Sunglasses Weren't Enough

Something about my life here in Bulgaria before it ends:

Today was the last day of school. We said good-bye to our 8^th and 7^th graders. The 8^th graders have to leave cuz I work at a primary school but the 7^th graders are leaving this year because most of them are super smart and got really great test scores on their big, national, 7^th grade exams and get to go to fancy schools throughout Bulgaria. I’m really happy for them cuz they’re all great kids. You know how I feel about my 8^th graders.

I cried. Not like a sweet, welling-up of tears but actual sobs. It was awful. I tried to hide behind my sunglasses but people noticed and then they cried and there were hugs and flowers and tears and pictures and it was just such a big, wonderful mess that I can’t imagine there was any other way to end my two years teaching here. I really love my kiddos. Saying good-bye was not easy. It sucked.

Then we went to the restaurant in town to celebrate. We took tons more pictures and, of course, I cried again. I joked with my 5^th graders, told my 6^th graders how special they are, and watched my 7^th graders prance around in pretty dresses and button-down shirts and realized how much they’ve grown up since I got here. 

Now I’m at home baking cookies for my close friend, Lenka, who I’m about to go to coffee with so I can give a her a letter in Bulgarian that tells her how much she’s meant to me and I just don’t think I can handle any more tears today. Seriously. They give me a headache. 

I’ve known volunteers who just take off. They leave Bulgaria and no one ever hears from them again. They don’t answer emails, they don’t skype or facebook. They are just gone and their colleagues and friends and kiddos don’t know why. I understand why. It’s hard to move on to a new life and hold onto this one at the same time. Moving on completely, severing all ties seems easier, less painful. But, I don’t want to do that. I want to keep in touch. I want to know how my friends here in Bulgaria are getting on and I want to know about all the wonderful things my students do with their futures. I’m gonna try my best.

That’s all for today. Parting is such sweet sorrow, am I right?

-Age

Manda -Pants

My best friend and I are living two completely different lives. We’re only best friends because we like each other so much. If we didn’t, we’d have probably lost touch by now. We’d be the types of friends that like each other’s pictures on facebook as an obligation. I might not actually care about her recent trip to Lake Tahoe, but I click the ‘like’ button cuz it’s easy and it lets her know that I’m glad she’s still having a good time in life and maybe her yellow striped bathing suit is cute. She’d occasionally comment on my posts with a ‘lol’ just to let me know that she still thinks I’m quirky even though she probably didn’t actually laugh out loud.

She's got a six-year marriage and a mortgage and a career and thinking about kids and I...well.

But, she’s awesome and I love her and we’ll be best friends forever. She’s one of the funniest, most genuine, kindest, completely normal, prettiest people I’ve ever known and we could laugh for hours and hours about nothing, tell the same stories over and over again without feeling repetitive, and listen to each other’s problems with the ear of a friend who knows the other so well that no advice or opinion needs to be given unless solicited. 

I figure, when we’re old, so old that it doesn’t make a difference at all how different our lives were because now we’re so wrinkly and feisty and grey that nothing matters more than the amount of fiber we add to our mojitos, we’ll just hang out on a front porch and bitch. And laugh. I’ll probably have a gross smoker’s laugh that will be completely unfair cuz I’ve never smoked and she’ll make fun of me for sounding like a man and I’ll tease her cuz her boobs that I was once so jealous of rest on her lap when she sits. It’ll be great. Right now we’ll stay friends even though we don’t see each other nearly as much as we’d like but one day we’ll grow old together.

I’ve read almost every Jane Austen novel (I’ve read JD Salinger and Ernest Hemingway too so don’t give me shit) and I remember her writing about friends. The main character describes the importance of being kind to everyone and I agree, but she also says that who you associate with, the people you call your friends, should be thoughtfully selected. Not everyone is a friend and that’s not cruel, it’s practical. If someone is a fool and you know they’re a fool and you call them your friend, it reflects poorly on you. Your friends reveal the person that you are, I think, in a similar way that your actions do and I’m happy to say that I’ve known the greatest person ever since I was in second grade – that’s 20 years of looking pretty damn cool by association. 

I should’ve thought to write this earlier, for her birthday or something, so I didn’t have to buy her a gift. Not that I bought her one when it was her birthday. She’s the generous one in the relationship, not me. 

-Age

Shut-Eye. Now, Please.

I haven't been sleeping well lately. For weeks actually. Either tossing and turning all night, waking up constantly or feeling like I'm only half asleep, never achieving the REM I so desperately need. Thinking about how tired I am and yet how sleep seems so impossible makes me want to cry.

