How Very American of Me

Up until recently I've focused mainly on the specific aspects of Bulgarian culture I've observed over the past 9 months. I can tell you all the ways that Bulgarians are unique and about their many traditions and how their past has shaped their present. Though lately, I've realized a couple of eye-opening things about American culture that I'd never noticed before. Things that are so obviously reflected in my actions and attitude that I can't believe I wasn't more conscious of them before coming here.

The first, Americans have a very strong sense of justice. We view fairness as a right, one to be defended. Bulgarians rely much more heavily on luck and fate and generally believe that good things happen to some, bad things to others, and fairness plays little part in it all. But Americans do not like to be treated unfairly. Not. one. bit.

Case in point, when a group of us went to Sofia for my birthday, we were waiting on a corner to cross the street when an man with a thick Irish accent yelled at us as he walked by, "Hey, you guys are really rude! The way you talk about Bulgaria is insulting and disrespectful! Learn some manners!" He then kept walking, satisfied with having lectured a group of Americans. We were immediately outraged as a healthy percentage of our group was, in fact, not American but Bulgarian and not a single one of us was saying anything even remotely disrespectful. His obvious prejudice against us caused us to defend ourselves...to no avail.

After we called after him with our complaints, the man turned around and walked up to us visibly upset and obviously inebriated. He yelled at one of my Bulgarian friends, D, calling him an "arrogant American" when my friend replied in a thick accent, "I'm Bulgarian." The man only blinked for a second before telling him he was "just like his arrogant, American friends.” As I was closest to him, I had much to say about his accusations and insults one of which was, "I'm sorry, who's being rude?" He replied, and I'm quoting him word-for-word, "I'm not rude, I'm Irish." Yeah, OK, my mistake. After that, all I had to say to him was, "Go away. Just go away and leave us alone," which he didn't appreciate much but after my much more patient Bulgarian friend, V, intervened he eventually left.

We were pretty upset about that encounter for hours afterwards and it wasn't until the next day that I realized how one unfair comment can set-off a whirlwind of obstinate resolve to set the record straight. All of our arguments with this man were logically-based and genuinely in search of a legitimate reason for his accusations. We didn't like being labeled simply because of our accents. That's not something we're used to and not something we tolerate from others.

The second thing I realized about our American culture though, be prepared, I am about to generalize, is our preference towards the casual rather than the formal. It could be simply a middle-class thing or even just a California thing but I never feel comfortable in formal settings. And, you know me, when I'm uncomfortable, bad things happen.

Like last night, when I went to a birthday dinner and continually blushed for no good reason throughout the entire meal. I had what I would equate to an anxiety attack though I wouldn't want to imply that I experienced anything close to what people who actually have anxiety issues experience. However, last night was awful in terms of simply feeling like I'd rather be anywhere else, an unnecessary fight-or-flight response to nothing more than a na gosti with friends.

It was just so darn formal. Sitting around a table, burning hot in the room because of the furnace, fancy dishes and glasses that didn't quite fit so I kept awkwardly dropping my fork on the floor. People singling me out simply because I'm the American who speaks English. I swear if we'd been at a cafe or just sitting around the TV, I would’ve been fine. But, instead, I kept turning red and receiving pitying glances from the baba I barely knew. Not only that, but my friend’s dad bombarded me with political theories regarding America and all of its faults. I actually got a little upset which never happens. Not to contradict my point above, I believe that differing opinions regarding politics and the government of a country in general are common and nothing to get worked-up over. But, last night was a nightmare. Plain and simple. I won't even tell you how the night ended cuz I still don't want to admit it to myself. Embarrassed would be the best way to describe how I feel.

Anyway, my point is, that it all started with the formality of the setting. I prefer casual. Casual is my favorite, right up there with crime novels, orange-flavored things, and flip flops.

My general awkwardness hit an all-time low but I'm sure my Bulgarian friends will forgive me - they are super great people and take good care of me even though I now know for sure that they think Americans are a little weird.

-Age

I'm Like Your Grandma, Only Without the Knitting Needles

I'm sitting here, waiting patiently for Spring. With Spring comes, not only sunshine and warmer weather, but all the things I miss and love about being a volunteer here in Bulgaria: my volleyball team, my adult English course with the best Bulgarian ladies EVER, and the ability to exercise and not feel like a hybernating bear.

Though, there are a surprising number of things going on currently that I'm pretty darn excited about. First, I'm a Co-Secondary Organizer (Official title. Fancy, right?) of the International Writing Olympics here in The Bulge. Several countries from this neck of the wordly woods are competing and Bulgaria is participating for the first time. Which means, we're kind of new at this. Vaune, the coordinator, basically our boss, is an amazing volunteer who has taken-on this project with gumption and only minor skepticism. She has delegated to Megan (the other Co-SO) the task of collecting 21 prizes for the first round of the competition. Things started off slow - like us planning a trip to Sofia with letters written in English and Bulgarian asking major bookstores and publishers to donate to our event only to find that all the bookstores were closed - no one is interested in reading on Saturdays, apparently. But, after the PC office promised us old Bulgarian-English dictionaries and the amazing Valya gave me the email to a woman at the embassy who has already started looking for other prizes for us, things are looking up!

