, almost daily, i braided at least one or two heads of hair and the girls just loved it. i have to applaud them in their creativity, they certainly came up with some interesting hairstyles for me to try. and i realized that some days, you really exist just to braid hair because it gives you a reason to spend time with people (the last day of camp i spent 3+hours braiding the hair of more than 13 girls). and that is perfectly okay.

9. it is absolutely amazing to me how far simply spending time with people will get you.

10. women, scratch that- let me qualify. women here that I have met who are over the age of 30 are all very concerned for my marital well-being. if only i had a penny for all the attempts that have been made to set me up with so and so's son. to be 23, single and seemingly uninterested in prioritizing boyfriend hunting is quite an outlandish thing for these women to behold. everytime this topic arises, it makes me reflect on the reasons why i focused so intently on gender parity, on equality during college. i refuse to be seen as just as an available girl needing to be 'married off' as quickly as possible; i seek instead, to be a person of character, of substance, capable of making contributions beyond merely being an object to look at. it is why i am passionate about independence, about following your heart instead of following the guidance of your culture, peers, and maybe your family, too.
i am frustrated at how few opportunities there are to work formally with young girls, a primary motivation for coming here because there is such a great need to expand the minds of these young women. there is a need to steer away from human trafficking, to teach them to be leaders and to urge them to stay in school. in time i suspect there will be more chances, but my opportunity here at present is to be atypical, to exist as a role model for an alternative, but equally okay, route in life.
there need not be formal lessons, just the uncomplicated presence of someone like me who is doing things a little differently.