I've always had periods where I struggle with sleep. I fear insomnia - a true, diagnosed, medicated sleeping disorder - on-setting  later in my life the way some teenagers must secretly fear the onset of schizophrenia in their 20s, combined with the unease that night is approaching and I may be unsuccessful at completely resting, drives me a little crazy. I imagine it's one of those things that can only be understood if the person doing the understanding has gone through it themselves. Just like I've had the feelings (or lack of feelings) involved with depression described to me but I couldn't fully grasp them because I've never felt depressed myself.

I'm currently on my 4th cup of coffee today. It's 2:30 in the afternoon. I know, I know, that can't be helping but I've always been a caffeine junky. Though lately I've been chastising myself to lay off. I've been drinking more caffeine recently cuz I'm on a Summer Is Coming diet and I can't completely deny myself cravings (cuz I've been me long enough to know I can't fool myself into thinking I can simply forgo all bad things - psshhh, yeah right) so I just replace all cravings - sweets, chocolate, red meat, dooners - with just one craving: coffee.

Healthy, huh?

I think my sleep issues have more to do with some underlying restlessness and apprehension. Things are ending and new things are beginning and I'm just sitting here waiting for the inevitable chaos of transition.

I've been chewing on the inside of my lips a lot too. A classic nervous habit that I've always had but now I'm making myself bleed. Gross. But I can't stop!

I've always prided myself on being a Type-B person, having this chill, relaxed personality but when things require a real reaction like venting or planning or making to-do lists or screaming - things I associate with Type-A people - I instead chew my lip unconsciously and walk to school tired every morning with zombie-like dark circles under my eyes (more heavily make-upped than usual to try and disguise them).

I think writing this probably helps a little.

I'm Apparently Freaking Out!

There.

That outta tie me over until I can absent my village life with a distracting trip to the beach.

I'm going to the Black Sea soon to swim, play beach volleyball, tan, and ride on a pirate ship. And sleep.

-Age

A Post

So, I chatted with my mom recently and we discussed the fact that I haven't written anything here in awhile.

I don't have anything to write about.

I mean, I probably do but it's all the same old stuff. I've finally gotten to the point where my life here is seemingly mundane and nothing is new enough or interesting enough to write about. I teach, I work with cute kids after school, I coach volleyball, and I...

Plus, why would anyone want to read about my life in MP when they could read about a man being bitten by a rattlesnake in a Walmart:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18068554

Or the fact that Britney Spears is joining X Factor USA:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/18067912

The internet is truly fascinating. So much information. So little time.

-Age

Things I've Said While Teaching. Seriously.

Phrases I've uttered in my English classroom here in Bulgaria:

• No drinking beer in class

• Stop punching your friends

• Let me smell that. Oh jeez. Rekia is for adults, not 11-year-olds.

• You dropped your cigarettes.

• Please put you clothes back on.

• What's more important, English or what you're doing right now? ......Oh.

• Please don't light your chair on fire....Really? Why? OK, because fire is hot and I don't want to die.

• What just hit me? Oh! Free pen!

• You want to know what "M*** F***" means in Bulgarian? Well, we have dictionaries in the back. Look it up.

• Well, that was incredibly inappropriate.  .......Incredibly? Много  .....Inappropriate? Лош.

• You haven't drunk beer in over a year? You mean, you're one year sober?!?! Well, bravo. Stay on the wagon, buddy. You'll want to start middle school with a clean slate. ...........Nothing.

I substitute taught in So-Cal for a couple years so my American version of this list would probably involve less alcohol but certainly more foul language and the occasional weapon. Ah, kids.

-Age

Istanbul. Aşkım. Canım. Seni Seviyorum.

Although a picture is worth a thousand words and I have what amounts to 100,000 words uploaded onto facebook, I'd like to write about my recent trip to Istanbul so I can look back one day and remember all the little things.

• We took an over-night train. We being Katelyn, Evan, Nichole, and I. The man in charge of the non-sleeping section of the train was Bulgarian, the man in charge of the sleeping section (our section) was Turkish and knew only a few phrases such as "15 euro" and "no problem" and "OK?" which made things equally frustrating and hilarious. Nichole spoke to the Bulgarian man in order to translate for another passenger who only spoke English. She was doing really well except for our drunk Turkish conductor who kept interrupting her with "no problem, no problem" - he was such a mess and later asked one of the other passengers to buy him a bottle of Johnny Walker at the border. 

