MASS EMAIL #8: I'm alive!

Greetings from the great beyond. I've been meaning to do this for, er, months, but well time runs away from me and my version of jogging wouldn't get me into the Special Olympics. I couldn't even catch up to the short bus.

So, major events/happenings:

#1 My birthday: It was April 29th, but despite what Miss Snotty Manners says, gifts are never really late, so you still have time. I celebrated my golden birthday (29 on the 29th) with group of about 10 friends. We met in a cabin in the mountains and ate and hiked and talked. Good times. Actually, the last day we met this odd Bulgarian man who wanted to show us the "right" trail. Skeptical but open we followed him into the woods (I know, I know - this is the point in the movie where you think "God! People are so damn stupid!"). Well, all but Wendy, Scott and I were smart enough to turn back and not just keep following the man. Turns out he's something of a marathon runner and practices in the mountains. Yes, he runs up mountains for fun. We were in the middle of nowhere with a crazy person. So, the "view" was always just a "little further" and so we kept following. Despite the fact that it was t-shirt weather down with the sane people (what I was wearing), we hiked so far up there was still plenty of snow and ice. Shivering but sweating, we hiked until we couldn't hike anymore. Complete exhaustion. The fun part though was getting down in the snow and ice. It was basically a "slide and hope you don't slip over the edge" tactic. It worked, though I was wet from snow in the end. The best part was we told everyone else that we were going for a short hike and would be back in "oh, an hour or so". Well, SIX HOURS later we returned to find our friends wondering how well they could describe a mass murderer and wondering what the mountain rescue league's number was. This worry, I think, pales in comparison to when my family called me on my birthday only to discover I was on a train that was ON FIRE and that we weren't getting off. I laughed, they did not. Good times.

#2 Copenhagen: I do believe Copenhagen is my favorite foreign city thus far. It's by far the most livable. Imagine your favorite neighborhood. Make sure there are cozy cafes, charming restaurants, boutique stores and bicycle racks on every block. Add sensible, but well dressed people including career women and men with strollers. Lots of public parks, dogs, everyone bikes. Now, imagine that as an entire city. It was a little slice of heaven. If you are into introverted blondes, it's also a quite nice place for sight-seeing. Of course I'm not. Noooo. I wasn't there for the eye candy. Not to say there was any...I mean I guess if you liked that kind of thing, it was there. I was there for the art (modern art at Louisiana, among the best around) and food (every kind, including amazing brunches) and shopping (which I couldn't afford) and guys....I mean... GOD! This keyboard has a mind of it's own. I went to Copenhagen alone, something I originally was hesitant to do, but something that turned out to be absolutely the right move. Being on my own time, in my own space, following my own whims was something I really needed.

#3 Welcoming summer: One of the perks of living in society that is still primarily agrarian is that seasonal changed are not ignored. With summer comes sun and warmer weather. The outdoor cafes, long walks, plentiful fruits and veggies, trips to the Black Sea, and general good cheer follow. It came to the point where I needed to plan for a weekend at home, if I did indeed intend to have one. Every weekend there was a hiking trip or sea trip or a visit to a friend...something. No one wants to stay home when the weather beckons you to enjoy it. As I suspected, I am not much of a beach person (as David Mamet said "The problem with vacation is that there's nothing to do there"). I just don't get it. What AM I supposed to do? I am pale, I can't just bake. It's hot. Napping only takes so much time. It's hot. There are annoying children. It's hot. Um, the beach would be better with some air conditioning and a laptop, that's all I'm saying. Hiking, however, I can do. It's busy. You're moving. There's progress. There are things to see. There are challenges. There's a POINT. Plus, I do love accessories and gear is nothing more than really practical accessories. The more I hike, the more accessories I can justify. How fun is that?

#4 Being social: The increased activity mentioned above has led to my social circles and networks expanding in new and wonderful ways. In the last 6 months or so my circle of friends has doubled and includes many people I don't know how I got through the first 6 months without. I do have this odd trait though: I like to be friends with individuals, not with groups. If my friends all like each other and can interact, fine. Great. But I really don't call someone a friend I can't exist with one-on-one. It's just weird to me. This leads me to have friends that come from a variety of places and with a variety of interests and personalities. All good to me, not always so good to mix and match. Wires cross easily. Keeping track of who likes whom is something of a task and, of course, cutting through so many social circles means information leaks are bound to happen and, well, the Peace Corps gossip mill didn't need any help. Two years of socializing with the same people is a bit like high school and I can tell you that high school wasn't a nightmare because you were a teenager, it was a nightmare because those people were IT. People are fine solo, but when they are pulled every which direction by the same people who pull you...god. This is why I need to live in a large city. That and access to a proper cocktail.

