Happy Holidays Everybody!

And some more Bulgarian folk music, this time by Bulgarka, an acappella group.

Народна Песен от Драгиново

Short clip from the opening of our school's JA company with music from students from Draginovo.

Richard Dawkins vs. Liberty U



Q & A session featuring renowned atheist Dawkins and some students from Jerry Falwell's University.

екскурзии (school trips)

10-А клас извън палеонтологически музея в Асеновград.

10 A class outside of the paleontological museum in Asenovgrad.



скелетa на гигантски мамут, в музея.

Skeleton of wooly mammoth, in museum.




С Мария Кутрианска, Руми Бояджиева, Даниела Груева, и Диана Кунчева в двора на Бачковски Манастир.

With Maria Kutrianska, Rumi Boydjieva and other teachers in the courtyard of Bachkovski Monastery.

още се захващам с снимките (still catching up on pictures)

Моята ученичка Николина работи на станцията на нашото учелище в случката за 15 юбилей на Корпус на Мира, в София, през септември.

My student Nikolina working at our school's booth at the 15th Anniversary of Peace Corps Bulgaria event in Sofia, during September.



Нашя директор, Г-н Моллов, отвари ботилка шампанско в коктейла да празнуваме завършването на проект на ремонт за запазването на енергия в училището.

Our director, Mr. Mollov, opens a bottle of champagne to celebrate the completion of the project for energy conservation in the school.



Асенова крепост, извън Асеновград, обитaтелен отначало през времето на Тракската империя.

Asen's Fortress, outside of Asenovgrad, first occupied during the Thracian Empire.

Повече снимки (More Photos)

Алесандър Невски Катедрал, София, през изгреб слънцето.

Alexander Nevski Cathedral, Sofia, at sunrise.



Видео клип на Мориси в стаята на хотела в София, на последня ден на Анна в България

Morrissey video on TV in hotel room in Sofia, Anna's last morning in Bulgaria



Колегите се събират около новата учебна програма, преди официялното откриване на училището

Colleagues gather around the class schedule before the offical opening of the school.



Учениците в откриването на новата учебна година.

Students at the opening ceremony of the new school year.

You Sing With a Certain Dramatic Flair

There are nestled in this country on the tourist highway well-travelled bits, a museum town here, a ruined fortress teetering on a gorge there. They are primped and on display for us, menus in English, fluent hostel staff, spools of veins and wire laying across the town the mosques, a ball of electricity rises above her skull keeping her balanced.

We are all American, in the end.



I marvel at the clear air, even in the heat, the light show over the fortress, the merchants selling bottles of water and t-shirts, the surly waitresses, the rubble reconstructed to what everyone thinks is its original form, the archaeologists drunk and hitting on their graduate students, the tally of bones that have accumulated here over the years. We pay to take photographs inside the little chapel on the crest of the hill.



The christ-figure is always recognizable in this context, and he is the greatest subject of art, cathedrals and tourist-photographs ever invented. Remove the head from the beast and the beast will roll on its back to show you its ribs, its hunger. Slip a few leva to a tour guide and she will tell you about the history of man in the starlight.



But it would all be nothing without the influence of the greatest artist of the 20th century, Walt Disney dreamed of lasers and talking animals and now this is what we've become, feeling more human packed in the darkness, the ancient fortress is now a space opera and our hearts are in our throats in ecstacy.

Collapsing on the Edge of Summer

Her prayers were answered by the sun god, breaking the colonists' backs on the shores of the James River, the goldhunters, the horror-writers. Her breath filled the world.

On the brightest, most crowded Bulgarian Black Sea beaches there are rusted post-communist playgrounds, rusted post-communist children hurling plastic bottles into the water, squatting on stretches of sand like Japanese secretaries staking out corporate plots of land for cherry-blossom viewing.

The weather descended on us as hot and lazy as a sweating ghost - an Englishman and two Americans, it surprised us and kept us up at night. I listened to the banal chatter in the cafe, the one not smoking taking the floor, the rest clutching their cigarettes.

