My last two months in Bulgaria

Well, nothing so interesting was happening. We (Viktor and me) settled down, got used to living together and our life was quite normal. We kind of realized that this living together was not just a fling but it got more serious :) Those three months were filled with fights with the cockroaches and with our always broken washing machine. We also locked ourselves out of the apartment one morning (the day before Viktor broke one of the keys to our double doors) and had to wait to the evening until the landlord came and broke the door – we could have done that, too. We stopped travelling around, because it was urgent to start to take my diploma thesis seriously. Even though I was freaked out when I found out that the deadline for my diploma is, I managed to finish it more than a week before (I am so good!:) We went for one memorable trip just before Viktor left  - to Basarbovo Monastery. It was a nice place definitely worth visiting but prefer spring or summer to winter (when the place is totally empty). What I remember the most from that trip is how hot it was on the train. Just perfect for getting stuck to the leather seats. After the trip, we both got sick, so our last days together weren’t as romantic as expected.

Things at school remained quite same. Kids were sometimes nice and interested and sometimes they were just driving me crazy. I really enjoyed teaching Czech because it taught me how complex my mother tongue is. I managed to teach two (out of three) students of latin letters class how to write English letters and also some vocabulary. This was really satisfying. A month before leaving Bulgaria, I just got so excited about going home, not only because of the comfort I have there, but also because I was a bit tired of fighting with the kids...

The last five days before my departure were dedicated to my dad. He came to Bulgaria to help me to move out and to do some sightseeing. When he was getting off the train, it was totally clear that he fits in considering his appearance and clothing. After he stepped into my apartment, his first comment was that the apartment has its potential (unfortunately my landlords didn’t see it). 

It was definitely challenging to spend 5 days in a row in the presence of my dad. Travelling around Bulgaria with him showed me how my brother resembles to his father. I learnt about my father’s childhood, about the time when he and my mum were young, about Communism, etc.

People sometimes wonder why I went to Bulgaria (and many look down at me), because usually the desire is to go to the West, not to the East. I think many of them think I am crazy or silly. As far as I am concerned, I am honestly glad I was offered to go to Bulgaria (and not to Spain or Norway), because I learnt a lot about not judging people, about poverty, about how lucky I am because I wasn’t born there. Thanks to Bulgaria I met a boy and thanks to him, I’m moving to Tallinn to find a job there and live my dream with him. Let’s see what will happen next :-)

sharing Czech Christmas traditions :)

 

celebrating my birthday

with my dad

Bulgarian traditions

 Russian traditions /borsh and vodka/

New year at school

It is said that a new year should bring something new into life of a man (in my case woman:). Before 2010, usually nothing had changed in the following year, but this new year is different. My lazy life at school is gone. I started to teach three 5th grade kids to write and read Latin letters (after 2,5 years of English it’s a bit sad story), two teachers Czech language a this week I will start to teach English some teachers.

I have always thought that teaching one’s mother tongue must be incredibly difficult. Well, maybe if one doesn‘t have any textbook or didn’t pay attention at their Czech lessons. What I am trying to say is that teaching Czech works incredibly well. One of the teachers I am teaching, she’s got an old Bulgarian-Czech textbook which is a good source for grammar rules and I borrowed one Czech textbook Viktor downloaded which is an awesome inspiration for speaking. Moreover, everyone is so motivated (well, Viktor doesn’t look very happy every morning he has to get up and go there :), does their homework...just like a dream in that jungle.

In contrast to well-working Czech lessons is English for teachers. It was supposed to be a team-teaching with Matt, but unfortunately neither of the teachers showed up at the first and second lesson. A bit disappointing but maybe also expected.

Teaching reading and writing Latin letter to those three kids is probably one of the biggest challenges I have ever take. The gang consists of two girls (one is really nice and trying to do something and she is probably the only one who makes any progress, the other one is always talking, touching me and I would call her Little Miss I Know Everything Better Than You Do) and one hyperactive boy who obviously has troubles with even Bulgarian letters. Each of them needs individual approach because they’re definitely not on the same level, but it’s damn difficult to pay attention to only one and make the other to work on something, because each of them wants 100% of my attention.

Every lesson they got wilder, noisier and less obedient pretending they don’t understand my (almost) perfect Bulgarian. I started to be a bit desperate, because it’s me and I don’t give up on any challenge, but it started to be unbearable. The night before Thursday I couldn’t sleep and had to think what to do with those three monkeys, because it was not possible to keep on like that.

On Thursday morning, I asked one of my Czech students for some phrases in Bulgarian and wrote them down next to my lesson plan. I also goggled some activities I could do with the alphabet. The game could begin. I asked the students for their Бележник (student’s book) and because they had no idea what was going on, they gave it to me. After that I told them, if they misbehaved I would give them 2 (the worst grade here) and if they were about to be good, I would give them stickers. (I couldn’t say that before because they would tell me they don’t have their Бележник) This was followed by one girl stealing the Бележници from my table (which is kind of a public place for the kids, but I really don’t like them being around it). I use here lots techniques learnt at uni about assertiveness, so she was forced to give them back to me. Well, all in all, the lesson went really well. Each kid got two stickers, it seemed they never get anything good from their teachers, because they were showing me their stickers repeating: „Look, I have two stickers.“ Maybe what’s even more important, I managed to keep them busy and interested. :)  The question is how long the trick with Бележник will work, because I am not allowed to write in it and probably there are not so many activities for keeping the gang busy.