#5 Work: When I say people are out enjoying the weather, I mean it. The non-profit I work for hasn't been to work AT ALL in 6 weeks. I'll stop in to check the mail, see if someone's around, but until the weather cools I don't expect to see them at all. The municipality I work for is similar. I arrived at work two weeks ago and the whole building was shut down. Lights off. Locked. No one even told me. I think it was just supposed to be obvious somehow. I did start, prior to the sun ruining my plans, working with local non-profits to construct a local NGO resource center. I need to make changes to the proposal and then submit it for funding in November. That's the work I have right now. A project 90% written due in mid-November. JOY. The strange thing is...I don't really know when people work here. In the winter it's too cold, people just kind of huddle. Summer, everyone's gone. Spring and fall get lumped into winter or summer attitudes, depending on the temperature. Just when I feel like something is moving, it doesn't. So tiring. I've been here a year and still understand so very little.

#6 Prague: Embracing the no-work-here mentality, I just returned from a fun filled trip to Prague. I met my friend Scott (the one from NYC, not Scott from here...it's confusing, I know) for a fun-filled week of eating and shopping and....er...I think we did other things. Basically, you get two foodies who love to shop together and put them anywhere and that's what happens. The product line up in the bathroom was damn funny (I forgot to take a picture, damn it!). There were two sinks and, well, half the Kiehl's line was on them. Prague was nice to see as an example of what Bulgaria is trying to do - beautify itself and make it open for visitors. Seeing Bulgaria, at this point, is impossible without knowledge of Bulgarian. It's not an easy destination. My general impression of Prague though was that it had tourist-friendly area and then NON-friendly areas. There was expensive and really cheap. Nothing in between. Each side felt not quite right (though indulging in the Western treats was soooo nice and I did it without much, ok any, guilt). Prague seems to have lost some of its authenticity in its lure of Western partiers and tour buses. I fear that Bulgaria will do the same.

#7 One year anniversary: My one year anniversary has come and gone. It's hard to believe I've been here that long and yet hard to believe it's only been a year. Pictures from my last apartment seem like snapshots from a long lost relative's life. Conversations with other volunteers the first year was centered around making things work here, figuring it out somehow. Like magic, the day we were here for a year everyone seemed to switch conversational topics to what we'd do when we returned, what it would be like, how we'd be different. The return home seems so much closer now. I'm really looking forward to it (and to moving to Chicago, my soon-to-be home) though everyone assures us that the adjustment back home is much worse than it was when arriving here. I can't wait!

I'm sure I have more I could say, but...well, this this has taken long enough to get out and I just need to get it out so I can get on with my life. I'll be better about emailing, I promise!

Take care,
Jen

PS - I've noticed an unfortunate dearth in my package arrivals recently... and I really need some replacement Starbucks (ground, Verona is nice) and really anything yummy, like wasabi peas. Yummy is good. And some pillowcases. Don't ask.

MASS EMAIL #7: Celebrating March and the beginning of spring...

Greetings again, friends, family and other forced readers.

Spring is arriving quickly here in Bulgaria, particularly in Haskovo, which (locals say) has the most days of sunshine out of all the towns in Bulgaria. I actually believe them. The cafes are reopening their outdoor seating, people are taking long walks and the town is suddenly very populated. During winter people hid in their homes so much (self included) that the town seemed deserted. Now, it seems impossible that all of these people live here.

The first of March is called "Baba Marta Day" (meaning Grandma March). It's sort of a personification of the spring-developing process. There are all sorts of traditions that happen on Baba Marta Day: children jumping over small fires for good luck, fathers pretending to chop down the most fruitful tree only to be stopped by the cries of children who halt him and bring the tree good luck, lots of baked goods. The most common and widely practiced tradition though is giving a "martinita" to friends and family. It's a string or cloth bracelet with red (for health) and white (for luck) and sometimes other colors too. When you tie it on a person you wish them love, health, happiness and any number of other good things. As you tie it on someone they get to make a wish. It was one of those days - one of those joyous days to be in Bulgaria. There was so much good cheer. Also, it was like some funny Adult Friendship Bracelet Day. There were all of these serious and polished professionals with dozens of stringy bracelets hanging off their wrists. Hard to be reserved when that happens. The bracelets stay on until the first sign of spring. The first sign of spring is interpreted in any number of varying degrees: a few warm sunny days in a row, a blossoming tree, or seeing a stork or sparrow (oh yeah, there are storks here - lots). If you remove the bracelet and tie it to a blossoming tree you get to make another wish. There are tons of trees in town with bracelets hanging from them - it's really quite a thing to see.