The event takes place this Thursday and I have some students from the local high school interested. Though I've taken on a bit too much lately and haven't been able to make my way over there in awhile, I hope that more students have decided to sign-up and I'll have some seriously great essays to take with me to Sofia for judging in just a few short weeks. Then, it's on to the the International part of the competition (which means our work is pretty much over and the more exciting aspect of the competition begins!)

Also, some more awesome volunteers are coordinating a spelling bee for Bulgaria and I and my counterpart, Reni, are participating. I am working with not only my school, but a school in a neighboring village becuase the English teacher there had a PC volunteer at one time and is still very intersted in the things we do, naturally. We've decided to have our own practice SB between the two schools at the end of February and then move on the the regional aspect of the competition in late March. Eventually, our best students will wind-up in Sofia to compete nationally. I'm pretty excited about this as I have some pretty amazing 2nd and 6th graders (as well as one stupidly smart 4th grader) who I feel will go really far. The list of words for each grade is long - 250 words - but I know they can do it, I've got some smarties.

Being a teacher here in BG is exhausting. So exhausting that I've been abbreviating for some time now, I'm sure you've noticed. Also, I'm too lazy to spell-check and find out if "abbreviate" has two b's or not. I go to bed at 9:00pm. Like an old lady or a 3rd-grader. I'm either 9 or 79 depending on whether I drink apple juice or warm milk before falling asleep. Don't judge me.

Anyway, like I said, I'm sitting here, waiting not so patiently for Spring. It snowed today. Snow, I'm beginning to really despise you. Though, I recently bought (or PC bought) a ton of wood for my pechka (stove) to keep me warm over the next couple months - as soon as I get a key to the garage it's locked away in, I'll be warm and toasty. Mmmmm, toast. I'm gonna go make some. Ciao.

Wait! I also recently found out I'm going home to the States for a two-week vaca in June!!! I'm so excited that 3 exclamation points really don't feel sufficient so...

! x Infinity = my excitement (it's probably algebra and can't be debated. Math never lies, I'm that excited.)

-Age

The Impression of Democracy

My friend Evan and I have spent some serious time discussing what we plan to do after we leave the Peace Corps. There are many options and we weighed them all with the wisdom of our combined experience. We could take advantage of the one year of non-competitive job eligibility within the government, we could enroll in one of the many graduate schools PC has partnered with, or we could extend our service and stay in Bulgaria for another year. Though these all seemed like interesting and beneficial options we ultimately decided on world domination, the obvious choice.

We quickly decided that dictatorship is a tricky business. It’s been done before and seriously out of style so if we were going to do it right for the first time in world history we would need to vamp it up a bit. Go at it from a new angle. Which is why we decided to campaign. And, yes, we’re well aware of the irony. After some brainstorming we chose the campaign slogan:

Evan and Adrienne

World Leaders

or

Rulers of the World

(official title pending)

“The Impression of Democracy”

(This regal walrus will be our mascot)

It gave just the effect we were hoping for: implied fairness. Though, we totally plan on being absolutely fair. I mean, we are Peace Corps volunteers after all. We’ve decided that we will use the mistakes of past dictators as a platform for our dictatorship; we won’t make the same mistakes. The world will be awesome because of us, we’re super good at problem solving.

Here are some examples of our future campaign ideas:

“Evan and Adrienne: Making the world a better place one non-disputable decision at a time.”


“We’re painting the White House blue because we’re not racist or sexist!”


“Dictatorship is such an ugly word. Feel free to never call us that or we’ll chop off your head. Kisses – Evan and Adrienne, World Leaders 2012.”


“Hitler: What a douche. Vote for us! (voting is purely arbitrary but in a completely non-condescending way)”


“Stalin was a buttface. Our faces look nothing like butts. Vote for us! (voting is purely arbitrary but comes with a free cookie upon ballot completion)”


“First order of business: Solving World Hunger. Cuz we really feel like Marie Antoinette was onto something.”

Those are just a small taste of the awesomeness that is to come. We’ll continue strategizing. Right now we plan to coordinate with Ludacris, Science, and the lady who wrote the Twilight books cuz all of those things worked out pretty well. They’ll be like consultants (cuz consultants sounds better than royal advisors – though we’re totally gonna have jesters cuz, I mean, who wouldn’t?)

That’s all for now but I would advise all to be super nice to us cuz, who knows, there may be a country in it for ya!

