When the first pangs of fall force us to put on a blanket at night, it’s time to write a new blog post: a summer recap

Last one in is a rotten яйце - young Turks escaping the extreme heat in the Bosphorus, Istanbul.

It’s slightly cold today.  Therefore, at some point this afternoon, as I was lazing around the house awaiting the new school year to slap me in the face with a few textbooks, I had a brief image of winter.  Sitting in the apartment, huddled under thick blankets and in one of a few hoodies we brought with us, deciding which hot beverage to cook up next (maté? black tea? coffee? hot chocolate? rakia?).  Thankfully, it didn’t frighten me too much, but I’m sure it’ll be a different story once faced with the reality of buying another 35 meters of weatherstripping for these windows of ours.  Instead, questions abound about our year ahead, and the ever impending year after pound the brain.

Not here, Muffy - The old mineral baths, Sofia

And so we come to this point.  It’s the end of summer, school begins in a week, and I haven’t updated this blog for ages.  In this next scroll of photos and text, I hope to do the best I can to update all my ever-faithful readers (a group which more and more is becoming comprised of my students, current and former) in the comings and goings of life in Bulgaria.

Dyado Denyo, a.k.a Кюфтето - kyufteto, "the meatball," enlightens us all with his homemade rakia, homemade sirene, and homemade wisdom, as Matt listens on in astute silence.

Somewhere in the middle of the summer, all of us B25s got a taste of our own PC mortality, as the guard was changed and our dear B23s went home.  Now, spread out across the great US of A, searching for jobs and meaning from the past 2 years of their life, I can wish them only the best and say that they are well missed, and my special best (that’s right) goes out to the Matts, of Sliven and Shivachevo fame, having been our only regional friends for the past year or so.  As happy as we are with our new neighbors in the B26s, Sliven pizza nights will never be the same.

The Matts and the grandpa hats on our final Sliven pizza night

It’s a bizarre process, the one that turns us into the “senior” volunteers after only a year of being here, and then shoots us out the other end (which isn’t to say that we’re forced, considering that the opportunity to extend is always there).  I’m not exactly sure what my objectives were walking into this whole thing, and if they’ll be fully met by the time I walk out, but we’ve hit the halfway point in our tour here, and it’s time to figure out how to walk out that door gracefully and with desired accomplishments, well, accomplished.  This is a hectic time for us, to be certain, but more in trying to stamp out a schedule for the year ahead and beyond than in a specific to-do list.  Days and nights are being spent researching master’s programs worldwide and otherwise pondering the unrelenting question “what do I want to do with my life?”  I know you’ve all been there, and some of you are probably there right now – it’s a funny game, and it definitely leaves the head spinning.  One can only try and revel in the excitement of possibility.  But enough of my crap attempts at philosophy.  I’m annoying myself with my own verbosity.

And so they arrive - the parents' visit to Bulgaria!

Moving on to facts and details – shortly after school ended, my dear parents arrived in Bulgaria and took a whirlwind tour.  I can’t tell you the amazement Nessa and I felt riding around in a rented car, being able to stop where we wanted, when we wanted, not having to call every bus station to make sure the bus we want really exists (it often doesn’t), and complete control over temperature within the vehicle.  It may sound cliché, but I never quite realized just how much of a luxury a car really is.  Which isn’t to say there aren’t real advantages to riding everywhere on buses and trains – trains especially can be a lot of fun (except when it’s 104 degrees out and you’re in a compartment with windows that don’t open).  But still, you see where I’m coming from.

Mom modeling the Rila Monastery (in profile) for us

So we did the tourist thing.  Sofia, The Rila monastery, Veliko Tarnovo, Koprivshtitsa, Sozopol, Yambol, Zheravna – as much as one car can in 10 days.  I have to give them credit for having more energy than Nessa or I to hit all these spots – at least, far more than I expected they would.  That and plenty of na gostis whilst in Yambol, listening to Vanessa and I do our best to translate and converse at the same time.  Obviously, one can’t overstate how nice it is to have the family come to visit.  I’ll let some photos speak for themselves.

