First impressions from Sliven

Going by train from Burgas to Sliven was really nice, I dare to say amazing :) This time the windows were clean, the train went quite fast, countryside was nice..:) I managed to talk to a drunk local, which was funny.

After my arrival, I was taken to school where I am supposed to teach. From outside it is a really good looking building, but inside it’s under reconstruction meaning there’s a lot of different dirt. Because of this, they have school in the afternoons, not in the mornings which is more student friendly time. :)
First thing in a classroom which took my attention were sharp edges of desks. The next one was the omnipresent chaos. I think chaos is something very typical for this south-eastern country. The kids are coming to the class even if it is 10-15 minutes after its beginning. They are also sometimes leaving lessons and coming back again in several minutes. I still don’t get it. Pupils seem not to be able to pay attention for more than 5 minutes. Well, it’s not surprising, because their English teacher is not speaking English much and her teaching can’t catch pupils‘ attention. I really don’t like this I-don’t-speak-English thing, because it makes impossible to communicate and I still don’t know what I’ll be doing here :(
In my opinion these Roma kids will be my challenge. On the other hand, within these two days I felt like a star, since everybody wanted to know who I am. White, young, pretty girl at school is something unusual for them, but I guess their interest will fade away soon. Sadly, they wanted to know a lot of things about me but didn’t have structures and vocabulary for asking me. So the teacher told some of the things in Bulgarian, so they now know that she’ll translate for them and they don’t have to try hard. :(
In the 8th grade, the boys really liked me and even some of them offered me „group sex“ – my Bulgarian suck but this was pretty obvious with their demonstration :-D When I was in this class, I wrote into my notebook: „Run, run, run away as long as it is possible...My life challenge is about to begin...“
I think I have never experienced such noisy classes in my life. Besides being noisy, the kids seem to be quite aggressive. I’m glad that I won’t be left alone with them :) (hopefully, because no-one really knows what can expect) I came back home with my head definitely bigger than it was before :-D On my way back home from school I was thinking about starting to drink alcohol. I can imagine myself having a glass of vodka every evening to make me feel better :)) I even found a hidden bottle of vodka in a cupboard in the living room ;-)
I managed to choose a nice flat. To be honest, this flat was offered to me by teachers from that school I’m observing now. Surprisingly it has everything I can need, including washing machine from Communistic era with encryption instead of clear description what does what :)
The funny thing about my flat is that even though it’s got heating, one can’t use it, because it’s not connected to any source of hot. I hope they don’t have cold winters here...:)
Weather is something I do like about Bulgaria. It’s almost sunny and warm every day. It’s nice change from Liberec’s rainy weather.

Last week in Burgas

Our Bulgarian course is about to finish on Tuesday 29th, so this was the last whole week I spent by the sea. In some ways I felt this week like going back in time and being sixteen again.
Anyway, yesterday I talked to Tobias in Groovy bar and he told me that they were renting a car and going to Varna the next day. My original plan was to go on Sunday by bus with some other people from the course, but going by car sounded a bit more sexy. Moreover, Taco was about to rent the same old Fiat as the previous week, so the decision was clear – I’m going with four boys :)
We set out at about 10 am and after several minutes, we noticed that we took the wrong direction, which turned our trip into an exciting countryside sightseeing. We even managed to take a road which was kind of under reconstruction and it was not allowed to drive there. Not suprisingly, we met a lot of other Bulgarians taking that road.
After lunch (again I ordered something which I didn’t like) some of us went to the dolphinarium and the rest went to look around the town. Not seeing any tourist train going there, we had to walk, which was pretty nice, because the path was throughtout a sea garden with many statues of important Bulgarians on the sides. The dolphin show was 20 leva (10 euro) - quite expensive but we’ve never visited such a attraction, so we paid. The performance was nice but for that price I would say it was really expensive.
Then we went to a restaurant where I got black tea. It felt and tasted so good :) We even could see the dolphins from there, but it was impossible to take a picture of them :(
We didn’t see many sights of Varna, but it was still a very nice trip. Varna has its seaside resort atmosphere and one feels very good there.

Weekend trips

As I said in my previous entry, we went to Nesebar on Saturday. Waking up at about 8 was a bit difficult for me, but even more, I guess, for those who stayed later than me.

