Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Clouds Lifting

The clouds lifted over Sofia today, and my spirits did as well. We've had 10 days or so of pretty much solid cold, drizzly, windy, misty nastiness. A few nights it got below freezing, and the heat is not yet turned on in our classrooms or offices. They have been trying to turn it on for a few days now, but it's an old, creaky system, and no significant amount of heat is coming out yet. Oh well...maybe next week (until then the little portable electric heater Shannon and I bought last weekend is coming in quite handy).

I'm leading a field trip tomorrow for my International Baccalaureate (IB) Biology class. Field trips are not a common thing at our school, to the extent that one of my students had to ask "What's a field trip?" We're studying ecology right now, and we've got this mountain with a national park just a few miles from campus, and it seemed a crime not to go outside a little. This time of year planning an outdoor field trip, especially one up a mountain, involves having a little luck with the weather gods. Fingers still crossed, but right now it is supposed to be clear and rather warm and pleasant tomorrow (highs in the 60s F down here, but of course cooler up top).

I've been freaking out trying to figure out how I would get my class there, where we would go, what we would do, all that stuff. I only have 5 students in that class, so I get to be a little flexible, but I still wanted to have some sort of a plan. I thought we would take the ski lift up, but it's down for maintenance during October, so I'm having the school driver take us up the access road in a van to the top of the ski lift. Problem is, I have never been up that road to see what ecological communities are along it that might be worth investigating, or what the logistics of such a trip would be.

I had thought I might do a scouting trip a few days ago, but the weather continued to be lousy. Finally, today, the clouds parted, and the sun came out, revealing a lovely snowy mountaintop.

After school, I weighed my options. On my mountain map it shows a public bus line running up the mountain road, although I've been unable to determine how often it comes, where or when it stops. I decided to take a taxi. That's right: I took a taxi up the mountain today. :) Growing up in Michigan I think I took one taxi before the age of 18, so I never thought I'd be taking one up a mountain.

The driver was friendly enough, but spoke very little English (a common theme of taxi drivers around here, you'll notice). We managed to communicate that I spoke some German, and his daughter was fluent in German. He called his daughter on his cell while he was battling ring road traffic (scary). I attempted to explain to her in German, then English (I discovered her English was better than my German, at the moment) where I wanted to go, and then she translated for her father. It was pretty comical. I was surprised at how hard it was for me to speak German all of a sudden, especially since I keep trying to use German or Spanish phrases when I'm wracking my brain for Bulgarian words.

It was a beautiful drive up the mountain...fall colors, a clear view of the city, and no other cars. It was about a 30 minute trip from my house, and my total bill was about $15, including tip. Not bad, and if there were two of us it probably would have been cheaper than the gondola ride.
I didn't really have a plan of what I was doing at the top (there are hotels/restaurants up there, but all closed in this off-season between summer hiking and winter skiing). Mostly I wanted to poke around, see where some trails went, look at the vegetation, figure out where to take my students. I also wanted to be able to get home, and not freeze. I had not dressed warmly enough (that's twice in a row now for Vitosha...that mountain keeps surprising me).
Once again we called the cab driver's daughter. I asked her to ask her father if he knew if the one and only bus was still running that time of day, and if so when/where it might come. She translated for her father, who found some random guy outside and asked him in Bulgarian. The verdict was that I should be able to pick up a bus back down in 30 minutes or 1.5 hours. Though I didn't really believe I could catch this bus (if only catching buses were as easy as catching colds...), I felt confident with my new cell phone in my pocket that I could extricate myself from most unforeseen circumstances, so I paid the driver (with a healthy tip) and set off. As I walked away, I asked a bystander if spoke English (a little), and if he knew anything about the fabled bus (he didn't). I thanked him and moved on.

I walked around aimlessly for about 30 minutes, getting chilly but enjoying being out of the city on a silly after-school adventure. I considered walking down the mountain to a new town I hadn't been to yet, but thought better of it. I talked to a random maintenance guy about the bus, who was confident that I had definitely missed the last bus for the day, but I could probably hitch a ride if I walked down along the road. I decided I would walk down a forest path that frequently intersected the road, so that I could bail and hitch a ride (or call another taxi) if I wanted, or (hopefully) have a pleasant woodsy walk back to town if things went well.