Dad, in full photojournalist gear, in front of the Tsarevets fortress in Veliko Tarnovo

The evening mist settles on the mountains above the Rila monastery

The Rila Monastery itself

Even presidential guards gotta have their ice cream - Sofia

Sasho Loves Love - and he knows family when he smells 'em

And one visitor turned into the next…

Peter Lemiszki finally makes it to the land of his slavic cousins (Ukrainian though his name may be), and sees the splendor of their creations: the blok apartments of Sofia.

Just kidding – In Peter’s time in Bulgaria, he saw a lot more and really loved his time here, so don’t you worry.  But we did, for some reason, find ourselves compelled to visit the blok neighborhoods in Sofia, just to know.  It was as exciting as it looks.

Peter and Nessa show off their best fisticuff skills in Veliko Tarnovo. Jesse is clearly impressed and frightened for his safety amongst such champions of street fighting.

So in a matter of a few weeks, Wayland MA and New York City represented themselves well here in Bulgaria.  That is, my parents grew up in NYC and eventually made their way to Wayland, and Peter did just the opposite – as did I, come to think of it.  Peter was happy to report that his favorite part of the visit was meeting my dear students on an impromptu walk up Borovets hill, after which we got some coffee on top of the Yambol mall.  That’s right – Peter came all the way to Bulgaria just to hang out at the mall.

Everybody but Peter clearly laughing at something hilarious that I said. Cuz I'm just that funny. Actually, most likely is that they were giggling awkwardly about Denislav taking pictures of us nonstop (props to Denislav for taking pictures, as I forgot my camera that day)

No comment.

And after he’d seen a small piece of Bulgaria, it was off to the closest thing to New York City we’ve got around here: Istanbul.

Kind of like soho...

It’s always fun travelling in big cities with other people who are/have lived in NYC, in that you can play the “which NYC neighborhood is this?” game wherever you go.  On my first visit to Istanbul, I probably called 30 different neighborhoods the Soho of Istanbul.  Which is silly.  This time, we made it to the Elmwood, Queens (Üsküdar), the Bay Ridge, Brooklyn (also Üsküdar – perhaps), the South Bronx (Balat and Ayvansaray), the Hamptons (Büyükada, the princes islands), Williamsburg (Galata), The Upper East Side (Nişantaşı), oh and Crown Heights (Fatih) – although the hasidic capital of NYC doesn’t compare in the same way to the conservative religious heart of Istanbul.  We couldn’t figure out a good comparison for Istiklal Avenue.

Gettin our grand bazaar action on - well, an action shot nearby, anyway

Gotta say, still proud of myself for figuring out how to say "excuse me, can you take a picture of us" in Turkish, on the spot. Üsküdar - on the Asian side of the city.

Alright, maybe the NYC comparisons are ridiculous and don’t quite work out – Istanbul is one of the more unique cities I’ve ever seen.  Currently, every plan for the future I make includes living in Istanbul for 1 year as a necessity.  The only question is how, and when.

The golden horn (the waterway, an extension of the bosphorus) as seen from the hostel roof

Kaymak - fresh buffalo milk clotted cream with honey and bread. This was such a good breakfast, that we came back to the same place almost every morning.

Oh Kepkep - you honestly made me look like a backstreet boy.