The second celebration was Bulgarian Liberation Day (March 3). Let me just say this: in addition to being thankful for folks shrugging off those bloody Brits, you should be thankful that they did so in a month that's not freezing cold, where there is nothing you can do outdoors but shiver. AND...and you should be thankful that auditoriums have central heating, so that if you were to go to see a cultural show to celebrate the cold independence day, it wouldn't be so cold that you were shaking and could see the speaker's breath. Think about that when you are barbecuing and drinking cold beers in July.

Also in March (the 8th) was International Women's Day. It's celebrated with some amount of fanfare, though people link it to former socialist times or to "bad treatment 364 days, good treatment 1". Whatever the case, men (and women) give the women in their lives flowers, appreciation and good wishes. Flower stalls were everywhere and restaurants were booked well in advance. Not quite as fun as Baba Marta, Women's Day still made me realize that we Americans need to recognize more than life (birthdays, Mother's/Father's Day, etc), death (varying memorial days for past heroes and events) and love (anniversaries, Valentine's, etc).

The American holiday lacking in this list of March festivities is St. Patrick's Day. Yeah, they don't really do that here. See, superstition says that blue-eyed people like myself can give you the "evil eye" and curse you without even meaning to or knowing it. Can't really blame the people for not celebrating us evil eyers. There were some Americans and other expats who gathered in the capitol for it, but that was out of my budget for the month and I've come to doubt the fun of drinking with random volunteers, who are often badly behaved. I tried to find green food coloring, figuring I could introduce that to my workplace, but I couldn't even find that. I'll have to find a better way to recognize St. Pat's for next year.

Other things I've done: I met some friends in Veliko Turnovo for a fun weekend of exploring a town not exclusively populated by blok apartments. I met some gals in Sofia, the capitol, for shopping, eating non-Bulgarian food and hours of much needed girl talk. Frustrated with the way my program is run, I rewrote my Peace Corps program's project plan and submitted it (without being asked) to my Country Director and Program Director. It was rather ballsy, but it seems to have been appreciated and taken into consideration. I'll keep you posted on what comes of it. I'm also working on helping training be revamped to actually reflect the skills we come in with and the jobs we are going to do. Shock. Let you know what happens there too.

Future plans include a birthday celebration (I think I'm one of few adults who still likes getting older. I just figure "hey, that's crap I don't have to do ever again!"). My friend Megan is helping me coordinate a hiking weekend (my birthday falls on Orthodox Easter weekend here, making it 3 days). From May 7-14 I am also going to Copenhagen, Denmark. I need a break from just about everything so I'm going alone to explore, see art, shop, sit in cafes...and anything else I want to do (or not do, as the case may be). If you have any Copenhagen tips, please share, esp regarding lodging, which can be quite expensive.

On April 22nd a new batch of volunteers arrives. It's weird to think I've been here so long I'm no longer in the freshman class. Time has flown. With spring comes the willingness to travel more - to see other volunteers and other towns. Bulgaria, for all it's crazy backwardness, is a beautiful country. I can't wait to see more of it.

Hope you are well and spending time in the sunshine.

Jen

MASS EMAIL #6: Yes, I am still alive

Long overdue greetings, one and all.

Hope this finds you well and welcoming bursts of spring. There was a spring day here today. Yes, it’s the first. Oh so welcome though.

I know this letter is long overdue. I haven’t written since before Christmas, which seems like an eon ago. I think I am going to just try to make this letter monthly. It would keep me on it to have a date when I felt I was supposed to do it….in any case, I bather on already.