Nesebar is an ancient town, in UNESCO heritage, meaning there were bunches of old buildings from Greek/Roman period. The number of churches really surprised me. People that time must have been really religious. I kind of liked the orthodox paintings, because they’re different from what I know from „Catholic“ Europe. The interesting thing about orthodox churches is that they don’t have windows.
On Sunday we set out for our trip to Sliven. The train was a bit worse than I expected, but it was a TRAIN :) Mario and Tobias managed to get a seat with a clean window (and were selling the view for 5 euro :)) in contrast to the others. As in Nesebar, I didn’t expect to be cold, so didn’t take enough clothes with me.
While me and Tsvetan were visiting flats, the others went to see the beauties of Sliven. I was surprised what one can(not) find in Bulgarian apartments. You can have a „cooker“ (it looks more like a microwave) on the balcony or missing heating. To be honest, I didn’t like neither of the ones they offered me :( So now I’m kind of choosing the „best from the worst“. I have decided to cross out living with „baba“, because of lack of privacy (for both sides) and the big (and nice) flat without heating.
The rivals are: 1) A new flat, which is quite small with a view into a concrete yard, but has a new washing machine and all in all looks nice. It is competing with 2) the flat which was offered me by the teachers. It has everything, but I’m not sure about the bathroom, since it’s not in the pictures I got by mail (I didn’t visit this one). Among its advantages belongs: it is bigger and no-one will be offended by my refusal to take it (which I promised about a month ago). Both are the same price.
After these exhausting excursions, we went into the Blue Mountains. I’m not mentioning the pain of getting up, because it was worth it. It was just magnificent. I think I’ll like to go chill out there (not on foot but will take a chair lift ).

On the way back down, everyone (ecxept for me and Tsvetan) decided to run down and they did it. I think they were really crazy, but whatever, nobody got hurt...
Fortunately, in the morning Taco appeared with an old minivan, which was really helpful, because it had already been evening and we would have to wait for 2 hours for a night train. Tobias made a comfortable sleeping place in the car boot and the rest travelled properly, as civilized Europeans :)

It was a nice weekend. Hopefully, the next one, we’ll go to Varna.

Just a not usual Friday

I like Fridays. I like them because we have only 3 hours of Bulgarian. We were supposed to do a test today, so I did it in advance to see my progress. It is more or less a progress test in our textbook, that’s why I could do it before today’s lesson. We did it as I expected, each of us read one sentence and filled in a gap or chose the right answer, which I consider totally useless for seeing our progress.

Anyway, since I had everything done, I was free to disturb the others who looked as bored as I was. We had some fun, but unfortunately our teacher didn’t agree with our entertainment, so we had to stop it :( Martin from France commented on my extracurricular activity: „And you are going to be a teacher.“ If I was such a boring teacher, I wouldn’t mind my students doing the same, I think :-)

After the classes we went to a Natural Historical Museum in Burgas. It was small, full of dead animals which were introduced by not-well-English-speaking-guide. All in all, it was nice to see what kind of animals live around here.

Finishing our meals in a Chinese restaurant, where jokes about cats started and are still on (even several days afterwards), we went back to our hotel.

On the way, there is a small Macmillan bookshop, which I was curious about, respectively about the stuff they have inside. So I encouraged myself to enter it. There was not enough space to show all books they have, thus a shop assistant offered me some help. She was one of the few people who can speak English here and looked really happy she can speak in this language with me. As she said, she doesn’t have many chances to speak in English. We had a nice talk, she recommended me some interesting textbooks for my teaching in Sliven and gave me several wall posters (e.g.with picture map of London), which I really appreciated. Since high school I have wanted to have some at home :))

In the evening we almost all went to the club. To be honest, the club era ended for me more or less when I was sixteen. Unexpectably it was fun, even though I didn’t drink alcohol.

The next morning was not such fun, because we had to wake up „early“ for our Nesebar trip. About it I’ll write in my next blog entry :)

Looking for an apartment

Thanks to Tsvetan who made severals calls for me (thank you so much!), I will see two apartments in Sliven this Sunday. He was calling on my behalf not because I was afraid of a phone, but mainly because Bulgarian people, in addition to being rude very often, don’t speak English and unfortunately my Bulgarian skills are still low (maybe I should pay more attention to the teacher:).