A Summer Wasting

As you might have noticed, I like titling my blog posts after

a. Belle and Sebastian songs

b. Pomak villages in the Rhodope mountains

c. Bitter "meta-blog" titles that indicate that I am, indeed, too cool for blogging

d. Pavement/Silver Jews lyrics (the more obscure the better, beeotches!)

So now that I'm spending my days happily editing my little SPA proposal and waiting for students to show up at school for English lessons and waiting for packages to arrive from Japan and feeling the gently wafting breeze and watching the cherries ripen, etc. I guess it's time for me to deal with my antipathy towards blogging once and for all.



Man there's a lot of bad writing on the internet. What would you say is the ratio of bad writing to good writing on the internet? Like, 99.99999999999% bad? And I don't feel great about contibuting to this surfeit of bad writing, trust me.

This is why my blog posts can seem somewhat, um, harshly perfunctory. The main purpose of this blog is to prove to my former coworkers at Browdy and Neimark (hi Maureen!) that I am indeed in Bulgaria and I didn't make up the Peace Corps thing as a way to honorably quit before "going postal".

Avramovo

Spent Friday night on a na gosti in Avramovo with my friend Halil.

Here's a picture of the town and mosque.



The main crop up in the mountains is potatoes, and the farmers make makeshift scarecrows - things that reflect light and make noise - to scare of the wild boars that feed on the potatoes. In the subtropical forests of Okinawa, you could find old stone walls built up to keep wild pigs away from their sweet potato patches.



All of the hay for feed is threshed by hand.



Finally, Avramovo has the honor of having the train station with the highest elevation in the entire Balkan Peninsula.

School's Out

School's out, school's out
Teacher let the monkeys out
One went east
One went west
One went up the teacher's dress




(Grad school version)*

School's out, school's out
Teacher let the monkeys out
One was jailed
One prevailed
Both asked God, "How have I failed?"

*From "Life in Hell" by Matt Groening

Blah Blah Blah Blah Junior Achievement Blah Blah Blah

Some of the 10th grade students who participated in Junior Achievement and I went to Varna a few weeks ago to present our business at the All-Bulgarian JA Expo thingy.

Here we are the day before the expo setting up our booth. On the left, I was trying to explain to Stefka the finer points of Keynesian economics.



Here's Teodora, the president of our virtual company, receiving the award for Best Team.







Still suffering a little bit from jet lag, I got up early to see the sunrise over the Black Sea.

Another Pointless Post

Instead of saving Bulgaria, I spend most of my time these days obsessing over my music collection. Let me tell you, my taste in music is legendary and does make me cooler than you.

I cruise a lot of the MP3 blogs on the net, which has allowed me to stay in touch with the American hipster underground, of which I am not the king, but possibly a duke or a baron.

So since no one else has a problem opinionating about everything and everyone online, I thought that occassioinally I'd list a few songs that came up on my Itunes party shuffle during my morning preparations (i.e. my vigorous toilette) for school, and briefly comment on them. This idea was ripped off from the random rules feature at the Onion A.V. Club site, I don't have a .mac account so I can't post the MP3s, and I'm doing this more or less so I don't have to discuss chronic health problems with the ladies hanging out in the учителска стая this morning. I refer you again to the title above.

1. "Crystal" Husker Du (from the "Candy Apple Grey" album).
This album sucks. I bought it back in the day because I was the owner of the Rolling Stone Album Guide, wherein it is written that Candy Apple Grey is Husker Du's best album. Whatever. Rolling Stone reviewers, from my experience, smoke crack. They gave "Wowee Zowee" 2 and a half stars, if memory serves. The production on "CAG" is tinny, the songs are weak, and the Grant Hart songs blow the Bob Mould songs out of the water. That being said, "Crystal" is one of the better songs because Bob does a lot of random, spontaneous screaming. Does anyone know how to type umlauts on a mac?