• When we got to the border at 1:00am, we had to get off the train and get onto a bus because Turkey is remodeling its train lines. Great. Then, the bus wasn't working and we had to wait 2 hours for someone to come fix it. Fantastic. Then, after about 30 minutes of travel, it broke again and we had to wait for a new bus. It was pretty terrible but we finally made it to Istanbul and immediately took very long naps before going for dinner, tea, desert, and then beers. We made up for the time we'd missed.

• We made a scavenger hunt for ourselves to complete by the end of the trip. We had to find:
• 5 hipsters
• Neon pants for each color of the rainbow (purple turned out to be the hardest to spot)
• a group of 30 children or more (they were everywhere)
• 2 men on one Vespa
• 2 people walking together wearing the same outfit (we saw that 3 times)
• a mosaic
• a viewpoint with at least 5 mosques visible at the same time
• a Whirling Dervish
• a PCV
• an American
• a hooka (shisha, nargile, water pipe) bar
• and other things I can't quite remember

• We made up a game called "friendly men" because Turkish men are very friendly towards each other and enjoy linking arms and putting arms around shoulders while they walk and talk. We got one point for every "friendly men" couple we pointed out. I believe the total tally was around 30.

• We made educational videos about Turkey, particularly Hagia Sofia, which I hope to upload to facebook if my internet will let me do something so fancy. They star Katelyn as the tour guide and Evan as the curious tourist. She explains the artifacts, culture, and tradition of Istanbul in six very entertaining specials. They involve giants, mashed potatoes, rectangles, and Santa Claus, among others.

• We drank a lot of Turkish tea. We even played a game of backgammon with a bunch of men in business suits while drinking tea (now that I think of it, that was on the scavenger hunt list - backgammon).

• We loved the hostel staff: Can (pronounced John), Gulsum, and Memo. We talked about men with Gulsum and she imparted some wisdom about Turkish men while we told her what we knew of American men. We smoked shisha with Memo and Can and played a game where I gave them a theme and they had to smoke the theme. Can's theme was shy. He's pretty hilarious so needless to say we all laughed hysterically and then he went on to tell dirty stories about foreigners smoking hooka for the first time and we laughed some more. Memo's theme was sexy and he made the most of the hooka's shape. We also had a dinner at the hostel that involved Turkish dancing at the end and we taught them how to horo. Then we did the limbo and learned that Turkish people can really bend. We stayed up all night talking and laughing and playing games. I also learned, from Memo, some romantic phrases in Turkish like "my love" - "my soul" - "my one and only" - "I love you" while Can taught us all dirty words and phrases in Turkish that I won't repeat here. 

• On our one night to go out on the town, we started off with 7 guy friends joining us. Before we actually made it to the bar, we had 0. Nichole joked about how pathetic that was but we ended up dancing all night to very strange music at a very strange bar and having a great time. Nichole dances really well and, at some point in the night, the bartender pretty much forces her to dance on the bar top and she insisted that Katelyn go with her. Katelyn, my friend who's deathly afraid a fire, joins her to dance on the bar which the bartender then lights of fire. Maybe one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Evan, seeing what the bartender had in mind, begged him not to do it. He said not to worry, lit some alcohol on fire, Katelyn froze in panic, eyes wide, and then jumped off the bar followed closely by Nichole. Epic.

• A very cute Turkish boy proposed marriage to Evan and then asked her out for tea (natural progression). She went. It was very cute.

I think that's all. It was a great trip.

-Age

Call Me Grimm (but don't really, I probably wont' respond)

My sixth graders are studying past tense in short stories and my counterpart asked me if I had a story I could recite for the class. I didn't. So I made one up. It went like this:

"Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess. She lived in California and was bored with her life. She wanted adventure. She wanted excitement. So she traveled to a far away land called Bulgaria. There she found a small school with many beautiful children and began to teach English. However, there was a group of evil students. They made the princess's life miserable. She came up with a plan. Every day after school the princess would go deep into the woods and spend one hour digging a giant hole in the ground. She dug and she dug and she dug and after many months and lots of hard work, the hole was finally ready. She told her evil students that they would be going on an excursion in the woods after school that day. She led them into the woods and as they neared the hole she told them she wanted to play a game. For this game they would have to close their eyes and follow the princess's voice. For possibly the first time ever, they did as they were told and when they neared the edge of the hole the good students from the princess's sixth grade class pushed them all in the giant hole where they were left to think about their evil ways. Then the princess and her sixth graders lived happily ever after. The end."

They enjoyed it.

-Age

(This fairy tale is 90% fiction. Only the evil and good students are real. There is no hole. I'm not a princess. And I would never use a shovel as a disciplinary tool.)