So in the game are:
1) Flat which was offered me by a coordinator from the high school I’m going to teach in. It’s quite old with a „kitchen“, 2 in 1 room (living room with a bedroom) and a balcony. The most important thing about it is the price, it costs 150 euro per month, which is a bit expensive for Sliven area. I could get for this price much bigger or modern one. I told her that I would take this place some weeks ago but now people keep telling me how expensive it is, so I started to look for some other options.

2) And suddenly I saw it – shared flat for 30 euro per bed. Incredible! After Tsvetan’s call, it showed up that there’s only one room for students, in the others live „baba“ (meaning „grandma“ in Bulgarian). So I can share the flat with an old lady and pay for both beds and have my own room. I’m in fact introvert, I like to be on my own. My boyfriends says I’m asocial, which I don’t think it is true :) Anyway, living with baba can be either perfect or a nightmare.
She can be either the good and nice baba or saving money baba. Good and nice baba would talk to me in Bulgarian (so I would master in this shitty language), she would let me use her kitchen and other equipment (I’m bit worried about how old everything will be there), maybe she could bake a cake sometimes for me....If she’s going to be an oposite, she would try to save as much money as possible and make my life miserable. (Notebooks „eat“ a lot of energy).

3) The last one was found through a reality agent. It’s brand new with a washing machine I know how to use (in contrast to that one in flat no.1) :)) There hasn‘t been living anyone yet. Well, I think I will like this flat the best, since it’s new and I like modern and nice furniture. But it’s 125 euro per month and I would have to pay 60 euro to the agency. I would definitely spend some more money on accesories. So, the same price category as flat no.1.

Well, let’s what happen on Sunday :)

Saturday trip to "Stonehenge" and Sozopol

It's a shame that both Eastern and Central Europeans cannot make interesting museums...:( Recently I haven't visited any interesting, the museums are like display cases and labels saying what the things are but don't tell stories, which everyone loves. Why isn't there anyone who would give us a guided tour? Especially when we are there as a group. 

The museums are here, in south Bulgaria, quite small as they were in Norway. But in Norway, there alway had been a guide (included in price) who told us a lot of interesting stories about the things with labels in front (Did you know that when people from the northern Norway came down to Bergen to sell their dried fish, they took back coffins full of prezles?). In fact they don't have exhibition cases in Norway, which I loved, because I could touch the stuff :-) 

Sunny weather is over in Bulgaria, meaning it was windy and rainy for the whole today's trip. We started at 9, well at 9:15, since some people are notoriously late. We drove in a funny old bus and I felt like I'm going on a school trip in 1970s :)) 

I have nothing to say about Bulgarian stone sacred place - there were just stones...nothing special. 

Sozopol, well, quite a nice town, obviously recently reconstructed, with old buildings and a lot of souvenir shops - finally I felt like in a sea side resort :) I found a turtle made from little shells, which I bought many years ago in Spain. I assumed that they make them in China and then export to seaside resorts :) 

(I'm not that fat, it's the stripes on my mum's jumper O-))

(Seeing the big waves made me today feel how great is our God :)

Make a wish

Recently I have recieved some really nice emails from my Venezuelan friends. I met them this summer at Global Games (Olympic Games for people with mental disabilites). I was their assistent for about 10 days and even though they didn't speak English and my Spanish is so bad I totally fell in love with them. It seems that they also liked me because they're sending me nice emails (which are sometimes quite difficult to translate, thanks God there's Google translator) quite regularly. 

Today I feel I really want to see them again. The only trouble is that they are over the Ocean and I don't earn enough money. On the other hand, flight tickets are now really cheap and I guess I won't be able to go there for such low price any more. My today's wish made me think about what I'm spending money on and how can I save more to be able to buy a ticket to Caracas. I'll maybe try to get another job in Sliven to earn some extra money :)

Talking about Sliven, I read about history of "Xadzi mina pashov" today (high school where I'm going to teach) and there was written that a Czech photographer planted a tree there in 30s and they had really good relations with Czechoslovakia. Cool. They will love me there! :)

ГОСПОЖА КОЛЕВА

Gospoža Koleva is our teacher of Bulgarian and is in her 50s. In spite of things I like about her, there are some I don’t. Since I am Czech (so I like to emphasize negative things), I’ve decided to share some of her negatives.