2. "Tabla in Suburbia" Sonic Youth (from the "suBurbia" soundtrack)
Steve Shelley is one of the best drummers in the world, and this little snippet of something is not really Sonic Youth per se: just Steve's drumming mixed to the front with some guitar stuff going on the background. This is the only SY I can think of that has bongos on it. As for the album itself, eh. Cultural detreius from the 90's, like the movie, and not aging very well in our new millenium.

3. "Eat Y'self Fitter" the Fall (from the "Totally Wired" compilation)
The Fall is one of those bands whose bad songs are still pretty good. You have to kind of buy into Mark E. Smith's aesthetic, which is so weird that you are either taken with it or at the very least find it amusing. The music on this song is dumb and plodding, like a lot of Fall songs, but its so tossed off as to have a charm to it. And MES knows how to pick his rhythm section so as to make the most elementary songs sound propulsive. Lovably eccentric, its too bad the Fall doesn't play their old stuff anymore live.

4. "A Pistol For Paddy Garcia" The Pogues (from "Rum, Sodomy and the Lash")
It seems that there are a few things that make good albums great:
1. The occasional instrumental to cleanse the pallette
2. Swapping of vocal duties between members of the band
3. Variety in song tempos
"Rum, Sodomy and the Lash" has all of these things. This song has a Mexico by way of Irish folk music thing going on that's pretty cool, and perhaps would be something that your parents might enjoy. Until, that is, they hear the way Shane McGowan punks up the other folk songs on the album.

5. "Like A Rolling Stone (Live)" Bob Dylan (from "Bob Dylan: MTV Unplugged")
I have two other versions of this song in my Itunes - the original studio version off of "Highway 61 Revisited" and from the infamous live performance at the Royal Albert Hall. The "Unplugged" version is my favorite. Bob's voice is pretty ragged on this album, but a couple of the choruses it rises up to keen "How does it feeeeeeelll??". Incredibly, it's one of the most emotional performances I've heard him give, but of course I might be fooled by the slick production and the great organ parts.

CUA Law School Graduation

In which the long awaited photos from Anna's graduation are posted.





What began as an engaging discussion about our favorite types of cheese



turned into a strangling match when Daniel couldn't get behind my love of camembert.

If Blogs Were Horses, Self-Obsessed Idiots Would Ride

Hello again from the land in which I live. Because I am not telling anyone anymore about this blog, and nobody links to it, and even I have only the slightest concern for it, I guess that means that I can write what I want here without worrying that someone's knickers are going to be twisted. And since I believe in freedom and democracy, the new purpose of this blog is going to be to fight for freedom and democracy.

By writing about freedom and democracy, and how cool they are, the only knickers that might get twisted belong to evil dictators, and maybe some Democrats. That's right, Democrats. You heard me.

In reference to my post of a couple of days ago (you know, the nonsensical one about DC and nature and stuff),one of the ways that we can all promote freedom and democracy is by giving money to homeless people for beer money only if they promise to vote Republican.

You Really Will Be Fascinated by the Minute Details of My Life

The weekend went by slowly. I ate a lot of potatoes and drank a lot of cherry juice. I'm sensing hostility from the stray dogs in the neighborhood, a certain xenophobia, a certain anti-Americanism if you will. I want to show them that I can integrate into their dog community, but I don't know how. Maybe the Peace Corps can train me?




A common Saturday schedule for me:

7:00 AM Wake Up
7:05-7:10 Take a shower
7:10-7:11 Put water on for coffee
7:11-? Repent to God for my sins while I'm waiting for the water to boil
7:??- Drink coffee
Rest of the day - Watch Roma people going to and from the market from my balcony
After sunset: Pine for Anna




Sunday: Repeat

So I'm sure some of you want to know why there's a picture of a panda crying in this post. I just wanted to remind everyone that pandas too have feelings.