-Age, Co-World Leader 2012

Attitude Adjustment

To be quite honest, I haven’t been enjoying teaching much. There are a lot of reasons and I don’t really want to get into them all (plus, I’ve already whined about this) but I’ve been having a difficult time finding the motivation I need. It seems that I simply can’t wait to leave my village on the weekends and meet up with other volunteers. I try not to do it too much but my weekend’s quickly fill up and I so look forward to the end of the week. This is beginning to worry me. I’m here not simply to help, I’m here for the experience as well. But I’m not gonna experience much in terms of Bulgarian life and culture if I’m not a part of it, right?


After the flu vacation and my many days off from school, I did not want to go back. I wanted to stay in bed and be lazy and pretend that I didn’t have any responsibility here. I mean, who would miss me really? I team-teach every class so it isn’t as if the students would be left without an English teacher. The Bulgarians I tutor were getting on just fine a few months ago without me. Volleyball isn’t going to define the futures of the young girls in my village. And my school’s fully capable of collecting money and supplies when needed. Who would miss me?

But, I got out of bed. I went to school. And all my students, all my little monsters, greeted me with big smiles, with English “Hello, Miss Hadaway, how are you?”’s, with “happy birthday”’s, and made it perfectly obvious that they did in fact miss me. There are some students who could care less about whether or not I’m there and those students are louder. They used to grab my attention with more frustrating strength but now I know that most of my students are sweet and kind and benefitting from my presence. It felt good.

Not only that, I had my friend, Marietta, and her husband, Angel, over for dinner to celebrate my birthday and they immediately began to fix every problem I had in the place. They showed me how to make a fire, offered to find me wood to last the rest of winter, unfroze my pipes so I could shower (hallelujah!), and changed the breakers so that I’d stop losing electricity. She also said that I should come for dinner at her house once a week and sleepover – it’ll be fun and more warm, she says. They are always taking such good care of me.

It’s good to be back.

I’m still running around and planning to meet volunteers in various places but I’ve decided to try and spend more time in my village because there are some amazing people here and the relationships I’ve made are real and worth the struggles. I’m blessed. I’ve been trying to foster this attitude for months knowing it was somewhere inside of me and I think I’ve finally found it. I’m going to focus on the good and exciting things that are happening (like the National Spelling Bee and International Writing Olympics!) and really enjoy the rest of this school year.

-Age

Flucation

Written last week when I was actually on flucation and away from my computer:

The oblast, or county, I work in closed its schools this past week due to a flu epidemic that has broken out this winter season. Many schools around Bulgaria have shut down as well and many TEFL volunteers including myself have found ourselves in the midst of a surprise vacation. That is not something I ever considered possibly (hence my usage of the word "surprise" in the previous sentence). At the most, I was looking forward to the prospect of a snow-day or two, something unheard of in my Sunny Southern California, but 7 full days of school off? All I can say is Woo Hoo!

I'm sure all the kids are excited as well, whether or not they're one of the many suffering from the flu, as final exams for the end of this first semester have been postponed. For some students this means the ability to momentarily put-off the inevitable F's that they know are coming their way because they crack open their books to study just about as often as they ask for extra chores or put themselves to bed early (though they'll act outraged when they receive their grades - it's a matter of principle, after all). For others, this will mean an opportunity to study further and do really well on their exams. From what I've seen of Bulgarian students, there's very little middle-ground. They either know the information or they don't. They either study all their subjects with dedication or they don't study at all.

Even at a young age, some students are aware that their future starts now. Ambition is an uncommon emotion for many students and because of this, an extremely valuable asset for those who have it. Others seem already doomed to a disappointingly mediocre fate regardless of their potential or any available opportunities. Much like the States, motivation and desire are everything and if the students lack these things, if they or, more importantly, their parents, aren't capable of valuing education and showcasing an optimistic attitude towards the future, they won't go far.

It's unfortunate but true.

Education is a problem here in Bulgaria, most Bulgarians will be the first to tell you. There needs to be a complete overhaul in the education system. Families from all over need to regard their local schools as an important part of the community and the learning going on inside as the future of Bulgaria - full of opportunity for prosperity.

Bulgaria's generally defeatist attitude, fostered under years of oppression where one's views and desires were of little importance because individual effort didn't influence the outcome of one's life, is what keeps them from making a united, proactive change. They have so much potential as a country part of the European Union and with genuinely clever youth who could grow up to make a real difference if raised with the right attitude and examples.

Basically, the problem is bigger than me but I can still do my part. My contribution, if combined with the contribution of others in my community in positions of influence: teachers, parents, directors, students, community leaders, and so on, can create a small change moving in the right direction. It seems lofty, because it is, but it's also absolutely possible.

But, right now, I'm on flucation and enjoying every minute of it...as are my students, each in their own way.

-Age