Christmas holidays

I would expect this time of the year to be lazier than it actually was. Some trips were made, cultural events visited, part of my Diploma Thesis written..just a perfect holiday without waking up „early“ in the morning to get to school on time. All in all it was one of the best Christmas ever.  

The Christmas atmosphere started in Shivachevo (definitely must-to-see in Bulgaria), where local school gave performance of Christmas Carol by Dickens in Bulgarian. Who has never lived in a town, where cultural events are rare, can never understand how exciting it was to go to the theatre to see a play, even though it was in Bulgarian. Although I picked up only some words, the play was so well done – Matt and Pavlina – good job!!!

After that, we went to visit ICT teacher thanks to which I got to know that Bulgarians have a special TV channel only with Bulgarian traditional/folk music. Pretty crazy! It was a really nice visit and it was pity we had to leave so early to get a train back home. Sliven welcomed us with its famous winds. Cold and windy, what one could wish more? :-D So we ran back home. 

The last weekend of my Christmas holidays (honestly I am sure that teachers love the holidays more than the kids) we took a trip to Plovdiv, second biggest town in Bulgaria. It is also said that it’s one of the most beautiful ones in this country. I think Viktor and me together must increase somehow the possibility of getting lost (see Istanbul trip;). Being saved from not-very-safe looking part of the town by an Armenian woman who could speak Russian, we checked in in our family-sized hostel and went to see the Old town. The houses in the old parts of Bulgarian towns start to look all the same, so the most interesting part was getting over the thorny fence to the antique theatre where we took some unique pictures. To get from the theatre, we needed to use different way out (another thorny fence, narrow path on the edge of the roof and some jumping down) because a suspious man with a label of security seemed to be watching us from behind the fence.

In the evening, we went to the Mall Plovdiv (who has never lived in a big town without a shopping centre or cinema cannot, again, understand how exciting it was) to the cinema to see Avatar. Unfortunately it was sold out. Well, ten minutes before its beginning, there were some free seats, but obviously we were in the wrong queue, so somebody from another one bought all available tickets. Interesting was one man who was totally angry and arguing because, as he said, it was not fair. Maybe it was not, but very probably he was from Plovdiv and could see it any other time whereas WE were there only for two days and it was a unique possibility to see it.

Anyway, we managed to see Avatar the next day. It was a great experience, not only because I haven’t been to the cinema for several months. For example, the scenes were breathtaking, but on the other hand the storyline was predictable and it was a bit too long. Once I’d like to write about Americanism in this movie, let’s see if I have time to do it.

Being too cold for waiting for the right bus, we took a wrong one. It can sound stupid or ridiculous, but after some minutes on a windy place where a bus stop was supposed to be, one would do anything to get out of there. Getting off the bus somewhere out of the map wasn’t very encouraging, but we managed to get to the railway station on time! Well, but we had almost missed our train because our train departed from
a „hidden“ track.

We arrived safely home and I went to sleep with the thought that I didn’t want to go to school the next day...

Халката, 26/12/09

Yesterday, me and Viktor decided to take a trip the next day, because we were stuck in our one-bedroom apartment for a day and something and we needed some exercise and fresh air.

I usually hate mornings, even though Viktor sings „Morning’s here“ every morning (which I love) and tells me how beautiful the morning is (it’s usually foggy and cold, since our apartment doesn’t have a central heating). Anyway, today morning was different. The sun was shining and there was no fog on our windows.

It was decided that we really WILL go out and we would visit Xalkata, a ring from a rock in the mountains behind the town.

We packed some necessary stuff like gingerbreads (we have lots of them :), bananas, baby oranges and some tea. Beer was left home, because as Viktor said, it was too cold outside for a beer. In fact, the weather outside was like summer in Estonia. Nicely warm with a spring breeze.

I don’t know why I thought there are no buses operating on public holidays, three of them passed us by on our way to Sinite Kamani. We met a lot of people going down, not so many (in fact no-one) going up. The way up was quite nice and not long, which was highly appreciated!!! :)

There’s a legend about the ring that if a girl goes through it, she can become a boy. Well, even though I’d like to become a boy because of several reasons, e.g. I wouldn’t have to sit down every time I need to pee, etc., I didn’t dare to go through that piece of rock.

We took a lot of “necessary” pictures, ate what we brought up and went down. We met some Bulgarians whose outfits, perfumes and handbags were definitely not suitable for the muddy path in the mountains.

It was a really nice trip in a really awesome weather. I feel some muscles which I don’t usually know about :)

Full-time teacher for one week

I met Veselina some weeks ago in a language school. I have a conversational part of her lessons. Once she invited me (well, to be honest, I more or less invited myself) to spend some days with students from Estonia, Romania and Turkey who were about to take part in Comenius Partnership program by EU. It was real fun and I met a lot of people working in Shivachevo school.

