O Solo Mio

Last night we went to the opera to see La Traviata.

It was all in Italian, of course, but there were helpful translations posted on a screen above the stage. Because we are in Bulgaria they were in the fascinating, yet challenging language of Mandarin Chinese.

I kid.

They were in Bulgarian.

But since I still am working on learning the language (which I wisely accomplish by browsing the Internet all day long and trying to come up with ideas for my next blog entry), it might as well have been Chinese.

Since I had no earthly idea what was going on, in order to make the experience an interesting one for me, I came up with my own story using my vivid imagination and spot-on intuition. It went sort of like this:

Act One: There's a girl. She's rich and definitely a tease, right? And maybe a little sick, too, since she coughs and rests her hand on her chest rather frequently. But being sick sure doesn't stop her from liking parties! And everyone at the party likes the parties too because they sing a lot! Her parents want her to marry that bald guy. I wonder if that's real champagne in those glasses? I wouldn't mind some champagne right now... and maybe a cheeseburger to go along with it... Hmmm... I don't think she likes the bald guy very much... although he's kind of hot... For some reason she seems to really enjoy the company of the older guy with the beard... but wait! She totally dissed him! I'm getting pretty hungry... I wonder where we'll go to dinner after this.... Man, I'd really like a cheeseburger right about now...

Act Two: Someone writes the girl a letter and it looks like she's writing one back. She's mad! At her dad! And they are singing about how pissed off they are! She likes the guy with the beard! Not the bald guy! No Bald Guy, Dad! I know he's hot, but no! And there's a bowl of fruit! On the table! It looks yummy! But not as yummy as cheeseburgers!

Act Three: Wow. This chick sure likes parties. And - hey! - there's more singing... Lots of singing.... okay, so it's good singing... but still, there's a lot of it... and because everybody needs more Flamenco dancers at their parties there's some of them too. And cheeseburgers! No, not really. Dammit. Some guy just threw his glove on the floor! Figgghhhttt! Fiigghhhttt! Oh wait. It's over? Is it over? I think it's over... Yes! We can go EAT!!!.... Oh wait. No one else is moving.... hmmm... isn't it over?

Act Four: Act Four?? Are you freakin' kidding me? GOD, I'm hungry! Can't a girl get a cheeseburger in this joint? Aw, the girl is sick. And possibly dying. And someone really likes to write her letters because she just got another one telling her the guy with the beard is dead. But he's NOT dead! He's there! And she coughs a lot and sings about how she's not in love with the bald guy... she loves him. And then she stands up, spins around, falls on the floor and dies! Yes! Yessssss!!!!! Let's eat!!!

In all seriousness, the opera was an enjoyable experience that I plan on repeating, although I might have to do some work convincing Ryan of this. I do, however, plan on eating beforeheand next time as you might have gathered I was a little obsessed with food. Specifically cheeseburgers. This sucks since you can't really get them here, at least in this town. Instead, I had a salad. And french fries. And some hot peppers. And also some vodka mixed with a sour cherry juice that is pronounced something like Vishni. Tasty stuff, that. Almost made up for the complete and utter dearth of cheeseburgers.

And, evidently, I was also a little over-preoccupied with the bald guy. I later found out he actually had nothing to do with the story at all. I looked up La Traviata this morning (you can find it here) and learned that while I am not entirely certain what I want to be when I grow up, I can cross one thing off the list for sure. I so do not have a future in opera writing.

However, given my fledgling career as a business mogul here in Bulgaria, I am now considering using my nonprofit to bring the wonderful world of cheeseburgers to Stara Zagora.

Working for a Living... (or at least trying to)...

Here’s the thing. As a United States citizen, I have 90 days out of every six months to stay in Bulgaria. Now, I can spend these 90 days as I choose. I can come in and out, enjoying 10 days here, 5 days there, another 20 over there… and so on… over the course of six months. I could frolic happily in Bulgaria for 30 days in December…. another 30 in March… and yet 30 more in June. I could even - you're going to be shocked! - come for 5 days in December and the other 85 in June!!!

…Or I could do it as I have chosen to, namely fly here on a one way ticket in December and pray to the gods and goddesses of Bulgarian employment that I find a job by March 22 thereby earning my right to stay longer. Perhaps you have noticed I have been in Bulgaria now for two months, two weeks and six days. To save you the trouble of calculating this, this amounts to exactly 80 days. Theoretically, I would have had 10 days left before I had to leave the country, returning in July for another 90 days. Naturally, this whole leaving thing did not cause me to do jumping jacks and cartwheels of joy. Mostly because, as I've learned, I miss Ryan terribly when he's thousands of miles away, but also because my bank account currently bears a strong resemblance to the piggy bank of an eight year old child and, given that, I anticipated having to explore the exciting world of hitchhiking across Europe followed by an invigorating swim to the States.