Among the many goals we had set in our visit, one included getting a Turkish haircut.  I find barbers to be quite the experience, the world round.  Mostly because it rarely matters what you want them to do – they just smile, nod, and cut your hair however they want.  At one point, my barber in Brooklyn, Yusef, managed to shave off most of my moustache but left the rest of the beard.  After I left the shop, I realized that I looked either like an Imam or Amish, or both.  Upon asking him to “fix” it, I was told that I was incorrect, and that I looked “very handsome,” in his thick Palestinian accent.  So I went for it, and have decided to trust barbers, in their infinite wisdom, ever since.  In our wanderings through Fatih, the conservative and religious stronghold of the old city, we happened to stumble upon this little kuaför (a turkish spelling of coiffeur, a.k.a barber), and Kepkep did his handiwork.  This included a full facewash and fingers in my ears that I hadn’t expected.  I must admit, my face felt mighty clean.  My Turkish language skills got a run for their money as we attempted to make smalltalk.  I got most of my points across, but couldn’t understand his answers for the life of me (“hiç bir şey anlamadım” – I don’t understand a single thing).  Overall, a great experience.

The blue mosque

Yep - I totally got caught trying to sneak a pic of these guys playing backgammon on the banks of the Bosphorus. I love me some backgammon.

Fishing on the Bosphorus - Kabataş

Well, these pictures could go on forever, but instead I’m gonna direct you here, for the rest.  There should be plenty of pics in there tagged “Istanbul” from my first visit there, as well.  Let’s move on, I’m sure you all have better stuff to do than read this crap.

Hangin' out on the black sea talkin' bout culture - Multi-Ethnic Camp "Заедно Напред" - Forward Together. Angel shows off the scene.

After riding the overnight train back from Istanbul, I had the pleasure to rush immediately to a multi-ethnic camp on the black sea, called “Forward Together.”  The basic idea, though scaled down this year, was to bring together the different ethnic groups that live in Bulgaria and learn a little bit about each other, via presentations, skits, games, and just hangin’ out on the beach together.  This year only Bulgarians, Turks and Roma were represented due to budget constraints, although in past years there has also been participation by Armenians and Jews.  Well, I did my best to represent the glories of Jewry (I learned to play and sing Hava Nagila, anyways).

The basics of the camp - group work mixing the different ethnic groups, followed by presentations and games n such - fellow PCV Matt Piscatelli presiding.

I’m not gonna go too deep into the specifics of the camp itself, but suffice to say I was truly enthused by the results.  We hung out for 7 days in a bunch of bungalows, a 5 minute walk from the beach, legitimately building understanding.  On my last night there (I had to leave a day early), each ethnic group presented a skit about their culture, which was a real blast.  Matt and I put on a skit about Americans that involved watermelon seed spitting and watermelon carving by the audience.  I realized I suck at watermelon seed spitting, but that’s besides the point.  The best part about the camp, however, is that it was originally a Peace Corps Volunteer’s project 10 years ago, and has since been taken over by a few Bulgarian Roma, with current PCVs merely assisting at the camp and helping find funding.  Truly inspiring stuff.

Little kids pretending to ride ATVs are always cute

From there, it was on to scout camp.

8 days living in a field in the extreme heat - but at least we built this kickass shade machine, as modeled by Tsetso

Yeah, that pretty much says it all.  8 days in a field in the middle of the forest on the Shumen plateau, living in tents, cooking on fires, fun with axes and twine and knives and kids of all ages – doing the scout thing, which, well, I never did as a kid.  Out of the whole experience, I gotta say that I was most proud of the shade machine that we built by the 3rd or 4th day, under which we had meetings, took naps in the afternoon, and even slept under at night sometimes.  The reality of the matter was that no one knew we’d be in the middle of a field, so we didn’t bring a tarp of any sort, and thus we were the only ones who (out of necessity) built shade out of natural materials.  This also made us the coolest camp around.

Starting fires for a cooking activity leads to...

...Delicious meatballs with sauce - a Broekman/Rabid Squirrels (that's actually the name of their troupe) collabo. We got 2.5 points out of 2 for taste.

There was all yer other standard stuff – hanging out around fires, sing alongs, stomach bugs, daytime activities that we rarely participated in (besides the cooking one above), all the good stuff.  We even had special guests.

Proud to introduce the newest American members of the Yambol community - Sean and Audrey. Featuring unfortunately small hat.