First of all, she has definitely never read Harmer or Scrivener, otherwise she would know something about classroom management:
 - She is usually sitting behing her desk (x rule: sit behind your desk as little as possible) and stands up only when she wants to write something on the blackboard. Unfortunately, she writes very small letters (but her handwriting is really readable), so the guys in the back can’t read it. Sometimes she stands just in front of what she’s written, so no-one can see it. 
 - She is using only frontal teaching. There are 18 students, so enough people for group work. I think group work would work in our case, because 1) we’re sometimes speaking Bulgarian to each other in our free time and 2) we’re from different countries, so there isn’t any danger of slipping to a mother tongue. Group work would make the dialogues easier to remeber and we would also be practise of speaking.
 - Never does monitoring.
 - TTT (Teacher talking time) is dominant to STT (student talking time)

The second thing I really hate is her focus on mistakes. This approach is old-fashioned! I don’t feel comfortable to say how many mistakes I had (even if I didn’t have many). If she wants to know how I’m doing, why she doesn’t read my exercise-book? Moreover, I’d love to know if my Russian apahbeth letters are understandable or not. I’m a bit mixing them with our Latin ones. 
She also doesn’t have a lesson plan. We’re just doing exercise by exercise in our textbooks. Actually, she’s got a plan, which was written by somebody else stating what we should cover during the course. We’re doing almost a lesson a day. I’m OK with that but for others (like Germans or French) it must be really fast. 

And the last thing is that she doesn’t speak English well. At the beginning I didn’t mind it, but now, when we needed something to be explained properly, she totally failed. The class turned into a market when everybody was speaking in their mother tongue trying to figure out how the articles in Bulgarian work. On the other hand it is good that we’re exposed to the target language. 

Weekend in Istanbul

We took Metro bus for 40 leva (app. 20 euro) one way leaving Burgas at 11:30pm. Actually, the bus left at 11:20 pm. When we came to the boarders with Turkey, I just realized how great it is live in Schengen area, everything is much faster. After six hours of drive we arrived to Istanbul.First thing which caught my attention were their tickets, better to say coins, because they don’t have paper tickets – environment friendly thing :) The other thing was that I can use euros as well as Turkish lira. Good for me, since I didn’t bring any of their money. It is pity that the shops Czech Rep., which has been in EU for more than 5 years, don’t accept euros as much as they do in Turkey which would like to enter the Union. I was told how dirty Istanbul is. At least the centre of the city is not and everything was working like in Europe. I mean, e.g. the underground was more modern and cleaner than in Prague or London.
In contrast to Europe, there were „homeless“ dogs and cats in the city centre. But were not as skinny as they are here, in Burgas. I sent a text to my dad if he didn’t want me to bring him a dog (he wishes to have a big dog, I think he might like Istanbulian ones). The answer was: „Rather not. Take care of yourself, so mum wouldn’t be right.“ My mum was crazy about me going to Istanbul and probably saw me either with a strange disease or in a house of some horny Turk. 
If only she knew that there are more tourists than Turks in the centre of Istanbul. It might have been because we were there when muslims celebrate Ramadan, so it’s better sleep during the day, so one won’t get so hungry :) 
If only she knew that they don’t sell drinks with ice there, so I couldn’t get any disease from the water. 

After we checked in in our hostel (in 6th floor, no lift!), we had some tea and then took a ferry to Asian part of Istanbul. So now I can say I’ve been to Asia and it looks pretty the same as Europe :)) And after that some of us went to see Topkapi palace and the others went to see the mosques. The palace was huge, more than 200 rooms (which looked pretty the same) and also harem. The bed, the ottoman slept in, was much larger than what we know from European chateuas (I don’t know how to spell this word). A lot of really expensive things as well as sweating tourists were there. I quite liked it. In fact I came there to see the harem, but one had to pay 15 liras to get there and we didn’t want to spend this money on it, because if there were only paintings and rooms as we had already seen, it wouldn’t be so interesting.
After that we decided to see the Blue Mosque and also Hagya Sofya, since it was pretty close to the palace. It was only me and Viktor who entered the Blue Mosque, because Karin has already been there. They borrowed us a piece of cloth to cover our legs. It was huge space with really nice walls. I enjoyed the carpet so much, it was so soft! 
When we came out, Karin has already left and her mobile phone stopped working. The problem was that we didn’t know where we live. Seeing some places several times (some „funny“ Turks gave us wrong directions), we managed to get back home and get some sleep before going out at night.

The next day, Karin, Viktor and Martin took a sightseeing tour by bus, Polish fraction went to see the mosques (they didn’t come in when they were there the day before) and I went to see the underground basilica. It was magnificent. It was huge and well-lighted, and also a bit flooded, so one could see fish in water. If there hadn’t been any Spanish and German speaking tourists, it would have been even better. I enjoyed this thing so much! 