As I’ve previously mentioned, finding a job here is not easy. I’ve had a couple of offers on the table for some time, but as these companies have learned, proving (as they must) that hiring an American for the job is the best and only option is slightly more difficult. A Human Resources company tried to get me a work permit to no avail, but informed me recently they hope to start my own company for me, bringing me on board in the capacity of Consultant. I got excited until I learned that in order to use this method to obtain a D visa I would need to hire 10 – 12 Bulgarians, also paying their Social Security.

This, my friends, is hilarious. Seriously, yo, I almost wet myself. I mean, it’s cheaper to live here – sure! – but let’s be honest. I am not going to be rolling in the dough. I’ll barely be able to support myself, let alone 10 additional employees. And if I merrily handed over to each hypothetical staff member (and myself) approximately 30 leva ($20 US dollars) every month… well, let’s just say I would not be met with smiley faces and giddy hugs.

So, realizing that while I’d likely found a way to financially support myself in Bulgaria, I still hadn’t found a way to actually live here whilst doing so, I hired a lawyer who first outlined a lot of what I already knew. First step – get a D visa. (Yep, yep. I knew that.) In order to get a D visa, one must comply with one of sixteen criteria. Most of them, like being a member of the foreign mass media or, um…. say, the parent of a permanent resident, I have no hopes of meeting.

Fortunately we have determined that starting my own nonprofit/foundation is a viable course of action. It’s not the cheapest option… but it is one that allows me to stay here without hiring a host of people I can't begin to afford. So, soon I will be the CEO/Director/President/All Powerful Supreme Ruler and Queen (I’m still deciding what title I want) of my very own nonprofit agency. As it turns out, this endeavor is very exciting for me because I’m starting to consider what efforts I can put forth in conjunction with other nonprofits in Bulgaria, which in turn allows me to continue to do work I find meaningful, pleasing and important. This, while not exactly inspiring those aforementioned cartwheels (at least not yet) does make me inordinately happy and far more relaxed than I’ve been in ages.

Anyway, as I previously mentioned I went to Thessaloniki, Greece to apply for my D visa the other day. (As an aside, it is impossible to apply for a Bulgarian visa here in Bulgaria, but since I’d never been to Greece I can’t say I really mind.) Once I have the visa in hand, not only will I be running my own nonprofit, but I will also be able to apply for my lichna carta (i.e. residency card) which allows me to stay here for a year… or longer if I reapply again this time next year.

In which case those somersaults and other gymnastic feats just might ensue after all…

Back in Action

Fret not, my dear and loyal friends!

Contrary to popular belief, I have not fallen into a bottomless Bulgarian pit, thus disappearing from the blogging universe forevermore. Nay! Instead I have spent the past month taking a course in Sofia. Specifically, I was in the process of obtaining the Cambridge Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA) at AVO-3 in Sofia. As you will ascertain, due to this and other circumstances, there was not much time to be had for typing up self-indulgent (but delightful?) blog entries.

But now that I find myself once again with that elusive but much desired concept known as “free time”, I hereby present you with an informative update categorized with the aid of popular movie titles! (Exciting, yes?)

Back to School

If only I hadn’t left my camera in the back of a taxi, I’d be able to take pictures without having to borrow Ryan’s far less superior model.

Let’s evaluate this sentence, shall we? What tense is it? How about the form? Can you identify the subject, verb and object? What type of conditional clause would you say it is? And, most importantly, which camera would YOU say is better… the Canon PowerShot SD700 …. or the Casio Exilim EX Z60? Discuss, please.

Yeaaaahhh… So let me first make a confession. Up until recently I thought I knew how to speak, read and write English pretty well. Ryan teases me about being the grammar police, but the truth is I really do sometimes feel like I should have some sort of honorary badge or something because when people write things like “your funny” or “The dog ate it’s breakfast” I have to struggle not to launch into detailed descriptions of the proper use of contractions and possessives. I mean, I know I’m not, like, Hemingway or Shakespeare or Dr. Seuss or anything. I like big words, long sentences, too many commas and tend to overuse fragments to convey certain points. I’ve even been known to accidentally use “too” instead of “to” from time to time. But on the whole, I felt I had the English language pretty well under control.