Yes, that’s right, we now have 2 new PC volunteers in Yambol of B26 fame, the esteemed Sean and Audrey.  They arrived in late July and came along on our scouting adventure, just as we had begun our service last year with the scouts.  They were a huge hit with the campers, especially with their American football skills (and American football), which was a source of immediate interest.  Now that the school year has begun, Audrey is taken up full time in OU Petar Beron (the second school I’d been working in, and where we applied for a volunteer), and Sean is working as part of the Youth Development program with multiple organizations in town.

Sean does his best to touch the mighty hand of Khan Asparuh - the first Bulgarian king

One of the more exciting points of the camp was a walk from base camp to the “1300 years of the Bulgarian state” monument, built in 1981 to commemorate, well, guess.  The above picture is actually inside the monument and is a small part of it – in fact, if I understood correctly, it’s either the largest monument in Europe, or simply the highest up.  I don’t know, something like that.  But it’s pretty wicked, and awesome to see Bulgarian history in giant cubist representations.

I hope I'm not getting this wrong... I'm pretty sure this is Tsar Boris, but I can't exactly remember. It could be Tsar Asen. Anyway, you can see how scouty I ended up, what with the ascot and the hat and all. Pretty hilarious.

After the camp, I facilitated a “TEFL Training Academy” in Blagoevgrad, on the other end of the country, in which we had a week of model school for the new education volunteers and seminars and such.  It was a good time, but I took no pictures.  From there it was off to visit our buddy Dan in the Rhodope mountains, as part of a project known as “кино на село” (cinema in the village).  Basically, a PCV comes with a projector (funded by a former PCV’s project), and using a local sound system, you show a movie.

Back in the Rhodopes with our boy Dan for the end of summer.

We set up a white sheet on the side of a logging truck, placed it in the fantastic location shown above, and watched “Up” with a few hundred people from Dan’s village.  It was a blast, and absolutely gorgeous.  So yeah – that’s the brief overview of this summer.  There are all sorts of little details I could’ve rambled about, but I decided to attempt to keep it short so that I’d actually get this blog post finished.  In fact, it was written over the course of a few days as is.  But I have one thing that I felt deserves a mention.  Outside of time spent planning school work and putting together grants and meetings with municipality members, there is one thing that keeps me focused on what’s important in life:

The Turkish Coffee experiment continues unabated

Two cezves and two değirmens (turkish coffee pot and grinder, respectively) later, the attempt at the perfect cup of Turkish coffee continues its nonstop fascination.  What I have learned since the last post involving turkish coffee:  First, the smaller the cezve the better.  When we were in Veliko Tarnovo recently, we had the joy of trying Turkish Coffee made on sand – literally with the cezve sitting in hot sand, so that the heat comes from all sides evenly and slowly.  Each individual coffee was prepared in its own cezve, so as to get the perfect каймак (kaymak – foam) for each coffee.  Note that the word for foam is the same as the Bulgarian word for cream, and the Turkish word for clotted buffalo cream from the picture above.  I’ve finally got my каймак down pat by grinding the coffee by hand to its absolute finest.  This also makes for a very thick, delicious coffee.  My final issue, however, is getting the right kind of beans.  You just can’t rush perfection.  It’s been 3 years in the works now, but at least I’m getting somewhere.  Vanessa mostly thinks my coffee obsession is ridiculous (though delicious), but she lets me run with it, and occasionally enables my habit by convincing me to buy the occasional handmade cezve.  The shame is that you can only drink so much coffee in one day.

And so, this blog draws to an awkward, unexciting conclusion, and as our Bulgarian language teacher arrives this afternoon, I will leave you with a few final wishes.  May your cats not attack your toes while you sleep, may your students refrain from derogatory racial epithets in your presence, may your projects find funding, may your bagels be layered with lox (and cream cheese, of course), may your coffee be rich, and may you have a glorious new school year.

All the best to all the rest