You Are Within Your Rights Not to Read This

I suppose that even when summer comes and things get hot and there are insects again, and birds are everywhere, that you can be miserable. But it's hard to maintain misery under these circumstances, all you have to smell the greenery in various stages of growth and decay. Moons in the summer take on a glow not unlike the lightbulbs in my spare bedroom, too dim to read by but bright enough to listen to music, especially "Flamenco Sketches" by miles davis and the tenor solo, maybe four minutes into the song, by John Coltrane that makes the grass and the leaves and your blood cells gravitate iin the air.



If there's a city to simultaneously love and be afraid of, its Washington DC and its uneasy truce between the politicos and the murderers, the just under the surface chaos pushing up against the stately embassies that line Massachussetts Avenue. There is a thick stench of fat tourists around the Mall, hording into museums and filling their fannypacks with souvenirs. A boy joked with his mother about how he gave a homeless guy a dollar to "buy some beer". His father proceeded to lecture him about how homeless people don't want to work, they are able to work, they are lazy and sucking the lifeblood out of our great nation. Jeans shorts, Oakley sunglasses, beer bellies, american flag shirts, and a coke. From the womb to this to death.

Should've Been a West Coast Bride

Next stop on my rediscovery of America tour was in New Castle, VA via Roanoke, VA, otherwise known as the "Star City". It was very nice to see my mom and dad and catch up with goings on in SW Virginia.




We paid a visit to the infamous star that looks down on Roanoke like a giant fluorescent eye (at night).



Anna and I took a walk around the Fenwick Mines area in the Jeffrerson National Forest in Craig County VA:

Here, Anna and I in our natural setting.

I Believe In Coyotes

I'm back home in Washington, D.C. for a couple of weeks for Anna's graduation. Over the last week, we rented a cabin in Virginia through the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club. Before we headed for the mountains, we loaded ourselves down with groceries / gear:



The cabin itself was pretty posh:



The view from the top:



Here's the whole gang on the last day:

Quasars in the Mist

The school's annual concert was on Friday - the theme being "Spring in Europe" - the kids did a great job, memorizing lines in French, German and English.




These are 5th graders who performed a couple of musical numbers. The girl in the front (pictured abote) is tiny but has a surprisingly huge voice.

I sat in the front row with my laptop, playing music and projecting pictures at appropriate moments

From Nakijin to Velingrad

So the talk of the school today was the letters from Okinawa that arrived from our pen pals at Hokuzan High School in Nakijin. Needless to say, the Hokuzan students did a great job and my students were thrilled to look at all of the pictures, puri kura, origami, etc.



Big ups to Mike Altwerger, the current ALT at Hokuzan, who was the driving force behind getting these letters in the mail. I seem to remember some of these students as being ichi-nenseis when I was there? Hmm, that doesn't seem possible. One Hokuzan student included with her letter a photo of me playing eisa, much to the amusement of my kids.

At the Clip of an IV Drip

With the return of spring, like-minded denizens of Velingrad head for the mountains for a little разходка (walking around). Here is some scenery from the горски път (mountain trail) in Kamenitza.



This is a mineral spring/monument although I forget what it commemorates.



As you might notice, a lot of the trees have been cleared out (for firewood?); this has the dubiously positive effect of allowing for more sweeping vistas.

Finally, here's a picture of the 10th graders who are participating in Junior Achievement. We will be travelling to Varna in May to present our business at the JA expo.

Hey Lady Put the Phone Down

Hi. Sorry about being a crap blogger. Actually I'm not sorry. There are worse things to be in the world.

There was an almost total eclipse of the sun today!!! This is what passes for excitement in my one donkey town. I tried to photograph the eclipse in all of its eerie glory and this is what I got:




Опа, that's not such a great one. I was in class for most of the eclipse. That's how it always goes. In class during eclipses. Here's one through smoked glass:




And if you want to see some more AWESOME photos of my school and our concerted effort to educate (indoctrinate?) our students about the EU, check out this web site and click on the Bulgarian flag amongst all of the other flags (it's the third from the left on the top line for those of you who don't know what the Bulgarian flag looks like, gawd).

One of the teachers said that back in the day they used to have to participate in similar information campaigns about the Soviet Union.