Last week, Veselina went to Iceland to take part in another European project and I was offered to take her classes. I thought it might have been fun, so I said yes, but wasn't sure, if my school would allow me to leave for a week to teach at another school in a different town. Shivachevo is officially a town, but in reality it is a really nice village, just like one from Western Europe imagines eastern European ones. Anyway, the headmaster from Shivachevo found somebody to talk to the director of my school and I was allowed to leave Hadji Mina Pashov for a week.

I didn’t have any textbooks, because Veselina forgot them at home. So I prepared general introductory lesson without any idea what the students‘ level of English is. Honestly, based on my experience from Hadji Mina,  I didn’t expect the kids to speak English at all. I was so wrong. At least in my first class. My lesson plan was done in twenty minutes and I had twenty-five left. Oh no! I had to improvise, which I hate, especially with students I don’t know. I managed to keep the kids occupied by playing „Simon says“ or drawing dictatition for clothes revision.

My other class was on the other side of the scale. There were only five boys who were hardly able to repeat something in English. It was a very challenging lesson where it was me who was practising foreign language skills instead of them. After the class, I talked to Matt (an American volunteer teaching there) and he explained me that those kids (all 5 were gipsies) even cannot read Latin letters properly, so that is the core of the problem with gipsies.

To sum up my experience from the week in Shivachevo:

Sometimes it’s good to know kids‘ mother tongue, especially when they (gipsies vs. others) start to fight, so the only way how to stop them was to find another teacher who was able to calm the kids down.

Nobody, except for a few exceptions, is preparing their lesson plans :(

Schools here don’t have so many (if they do have any) supplementary materials as we do in Czech.

Teachers were really nice to me there and tried to talk to me. Trying to talk to me in Bulgarian is always highly appreciated. I got, again, more confident in this language.

The gipsies are totally not motivated to learn anything. I was wondering why...is it because of they don’t have any studying habits and strange family background or is it because teachers have different attitude to gipsy and Bulgarian kids? Probably both. I felt quite sorry for those gipsies, since they don’t have any future. They will in the same slum as their parents.

Teachers of English speak English there. :-)

There was no timetable on the bus station in Shivachevo, so I came to there and waited until a bus came. Btw. one driver was crazy, no one in Czech, hopefully, would dare to drive like that with a bus full of people...

I felt welcomed and useful there. I wish I felt the same at Hadji Mina Pashov. I mean, they’re nice to me, but is teaching just one lesson a day enough?

Detailed instructions how to destroy 130 euro shoes

1) Get shoes for 130 euro (can be bought even in a sale – as mine).

2) Find a friend who was in a military service.

3) Ask the friend (in my case Estonian) to come for a weekend to do some hinking in the mountains nearby.

4) Take a chair lift to get into the mountains. (Walking up is too exhausting)

5) Have a small talk with chair lift crew, they can give you some discount (as we got, so we paid 3 leva instead of 10 :)

6) Up in the mountains, start your hiking in wet grass with some mud. Oh, don’t forget to give the map to a girl who can’t read in maps well.

7) Shoes are now totally wet and dirty. Enjoy the deciduous forrest all around. Have lunch. Bread with tuna. See some gipsies having their lunch, too. Don’t be surprised if a horse, who obviously ran away from his (gipsy) owner, shows up. Be glad you’re sitting after several hours of walking (don’t forget, there’s „army“ guy with you!)

8) Follow a sign saying in 1 km there’s a restaurant.

9) Have a proper lunch there with some pancakes :)

10) Ask for a room.

11) Have a pillow fight.

12) Let your „too active“ friend take you for a short trip to the highest mountain of Sinite Kamani, which is nearby.

13) Remember, there is no path going to Bulgarka (the highest point), when you pass teenagers trying skiding in their parents‘ old car (which makes terrible noises), you have to find your own. Your shoes will suffer again in a layer of old leaves and mud.

14) Enjoy the view. It’s magnificent. Take some pictures and then go back.

15) Have some more fights in your hotel room.

16) Wake up late the next day. Watch Winnie the Pooh. The Tiger’s Story. Very sad, but with happy end.

17) Start walking again.

18) Talk to two old Bulgarian women who will want you to join them. Run away.

19) Take the wrong way. The very steep one going down. Have a lot of leaves and earth in your shoes. Sit and refuse to move. Have some more dirt in your jeans as well.

20) Feel sorry for your shoes.

21) Get the right way. Meet a tourist with camera. Try to get rid of him.

22) See the two old Bulgarian ladies. Run. Run. Hide.

23) Take some pictures in the rocks.

24) Walk. Walk. Walk. No rest.

25) Finally back in Sliven.

26) Buy a melon.

27) Throw it away in three days.

28) Clean your shoes and check all scratches :(

I'm back :)

As you probably noticed, I haven't published anything recently. It was not because I wouldn't have nothing to say (it usually doesn't happen to me :), but my life was pretty busy. So I'll add some memories from last 14 days :)