The Turkish Invasion!

Okay, it's a welcome invasion, to the citizens of Pavel Banya, who are happy to have the business, but if you want to pop by our town ploshtad (square) right now, you'd swear you were in Turkey, not Bulgaria. I have no idea why, but it seems like a lot of Turkish people come to PB for their summer vacations, and they're all sitting in the ploshtad right now. Lots of stout women with headscarves and skinny men with moustaches chatting in Turkish.

We have our own local Turkish-Bulgarians here in town, but these visitors are noticeably different. First of all, the women are wearing headscarves, which I never saw during, say, the winter, when we don't have so many visitors. Second, they're actually speaking Turkish. Now, I know my Turkish students speak Turkish because they have told me so, but I have literally never heard any of them speaking anything but Bulgarian (and English, of course!). I guess they must speak Turkish at home, but I've seen my kids speaking with their parents in public - in Bulgarian. I don't know why they do this. I know volunteers who live in all-Turkish villages and they say that everyone speaks Turkish in their daily life, but here in PB, where the Turkish are a significant (and well-integrated) minority, Bulgarian is the language of choice.

In other news, it's painfully hot, and my summer English classes were supposed to start today, but no one showed up. I was hurt and puzzled by this turn of events, seeing as 24 students told me they wanted to come, but when I talked to one of my adult students (who's the mom of two of my kid students), she told me that everyone seems to think that classes start NEXT week, and everyone is off in their villages this week. And probably everyone who isn't in the village was at the pool or the river. Can't say I blame them. We'll get classes started eventually.

HOT.

Blech.

That's how I feel today. Blech. It's not all that hot, but it's humid and it's just beginning to rain...everything is sticky and yucky. School ends on Friday and my kids are out of control. Today my seventh graders whined that we should have class at the "beach", by which they mean "pool". (It sounds funny in English, but in Bulgarian, a pool complex is called the beach.)

They crazy.

And on Saturday, the first day of my summer vacation (ha!), I have to go to Blagoevgrad to plan the camp that I'll be working at in July. Then it's off to Dupnitsa for my Mid Service Training Conference. I'll be back in Pavel Banya on Wednesday, and my summer classes start on Monday. No rest for the wicked Peace Corps Volunteer.

I have gosti.

Last weekend I had three gosti (guests) over - members of the new group of Volunteers, the B21s. They have been in Bulgaria for a couple months now, and they haven't had the chance to see much of the country besides their training sites and immediate surroundings. They had to go through Sofia, which made me very nervous - I was like a frantic mom! There are two bus stations in Sofia, and I knew that they would arrive at one and leave from the other, and it was the trip between that made me nervous. Sofia is a pretty big city and it isn't particularly easy to get around. But they arrived safe and sound and bearing avocadoes. So we made guacamole, which was awesome.

Sometimes I feel like I just got to Bulgaria, and sometimes I feel like I've been here forever - and my old life back in the US seems awfully vague and unreal. Talking to the new volunteers gave me a good sense of perspective, I think. I've learned a lot in the last year and I feel much more confident and sure about the coming year. I had summer classes last year, and I remember floundering around, trying to find appropriate lessons, which was hard because I didn't know the kids or their language abilities. I'm planning my summer classes now, and I have all kinds of ideas. I'm finally figuring out what I'm doing, which is feels great. Of course, this is the last week of school, so it's kind of frustrating that school's ending just as I'm learning how to do my job.

In other news, I got cable! Shiny, shiny television.