Right about as I was about to set off down the path, I discovered the first gentleman I had encountered and asked about the bus. He was waiting in his late-model Audi (engine running) with his wife and kids in the back seat (empty passenger seat).
"You go to Sofia?"
"Yes."
"Want ride?"
[of course]
"Get in."
This nice man had actually tried to follow me on my walk to hail me back, to warn me that I had missed the bus (I had seen some weird guy whistling and waving in the distance, but didn't know he was trying to get my attention). When he couldn't get my attention, he waited for me, just so that he could give me a ride back home! (A ride that I hadn't asked for, and didn't expect!)

"I like mountains, and I like people. I want to help you," he said.

Turns out he owns a construction firm, he didn't work today because his kids were sick (they were coughing all over me from the back seat...yay, swine flu!), and he likes to ski. He learned some English back in the early 1990s by living in Cyprus. I didn't know that Cypriots speak English, but now I do. He drove me all the way back to campus (I kept offering to get out and catch a bus/taxi once we were in "civilization," but he wouldn't let me). We exchanged phone numbers (so happy to finally have a phone!) and said he wants to take me skiing this winter. Nice.
So...a taxi up the mountain for $15, a free ride down. Not bad for a Wednesday afternoon. I didn't really get a hike in, but just knowing for the future that I could get to a trailhead or three on my own makes me feel so much more independent. This is my first time in 10 years I haven't had a car, and my first time since age 5 that I haven't had a bike. It's a hard adjustment for my independence, especially as it's been hard to figure out the public transit system. The knowledge that I can call a taxi (yay, cell phone) and go hiking after school for a reasonable fee makes me feel very happy, even if that road will close for the winter soon. At least I know it's there.

Shannon also noted new-found independence today. She ran some errands that included taking a bus, calling her Bulgarian tailor on the phone (who doesn't speak English), and then going to the grocery store. Today was apparently the first time Shannon has left campus alone since coming to Bulgaria, venturing into the strange, strange world we live in without assistance (I hadn't realized until now that she hadn't done this yet!) Having her cell phone helped give her the confidence to do that also (who knew how reliant we have become on our phones?). We both felt proud/satisfied with our after school activities today. Gaining independence makes everything feel more surmountable.

One more thing that makes me happy: I downloaded on my cell phone a bulgarian-english dictionary which came in very very useful for my pidgin communications today. Yay, technological gadgets!
G'night, all!

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Greece! (Mt. Olympus & Meteora)

On the long weekend we had in September to celebrate Bulgarian Independence Day, we drove to Greece with Brett and Betsy to attempt to climb Mt. Olympus and to visit the Meteora, home of monasteries on clifftops. It was about a 6.5 hour drive down to our hostel on the seaside in Greece. We left early enough that we avoided major holiday traffic jams or holdups at the Greek border. It was a stormy Friday night, but we hoped that the weather would clear for our hike. When I tried to talk to the proprietor of the hostel, it dawned on me that I had gone to a completely new country without speaking a single word of the language. I didn't even know "yes" or 'No' and we had not brought a guidebook or phrasebook! Luckily the tourist infrastructure in Greece is well-developed. Most road signs are posted in English as well as Greek, and most restaurants/stores/hotels had someone that spoke a little English. I still felt utterly American about the whole thing, just assuming I could get by with my home language in a foreign land. I've never done that before. [When I did look up a few words, I discovered to my horror that Greek for "Yes" is pronounced the same ("Nay") as the Bulgarian word for "No!" No wonder they've had a few wars between them over the centuries!

The rest of the crew crashed out early (before 9:30 pm, I think), but I was awake and hungry, so I had a pizza at the empty hostel bar while I watched distant thunderclouds occasionally light up the Aegean. The owner brought me several glasses of wine, gratis. Very nice.

Our hostel "Summit Zero" near Litochoro, Greece. There was an ocean view from the patio.