Afterwards, I was walking back to our hostel (I guess it must have been 5 km), looking around, visiting shops, buying some clothes...
Finding our bus back to Burgas was a bit chaotic, since the bus station was two-floor one and it seemed that not many people knew where it should be, so they couldn’t give us a piece of advice. Of course we managed, boarded safely and got back to Burgas, where we took a taxis to our hotel. We were quite surprised when the drivers asked us for 23 leva (about 11 euros) for 2 km! Incredible! We gave them the money, because we just wanted to go to sleep. 

I was nicely surprised by Istanbul. I thought I wouldn’t like it, because recently I haven’t liked visiting big cities in Europe. It was maybe because it was different from what I know but also very similar. 
This trip encouraged me to travel outside Europe, so hopefully I will be able to do it soon! :-) 

It’s been almost 6 days since I arrived to Bulgaria and I have already had 3 days of Bulgarian. I must say, we are really hard working students, I didn’t expect that. Some of us even didn’t come to the beach today, because they wanted study or catch up yesterday’s lesson. We used to have „German flu“ here (it means every day, one German was sick – probably from drinking too much :))
I’m getting better in written Russian letters but still I’m quite slow. Sometimes I’m mixing Bulgarian with Spanish. I’m lucky, my mother tongue is Czech, because it is easier to guess meanings of the words or phrases. Our teacher doesn’t translate much for us.


Yesterday we decided to take a trip to Istanbul (it’s six hours by bus from here) and today we went to buy the tickets. Tomorrow we’re leaving to Turkey! (yey!:)Getting the tickets took about 3 hours, people are so laid back here. And don’t speak English but Russian. We were so lucky that Victor came with us. He’s from Estonia but his parents are Russian. There were some troubles with passports because some people didn’t bring their passports with them to Bulgaria and some of them (e.g. Germans) aren’t allowed to cross the boarders without it. I’m excited about going to Turkey. Hopefully, our boys will protect us (girls) properly and no-one will get lost :)

The drivers here are incredible! They even don’t slow down when you enter the road using zebra. 
Pedestrians here are incredible! They’re crossing the road wherever and don’t care about the cars! They e.g. stand in the middle of the road and the cars are passing them by.

1st of September, 1st day at school

First thing I read today was a text from my boyfriend, in which he told me that SkyEurope had bancrupted.
It was also my first day at university where I take Bulgarian language course. So, instead of thinking how to ask somebody what his name is (anyway, I knew almost everyone, except for the French section), I was wondering what to do with my graduation exam. Shall I buy a new ticket or shall I let it go? What about all the books I have from libraries in Liberec and now they’re back home or even worse, in here with me in Burgas. My poor mum will have to send them either to my friend or even worse would have to go to the library to give the books back.
During the course, my mum and dad sent me several texts with suggestion what I should or could do. I was more and more sure that I would prefer to stay here, with my new friends and also I was a bit worried that I won’t catch up the course. It’s 5 hours a day, so pretty intensive. But then I talked to my boyfriend and he told me about how hard I had worked the whole summer (which meant we didn’t see each other as much as we’d like to) for this exam and it would be easier with the books and also the clothes I had to leave in Prague because I didn’t read Wizzair baggage rules properly.
Wizzair has a special offer for ex-SkyEurope clients – 30 euros for each flights. Unfortunately the flights from Burgas were sold out. Czech Airlines also have this kind of offer but they don’t fly to Burgas, so they didn’t help me as well.
After talk with my mum if she wants to pay me a new flight ticket, I decided to write to our department that I’m not taking the exam and I’m staying here. It doesn’t change much, it is not important if I take the exam in September or in June. I’ll pass it anyway :)

If you want to buy a wraping paper (for packages) in Bulgaria, don’t do it in a stationary, they don’t have it. They had it in a shop where toys and some stuff to school were sold.

They don’t have neither simplified Spanish books nor anything for grammar practice :(

A když jdete s kamarády na jídlo, tak vám donesou účet pro všechny, kde jsou vypsaný jednotlivý položky. Je na vás jak si to mezi sebou rozdělíte, ale musíte nechat na stole daný obnos. Docela dobrej způsob jak si ušetřit trable s drobákama :)