To my eternal dismay, the CELTA class proved me wrong. I do not wish to bore you with the details, mostly because reliving the experience triggers my gag reflex, but I learned that those of us who use English as our native language really have no clue about all the nuances of our mother tongue. Considering I had previously thought we only had 3 tenses (past, present and future), discovering that with all of the forms we actually have closer to 12 or 15 came as a bit of a shock. It was quite humbling, actually. One of my roommates, Marina, is from Macedonia and fluently speaks a number of languages (including English). I would ask something like “So this future continuous, right?” And she would smile and gently tell me “No. That is present perfect.” As it turns out the individuals who learn English as a second language actually learn it better than those of us who learn it as a first language and much to our chagrin many of the students we taught knew grammar better than we did. This is probably not funny to you, but I assure you it is. Mostly because I envisioned myself completely at a loss, standing in front of a class saying “Um. This is a sentence. Here is the verb. And the object is here somewhere…. uhhh… okay, class dismissed! For homework write me an essay on the merits of, ummm… cheese! Yes! Tell me all about cheese!”

But I prefer not to dwell on that too much.

Anyway, we had class Monday – Friday from 9 AM – 6 PM, complete with detailed lessons on how to be an effective teacher. Additionally, we engaged in 6 hours of teaching practice and the subsequent oh-so-lovely feedback sessions where we got to hear what we did right… as well as just how badly we sucked. Because we also had to develop detailed lesson plans for the classes we taught, write thorough descriptions of 6 hours of observed lessons and come up with 4 papers on various assigned topics, there was limited time for anything but living, breathing and sleeping CELTA and gorging myself nightly on bread and picked vegetables because there had been no time to eat earlier in the day.

However, to my good fortune the people with whom I was taking the course were very supportive, enthusiastic and fun. (There was one notable exception, but I won’t go into that too much here. Let’s just say that if upon facing constructive criticism you feel the urge to disagree vehemently with the instructor, then spend the next month alternately pouting, complaining exclusively about how you're being singled out, accusing your fellow students of not supporting you and saying derogatory things about the size of the said instructor’s manhood, this class is probably not for you.)

So it was challenging… but it is also thankfully complete and the good news is we all passed and are now certified (if not entirely qualified) teachers of English!

The bad news is… I really did leave my camera (the completely awesome Canon PowerShot) in the back of a taxi and therefore, until my new one arrives, must battle Ryan for the use of his Casio. (Just kidding about the "far less superior" comment, baby! But I still maintain I am the better photographer!)

Nurse Betty

About a week or so after I got here, I came down with bronchitis. This is not unusual for me. For some reason my body tends to avoid most other illnesses such as the Bird Flu, Ebola and Sleeping Sickness pretty well… but seems to simply love bronchitis and embraces it wholeheartedly several times a year. To top it off, this time I also managed to catch the flu my first weekend in Sofia and spent two whole days in bed. Ryan was great and hung out around my apartment all Saturday and part of Sunday helping take care of me until I sent him off Sunday night to have dinner with friends and watch his beloved Bears play in (and sadly lose) the Super Bowl.

Anyway, as the flu tends to do, it went away very quickly, but the bronchitis kept getting worse and worse until I had to be forcibly urged to enter the mildly alarming world of Bulgarian Medical Care. Luckily the instructors at AVO-3 were fabulous and one of them went with me to serve as translator and, if necessary, hand-holder. Approximately 12 prescriptions, 7 doctors’ visits, 400 leva, 1 traumatic chest X-ray and a partridge in a pear tree later, I was told I had borderline pneumonia and needed to have a shunt installed in my arm so I could have daily injections of heavy antibiotics and cough suppressant administered directly into my vein.

Super!

This was not absolutely the most fabulous experience of my life, but luckily I paid for a nurse to come directly to the school so I didn’t have to spend a few hours a day at the doctor’s office, thus jeopardizing my standing in the class and forfeiting the money, time and energy I had put into the CELTA. And I tried to have fun with it! Even when the nurse had to move the shunt from one arm to the other because the first was really bruised and her (ungloved) hands were shaking so hard she couldn’t find my vein and wound up spilling my blood all over the table, I tried to view the experience with a bright spirit and a good natured sense of humor. (Ryan was there for this instance and he felt so bad for me it earned me a tasty meal at a local Chinese restaurant so dare I say it was worth it?).

At any rate, the shunt has since been removed from my arm, the drugs worked their magic and I am now feeling much better and moderately more confident in my ability to obtain quality medical care here. Huzzah!

A Clockwork Orange

You’ve heard about my driving, yes? Or perhaps you have ridden with me and are personally aware of my propensity towards speed, lots of cursing and heavy horn usage.

Have you also seen the movie A Clockwork Orange? This charming flick, brought to us by Stanley Kubrick, is about a seriously disturbed man who favors classical music, violence and rape. During a robbery (that also winds up being a murder) he is summarily caught and essentially forced into submitting to aversion therapy. He is drugged and his eyes are held open with clips while he is subjected to images of extreme and graphic violence set to Beethoven. Needless to say after this treatment he is unable to engage in any form of aggression (including self-defense) or, for that matter, acts with naked women. There is a lot more to the story, but that’s all you need to know for now.

