The Peace Corps FIles: December 10, 2007

A post by "Blake the Megalomaniac" To see more posts click here

It’s Beginning to Feel A Lot Like Christmas:

“I feel it in my fingers, i feel it in my toes, christmas is all around me, just like the saying goes!

A
few days ago I watched “Love Actually” for the first time and I haven’t
been able to get that ‘one too many syllable’ gingle out of my head. I
definitely feel the christmas spirit is all around me…but,
proverbially, maybe just one syllable off.

I’ve been pretty
active over the past month not only during the week with the school
year in full swing, but it seems like every weekend I have a full
schedule. The Second weekend in November, I traveled with 4 other
teachers and two of our classes from Geo Milev High School to a town in
central Bulgaria: Gabrovo. Although it was raining litereally the whole
time and the temperature was hovering right around freezing, we made
the best of it. We went to the planetareum in Gabrovo where
disappointingly the presentation failed to mention the recent
renumeration of planets to exclude Pluto. I thought that was a rather
blatant ommission of facts considering none of my students knew what I
was talking about when I brought the subject to their attention. Also,
Gabrovo is known throughout the country as the ‘capital of humor.’
Because of that, they have a Home of Humor with different famous
Bulgarian Cartoonists and Satirists work on display as well as an
exhibition of interesting Bulgarian sayings/adages. The one I liked the
most was: “No matter what you produce, when you go to market you must
sell yourself.” Ambiguous maybe, but I liked it. On our excursion, we
stayed in a Hotel with our students. Fortunately the night was rather
uneventful (at least no one got hurt or drank too much according to my
knowledge) but being so close to their age, I felt a little awkward for
sure.

On our way back to Ruse, we stopped at an open air
museum that was set up like an eighteenth century bulgarian village
would be. This time in Bulgarian history is very popular/nostalgic for
Bulgarians because this is the time immediately following their Rebirth
from the Ottoman Empire. Once again, although it was miserable
weather-wise, I enjoyed it as much as I could.

Next weekend
was Thanksgiving weekend. I really began to feel homesick as the days
began to end around 5pm and I yearned for the feeling of returning home
from Blacksburg to experience the sights and sounds of The Bridge for a
week. But I got over this the best way I knew how. I invited some of
the teachers from my school over from my school for a thanksgiving
dinner. I made a pumpkin pie, roasted a turkey, and made some delicious
stuffing. Surprisingly the food was delicious! My friends loved it and
we had a great night at my apartment. This was also the first weekend
of the Ruse Teachers 3v3 Co-ed Basketball Tournament organized by the
Municipality. Many factors led to Geo Milev absolutely dominating the
tournament and winning first place. Among them being: I was about 10
years younger than the next youngest player, the other man on my team
is about 6′5″, and apparently not many of the teachers in Ruse have a
thorough background in Basketball. We won a pretty nice-sized trophy
that was awarded to us at an Awards Banquet/Holiday party.

That
night was a lot of fun filled with folk dancing (horo), good food (a 3
course traditional bulgarian style dinner), and good drink (rakia).

One
weekend, along with a couple of the men that work at the Youth Center
in Ruse, I took some students to a nearby lake that is (or at least
was) absolutely filthy. We spent the morning filling about 70 bags of
trash and spent the afternoon playing football. One of the kids had a
football that his mom brought him back from the states when she went on
vacation this summer to Miami. It was a great time throwing the
football. When I think about it, going a whole summer and fall without
touching a football is a tragedy. But it was pretty fun tossing it
around after all. It was also cool how everyone was seemingly
dumbfounded how I could throw a spiral.

On Thursday, some of
my students will perform a Christmas play that I wrote. Well, I didn’t
exactly write it. I adopted ‘A Christmas Carole’ by Charles Dickens
into play form and shortened it while also making the English very
easy. Either way, I’m definitely excited to see my students perform it
on Thursday.

But my excitement for that doesn’t come close to
how excited I am for Ill nana to come. Will is coming to visit me for
my Christmas break. I am going to meet him at the Sofia Airport on Xmas
day and we are gonna travel from Sofia to Kyustendil to Plovdiv to
Istanbul…in effect traveling across Bulgaria. I’ve heard nothing but
great things about the sights in Istanbul so I can’t wait to experience
it with Will and some of the other PCVs who will be traveling with us.

I hope everyone is having a great holiday season…MERRY CHRISTMAS! – EJC

udothedishes…