The Best Medicine

So, I like to laugh. A LOT. You're probably thinking, "what a ridiculous thing to say, everyone loves to laugh." And it's true, everyone does. It releases endorphines and relieves stress and blah blah blah. But, for me, laughter, especially here, where I struggle on a weekly basis between going home and just calling it quits or declaring Bulgaria my Mt. Everest that I WILL conquer, it's nice to have uncontrollable fits of laughter every now and again.

I love it when you get the giggles at those really inappropriate moments and you just know you should not be laughing cuz it's unprofessional/rude/disruptive/etc.  Those moments are priceless because the discomfort of knowing you're being ridiculous in no way trumps the good feeling it leaves you.

I have those moments a lot during my adult English class here. Every Wednesday night since I've moved to Momin Prohod I've been teaching the same group of women English. They are fantastic, I love them, and if I didn't have their dedication and sweet smiles this whole adventure would be even harder.

I was thinking today about how I only really laugh when I'm with other Americans. We just crack each other up using nothing but word play, sarcasm, stories, phrasing, everything that has to do with language and everything that I just don't have with the Bulgarians I call friends here. BUT. There is one woman in my adult English course (she's my age and understands English better then she lets on), her and I just crack up all the time. And we're usually laughing at someone. Which is terrible. The teacher should not be laughing at the mistakes of her students. Ever. But, throughout the whole class I'm already on the edge of laughter because of their accents, errors, questions, and overall miscommunications so when this girl laughs, I'm done. That's it. There's nothing I can do. I try to fight the laughter and giggles but I can't and I usually have to bury my face behind a piece of paper or turn around and pretend to write something on the board until it's over. I can't even look at this girl or it will turn into the full-blown, tears-falling kinda laughter that usually doesn't end for several awkward minutes. Luckily, most of these women are fully capable of making fun of themselves and end up laughing with us but I still feel really bad every time it happens.

But I can't help it. And it always feels so good to let that out. Sometimes people say, "you just needed a good cry." I think the same goes for laughter.

When my friends and I went to Greece for Spring Break, we went to a travel agency to buy our ferry tickets for Santorini. The man was older, Greek, and his English was just enough for us to understand the basics of what he was telling us. However, he phrased himself so oddly, repeated himself in so many ways, so many times and with these crazy, over-exaggerated hand gestures that, to me, he was nothing but comical. I couldn't even look at him. And after about 20 minutes of trying to explain something that should have taken 30 seconds, he fixed me with his gaze and hand-gestured the crap out of his newest explanation and I. Just. Lost. It.

Tears started to roll down my cheeks, my face contorted, my friends looked at me like I'd gone insane. I thrust the money for my ticket into my friends hand, ran out the door, and laughed hysterically in the stairwell for about 10 minutes before I could come back inside. I felt terrible. It was pretty obvious I was laughing at the guy. He had our tickets ready by then and was really nice about my odd behavior but, man, that felt good. I love those moments no matter how embarrassing.

When that class first started, I could make funny comments throughout the whole thing knowing no one understood them and they were just for me - I still do that with my kids when I really need to make fun of them in order to keep my head from exploding. But now, these ladies can understand me and I have to be a little careful with what I say. Though, it's kinds nice to have someone laughing with me  - it's always better than laughing alone, in a stairwell.

-Age

PCPP Complete!

It's been awhile since I've talked about my PCPP - which are letters that mean something, however, I no longer know what. My project. Anyway, it's basically finished besides a few minor details that seem to be taking forever to iron out but, hey, we got this far.

Here are some pictures to let you see how it all turned out:

the classroom all stripped and ready to be made new!

shopping for supplies (this is where I walked around like an over-stimulated two-year-old)

(My counterpart, Reni, and our school's handyman, Sasho)

purchasing lamps (it took us like 30 minutes to choose - there were just so many!)

We painted about a million of these silver. It took all day but they looked great, so shiny.

She was actually working, I just picked up that paint can cuz I wanted to be holding something.

Delivery truck with our new desks!

AND....TA DA!!!

New white board, teacher's desk, floor, desks, chairs...

cupboards with donated books...

windows (check out that view, huh?)...

door (I painted some words in Bulgarian to match the pretty wall stickers my mom sent me  - thanks, mom!)...

Our desk has, wait for it, DRAWERS! So handy.

and new lamps (all six work, that's really somethin')

I'd say it was a great success. We're just waiting for blinds so our kids won't go blind in class, strategically placing their desks so the sun doesn't shine on them directly. We're also hoping for a computer which would make our snazzy classroom complete! Yay us!

-Age

Culture Thursday

A few months ago the B25s (I'm a B26) finished their Peace Corps service after two grueling/piece-of-cake (depending on the person/site/work) years. Quite a few of those volunteers stayed in Bulgaria and their varying reasons include: extending service from 3-11 months, getting married to a Bulgarian, starring on a new Bulgarian reality show called "Lost in Bulgaria" which happens to be the case for four of these amazing "R"PCVs (the "R" is for "Returned" which they haven't technically done yet but I still think they deserve the highly coveted status).

The TV show is in Bulgarian but there is some English every now and again and the scenes or so dynamic, interesting, and funny (no, really, funny) I'm not even sure it's necessary for you to understand exactly what's being said. You'll get the general idea - promise. AND you'll get to know Bulgarian culture so much better. Which is why you tune-in to Culture Thursday, now isn't it?

Here's the link to the first episode (there are two episodes currently online and the rest of the eleven will air on Wednesdays here in BG so they should be up on the website by Thursday - conveniently).

LOST IN BULGARIA - ИЗГУБЕНИ В БЪЛГАРИЯ

-Age