In the morning we were instructed by the owner, who seemed quite knowledgeable about Olympus, that we definitely could NOT camp on the mountain. We could only stay in the mountain huts. Fair enough...no need to drag all of our camping gear up a rather stout mountain (2918 m, 9,573 ft).
Hiking up Mt. Olympus.

We hiked in the rain/mist/fog for about 3 hours to the first hut. It's a large place, with a dining room and beds for 140 folks. It was quite crowded. There were no rooms at the inn, and they didn't think there were any beds at the other huts further up. Oh, and you could definitely camp right outside the hostel. Too bad our tents were 3 hours down trail at the car. Shannon decided to curl up by the fireplace while the rest of us hiked another 1.5 uphill, hoping we might break through the clouds. No such luck. The views just kept getting foggier and foggier. We had also been told that the final push to the summit involved some semi-sketchy rock scrambling that would not be possible if it were wet. It was definitely wet, and I don't think it was going to dry out anytime soon. With no housing and no expectation that we would either be able to summit or be able to see anything if we did summit, going further up seemed futile. We gave up. The gods on Olympus were apparently too hungover from their bacchanalia (literally, in this case) to come out and play. Not to be seen on this visit. The postcards make the mountain look rather dramatic, with snow-topped craggy peaks and views to the ocean. Or so we're told. Maybe we'll head back for another attempt some day.
The view above the hut never got better (top), so here was our "summit victory pose" nowhere near the summit.

Goats blocked our path both up and down the road to the trailhead. Here I'd already shoo'd them off the road, a little, and they mostly stayed out of the way.

We headed down to a cheap beach town (Leptokarya) for a dry place to sleep. All tacky beach towns are the same, I think, no matter if you are in Maine, California, or Greece. Cheap towels with imprints of scantily clad women on them, loud bars, ticky-tack plastic crap from China for sale, all the same. The main drag seemed to have a dozen bars (all showing European basketball), and only one semi-awful restaurant. There were lots and lots of hotels with tour buses...these people had to eat somewhere, but I have no idea where. I had hoped the weather would clear overnight to let us have a sunny beach morning, but no such luck. I actually bought a pair of umbrellas as I wandered down to the beach. It was a very trash-littered, deserted beach. I considered going swimming, just to have swum in the Aegean, but it seemed rather silly as I stood there in my raincoat and umbrella. I did wade in up to my knees, just for posterity or something. Beach towns in the off-season, especially on a rainy off-season day, are somewhat sad, pathetic things.

The Aegean Sea. Somewhat anticlimatic after years of reading Greek history.

We drove inland 2 hours to the area known as Meteora. This was one of the only places my well-traveled uncle Jim had recommended, so I figured we ought to check it out. I hadn't really heard of it before, but given the number of tour buses there, apparently I was the only person in Europe that hadn't. Tourbus traffic jam in Meteora.

The nearest full-service town is called Kalampaka, if you're looking for it on a map.

Meteora is a collection of beautiful rock spires (1000 ft high or so) that has developed a collection of monasteries over the last 900 years. Originally monks hung out in caves up on the cliffside, and gradually developed chapels and then rather elaborate monasteries.
Hermit caves (above).

St. Nikolas Monastery, built into the cliffside cave. You couldn't visit this one, at least not while we were there.

The clifftop locations provided both defensive protection against ruling classes of different religions (such as the Ottoman Turks) as well as removal from day-to-day mental clutter to allow for appropriate meditation. Originally, the only way in was to climb rope ladders that were released from the top, either that or getting a ride in a net raised from a pulley system. Only in the last century were stairwells carved out of the rock faces to allow easier access.

When we got there it was still cloudy/rainy/misty, but the clouds were high enough that they allowed partial visibility. The changing visibility was actually pretty neat, as the monasteries disappeared into the clouds and then reappeared. Very "atmospheric," as they say.


We tried hiking around through the rock pillars to access some hidden ruins, but couldn't really find the correct trail (granted we didn't have a proper map either).
The pulley system used to raise heavy stuff, or sometimes people,into the monastery.


Varlaam Monastery - this shows the height of the cliffs pretty well. Rather impressive.

Brett and Betsy - nice cover-up skirts!