So, Christmas. I went back to my host family in Velingrad and was welcomed with open arms by everyone. I sorely missed home and all the little traditions I am used to, but it was really great to share the event with my host family. As Eli, my host mom, said to her brother in the States: “see, she’s not just a friend she really is family”. It felt like it for sure. Here in Bulgaria, as I may have mentioned, Christmas Eve is of significantly greater importance than Christmas proper. Christmas Eve is for family and Christmas is for friends. Each family seems to have their own version of what happens on Christmas Eve and why, but here was what we did in my family: a vegan dinner was cooked – no meat or dairy, for purity. Food was placed on the floor with wine and three lit candles for the Trinity. The meal honors those dead and the leftovers are kept on the floor overnight to feed departed loved ones. The meal is eaten with everyone sitting in a circle on the floor, but it’s set as a table. It’s fairly somber. ….Well, that what was SUPPOSED to happen. Here’s what happened: A vegan meal was cooked. We all sat on the floor, plied our plates and there was this long silence. I didn’t know what everyone else was doing but I was hoping for some yummy yogurt sauce to go with the otherwise strange stuffed cabbage leaves. How was I going to choke this down?! Suddenly Toshko, my host dad, gets up, goes to the kitchen and comes back with….YOGURT SAUCE! Everyone was so relieved! So, out with the “pure” dinner. One of the candles had a problem with it, so eventually it was just put out. No Trinity. After about five minutes of eating we were all uncomfortable. We were supposed to eat off the floor, but eating off a plate in front of you is hard. Do you sit Indian style and risk dropping crap all over yourself (a REAL risk for me!)? Do you sit with your legs to the side? They fall asleep after awhile and how do you get up from the floor with deadened legs? After a lot of shifting we all just picked up our plates and ate holding our plates at chest level. No proper floor eating. Once finished with the meal, we cleared the empty plates. There was quite an amount of excess food on the “table” though and it was supposed to be left there overnight. My host mom, quite a sassy thing, decided to put the family ghosts on a diet. She piled a plate for them and left it to the side. Tripping over the leftovers the next day was a family tradition she’d had enough of. All of the improvising and makeshift measures made me love the event even more – and really added to the feeling of being family.

New Year’s Eve is a much bigger event for Bulgarians. It’s the day where you nearly get burned alive by teenage boys. Seriously. Every male (and there was an enormous gender divide here) threw fireworks all day long. We’re talking things like M-80s. Huge noisemakers. Scariest part? There are no fuses. None. There’s this tip that you light and a few seconds later the thing goes off. Walking down the street that day was dangerous business. I spent the holiday with some friends in Pravitz, a college town in western Bulgaria. Not fully realizing the seriousness of the holiday, we failed to make reservations long in advance and found ourselves making a makeshift meal at home. We celebrated more properly the next night, when we could walk into any restaurant without a hitch and without risking our lives. Who needs to celebrate on the exact day anyhow?

Let’s see…that leaves another 2.5 months to explain. Damn. Um…there was this Peace Corps conference where they all talked to use like children. And then lots of the volunteers got so drunk they ACTED like children. Oh, yeah. Those were good times. Darwin has decided that my family has made it too far and has delivered various complications to various family members, which I’ve gotten to hear about via instant messaging and email. That’s pretty grand. My friend Megan and I were harassed and intimidated (and Megan sexually assaulted) on a train one night. That was…well, that was just damn scary. I’ve also spent a lot of time fighting the winter blahs. One never fully understands the Eastern European mentality of heaviness and despair until one lives through a winter in a cement blok apartment, I say. There were times when The Cure was just too perky for me.

There must be good news though…there MUST be…hmmm….Well, work is picking up a bit. I am working on some women’s employment projects and a networking project…also waiting to hear about multiple proposals we submitted for things like a regional women’s rights newsletter. John and I are helping local vets and animal lovers start pet registration and a more humane shelter. Looking for computers and books for the local library. Thinking of a project to train local NGOs in strategy and marketing. Oy!

Part of the Bulgarian holiday tradition (there’s a point to going back to that, I promise) is to have bread with things stuffed inside signaling luck or health or love or any number of other things. The large loaf is torn by the eldest man of the house and handed to each person without looking at the contents. Of course, no one told me this so when I found all these twigs in my bread I was very…appalled. It turns out that the twigs stood for health – each one did, and I got all six that were in the loaf (it was freakish, and not appreciated by my superstitious and aging host grandmother). I mention this (in addition to wanting to share a fun tidbit) because I, along with a host of other Peace Corps volunteers in Bulgaria, am participating in the November Athens marathon. OK. OK. No, I did not have a personality transplant. Nor did I have a physical one. I won’t be running it – more like speed walking or fast shuffling – but I figure that 26 miles of anything is quite an accomplishment. I’m sure I’ll have various stories along the way, of the comical “I am such a klutz” type, but I am looking forward to it nonetheless.

That’s the basic news, since it’s all so old now I don’t know what else to say. I will take a moment though to promote….MY BIRTHDAY! Oh yeah! I’ll be 29 on the 29th (April, that is). My golden birthday and my last year in the stinking, rotten 20s (good riddance!)!! My address is below. Feel free to send me lots of presents and cards and pictures. I could really use some new Eddie Bauer v-necks (large, no white), some Starbucks coffee, scented candles, good music, random gourmet food, REI or Amazon gift certificates…I can come up with other ideas too, I have sooo very many.

Hope all is well in your world. I’ll send another letter in April (I SWEAR!) with more details about Bulgaria and what I actually am doing here, since no one seems to know that (and I don’t ever get around to telling it).

Best to you and yours,
Jen