Bulgaria’s roads are my Clockwork Orange. Every day. Cars speeding through red lights. People leaning heavily on their horns. Dogs, cats and pedestrians nearly getting run over. The sounds of gunning engines, the screech of brakes and, often, metal crunching against metal. I offer now to everyone who has ever ridden with me or come into contact with my driving in any way, shape or form a heartfelt apology because... boy do you deserve it!

You will be happy to learn that when I come home I fully suspect I will be virtually incapable of the following activities: speeding, using my horn, aggressively passing other vehicles, swearing at the driver in front of me, swearing at the driver behind me, swearing at the red light, swearing at animals that cause me to slam on my brakes, etc., etc., etc.

Aversion therapy worked for me.

Love Actually (or Planes, Trains and Automobiles)

Ryan wound up having business to take care of at the Peace Corps office the day after Valentine’s Day, so we were able to celebrate the holiday together. However, we vastly underestimated the all encompassing power of the Hallmark Corporation because evidently in recent years February 14 has become quite a popular day here in Bulgaria. When Ryan tried to get reservations a few days ahead of time, his coworker looked at him like “Uh, smoke crack much?” and advised him we were out of luck. Still, he persisted, but after a few phone calls it was revealed that the coworker was right. The entire population of Bulgaria (except us) would be dining out that evening.

Initially nonplussed, we solved the problem by getting take-away from the Taj Mahal, a fabulous Indian restaurant just up the road from my apartment in Sofia and cuddled on the couch watching movies. It was a most special Valentine’s Day after all.

We’ve also gotten to do a bit more traveling. Last Saturday the staff at AVO-3 arranged a field trip for the CELTA students to the Rila Monastery and Melnik as well as the St. Petka Church and Baba Vanga’s house in Rupite.

The Rila Monastery is located in none other than the Rila Mountains and is, as you’ll see, simply breathtaking. My fellow students, Ryan and I enjoyed wandering around the courtyards, taking pictures and dining on mekitsi (sort of a hot fried donut reminiscent of funnel cake).

Melnik, on the other hand, is the smallest town in Bulgaria boasting about 200 – 300 people, steep, winding roads, sandstone cliffs and lots and lots of wine. We had lunch in a typical Bulgarian Mehana, drank vino that was a little too grapey for our tastes, but on the whole not bad, and toured a really cool winery complete with barrels and caves (but not the bats I had been told we might see). We also got to hang our martenitsa on a blossoming tree in a courtyard overlooking the town. (Martenitsa are red and white yarn bracelets handed out on the 1st of March to celebrate the coming of spring. Ryan's blog offers a much better description here: www.ryaninbulgaria.wordpress.com)

As far as баба Ванга (Baba Vanga) is concerned, she was a woman apparently blessed with the ability to foretell the future, heal people using herbs and travel places around the world using only her mind. Whether or not they agree with the true nature of her alleged gifts, most people seem to revere her and although she died in 1996, Rupite is still a much visited place in Bulgaria featuring a church, Baba Vanga’s house and hot springs.

On Wednesday I also traveled to Plovdiv to meet up with Ryan. I really got a kick out of this city as you can find anything from Prada handbags to awesome pizza to ancient amphitheaters to roadside artists there. I loved it and I can’t wait to go back.

Despite all the fun we’re having, I’m not gonna lie; living 3 hours away from Ryan (as I did during the CELTA and probably will for the next year and a half) is not exactly easy. But it sure beats living 5,000 miles away! At the risk of sounding cheesy, I feel so lucky to be here with him. Challenges notwithstanding, we are really enjoying being here in Bulgaria together and are having fun living in the moment… as well as planning “what happens next” after Ryan finishes with the Peace Corps. Now, no firm decisions have been made, but the consensus seems to be that some time in the States is definitely in order! Our future home may be in Orlando, Florida… perhaps San Diego, California… or possibly Macomb, Illinois… who knows?

So friends and family please plan to come and visit us here before this limited time offer expires!

Employee of the Month

Wow, this is getting long and if I include details on my impending employment here in Bulgaria, I fear your eyes may begin to bleed from the tedium of reading so much in one afternoon. I will save this for later… but offer you a bit of a teaser.

I went to Thessaloniki, Greece on Monday and Tuesday to get started on my D-visa. While I will have to return one more time to pick up the necessary documents, I don’t have to leave Bulgaria long term and should soon be an upstanding (and employed) member of society. So tune in tomorrow (or maybe the next day) for more details!