I am famous!

I finally started the community English course I've been wanting to do for month. We met for the first time about three weeks ago now. I have around seven students, all adults who live in Pavel Banya. (Several of them are the parents of my kids, who want to learn English so they can help their children with their homework.) It's going fairly well so far.

The funny part - last week I got an email from another Peace Corps Volunteer, in Gabrovo. She wanted to know if some acquainances of hers, who live in Kazanluk, could attend my "famous" class. That's right - within two weeks, people in other cities were already talking about the free English class for adults in Pavel Banya. Ha! And here I thought my actions were only being followed by the people here in town.

Today is the last day of class for the second through fourth graders. From here on out, I only have school with the fifth through seventh grades. During the summer...I don't know. I have some ideas, but the only fairly concrete ones are that I'm going to have summer classes for my younger kids, and I'll continue my class for adults. I'd like to have a project that doesn't have to do directly with teaching - I don't know if my plans to translate the town's website into English really counts, though. Also, I'm going to work at a summer camp for advanced English students at the American University in Blagoevgrad for two weeks in July. I want to go to Romania, too.

That's what's up. Everyone keeps asking me if I'm going to the sea this summer. I don't know if I'll have the time!

Den Pobudui.

I recently wrote about Den Po Budui, a mysterious (to me) Russian holiday that we were celebrating here in Bulgaria, but after I wrote about it, I realized I was parsing it wrong in my head - it's actually Den Pobudui, which I figured meant "Day of Victory". (The Bulgarian word for "victory" is close to the Russian.)

So now I am extra amused that my coworkers were celebrating it because...Bulgaria LOST in World War II. They didn't have a hell of a choice, since the country was occupied by the Nazis at the time, but that they celebrate the victory of another country says a lot about Bulgaria, and its relationship with Russia.

Gotta run. Class!

FINALLY. Pictures from Bosnia.

This is actually not Bosnia, but rather (the Former Yugoslav Republic of) Macedonia. I had several hours between busses here in Skopje.


Finally, after a 15 hour bus ride, I reached Sarajevo!


Did something happen here? This is an ordinary building photographed at random. Pretty much everything in Sarajevo (and Bosnia, really) looks like this.


Okay, even for Bosnia, this is a little extreme. This house is the Tunnel Museum. During the war, the Bosnian Army built an 800 meter tunnel that went under the Sarajevo airport. For three years, it was the only way in or out of Sarajevo. (Except with UN escort, but the UN and the Bosnian Army had slightly different priorities, as you may imagine.) Serb forces attacked it six times.


Inside the tunnel. Only about 20 meters of it are open now.


The bridge of deeeeath. Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sofia, on this bridge, which he then jumped off of in an attempt to commit suicide. Alas, he only succeeded in breaking his legs. D'oh.

Then I went to Mostar. I wish I could show you how amazing the scenery between Sarajevo and Mostar was, but taking pictures from a bus doesn't usually work very well. Anyway, it was spectacular.


Most means "bridge" (in Bulgarian, too), and although there are 12 bridges spanning the river, this is the most. The original version, built hundreds (I forget exactly) years ago during the Ottoman Empire time, was destroyed by Croatian shelling in 1994. This new version, an exact replica of the original, was finished in 2004.


More Mostar. This here is the eastern (Muslim) bank of the city. (By the way, both of these pictures were taken from the minaret of a mosque that's open for visitors.) As you can see, Mostar is a ridiculously pretty place, but all of these buildings are new. You can tell because of the lack of bullet holes. All one has to do to see how terribly devastated this city was is to walk about two blocks from the tourist area, where shells of buildings, missing windows and covered in bulletholes, sit, trees growing out of their roofs.

I didn't take any pictures of these. I didn't want to be a tourist of other peoples' tragedies. Besides, I think I'll remember okay without photographs.

Den na Evropa.

First, I have a bunch of pictures to post. I've just had some problems getting them on the internet.

Second, today is Den na Evropa, the Day of Europe. What I find most amusing about this holiday is that 9 May used to be an entirely different holiday - Den po Bedui, which means...I don't know, exactly, because it's Russian. (Day of...something or other.) It marks the end of World War 2, and this morning on the news, they showed the big ceremony in Moscow, complete with marches and Vladimir Putin staring down at everyone.

But some years after the end of World War 2, the European Union was founded on 9 May (which I haven't researched, but I doubt the day is a coincidence). And so now it's Europe Day. To celebrate Europe Day, for whatever reason, the kids get to run the school - and lord preserve us - the town. So far, nothing has been destroyed, but it's still only noon. Two of the best eighth graders "taught" my second grade class this morning. I think maybe they now have a clue of how tough teaching is.

Right now I'm in the teachers' lounge. We're listening to patriotic Russian songs, very loudly. My colleagues who also have a break this hour are singing along and laughing.