That's all for now. There are more pictures posted at my Flickr account, so click on over if you want to see the whole slideshow.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Birthday Bowling and Brr!

Just a quick note...Thursday night rambles...
it's close to midnight on a schoolnight, I'm on the upswing from a cold and Shannon is on the downslope. We had a great time last night for Shannon's birthday. Hopefully she can post a first-person account some time when she's not sniffling/grading/lecture preparing (all at once right now). Betsy made Shannon delicious flourless chocolate cupcakes (I'm just happy to get the leftovers!) and the girls from Pink House (Lindsay, Sarah, and Abby) generously cooked us (OK, Shannon, but I got to come along) a lovely dinner.
Shannon, Abby, Sarah, Lindsay, and Jess at B-day dinner

After that we managed to rally about 18 people on a school night for some crazy Birthday Bowling. I've now been bowling more in Bulgaria than I have in the US for the last 10 years, I think. Luckily, bowling seems cooler here. :) The bowling alleys have disco lights / music, and a less redneck-y crowd. (Although I'm not sure what a Bulgarian redneck would look like...)
B-day girl with Betsy and Adam

Carmine expressing his bowling joy

Birthday Girl showing perfect form (and fashion)

The weather finally turned this week too. We've had a beautifully mild September, with many days of clear skies and temps in the 60s and 70s F. Tuesday morning around 9 am the front came through, and temps dropped 20 degrees in about 20 minutes. Even though I know it has been cold for a while now other places, that knowledge doesn't make the sudden transition any less painful. Here comes winter! It got chilly (and damp...not used to the damp) and the very gusty winds sucked all the heat out of our apartment through the window we left cracked in the bathroom. I couldn't believe how cold it was in our apartment! We slept with all the covers we could find, plus our down sleeping bags on top. As Shannon wrote on her Facebook post, the best part of her birthday may have been that they turned the heat on in our apartments. We had been warned that this was government controlled and might not happen for several weeks. Hurrah for fossil fuels! Unfortunately, we've not been so lucky at school. It was in the 30s and 40s F here today, but no heat in the classrooms or offices! Everyone was wearing several layers of jackets and hats in class, and the draftiness of my office made it hard to type. I'm thankful I'm in a renovated building with "good" windows. I'm told that some other buildings are so drafty that papers blow across the room, even with the windows closed! I'm also thankful I wasn't around last winter when Vladimir Putin was playing chicken with the Ukraine over natural gas prices, so he shut off the pipes, making Bulgaria a shivering innocent bystander for 2 weeks (in February). These are things you just don't expect to happen in the US. The cold weather at least made for some pretty views, as seen below.
The view from the science building towards Mt. Vitosha - first snow of the season on the peak. Very pretty. I'm hoping to take my biology students on a field trip up the mountain next week to study biomes, but the weather may not cooperate. On the close-up (bottom) you can actually see the lift towers on the ridge coated in rime ice.

Shannon and I finally concluded our far-too-long-running cell-phone acquisition saga (6 trips to cell phone stores...many hours wasted online shopping). We're the proud new owners of some fancy-dancy little smartphones (she got the Nokia 5800, and I got the Nokia E55, for the gear-heads out there). Wi-fi, GPS, mp3 players, touchscreens (on hers), all the toys. We definitely didn't need them (we could have gotten a bare-bones phone for $10), but we felt like splurging. If we can't have heat, at least we can internet and music!
The crew exchanging cell phone numbers...very serious business.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Saturday Night Musings

It's still fall in Sofia, unlike Bozeman and Gardiner from what I hear.  Snow?!?  -1F?!?  Montana has forgotten a season!  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?  Actually, maybe whiskey, tango, and foxtrot will help all the poor souls who missed fall to keep warm...  We're supposed to get snow next week - maybe even for my birthday!

It's been a really long week.  A couple of weeks ago I was pretty much ready to quit my job here.  I don't enjoy being a teacher.  This is the hardest job I have ever had - this is even harder than finishing my PhD - and that was no easy task!  I have no complaints (or very few ;-)) about the school, my fellow teachers and other staff, the students (except for one or two rotten apples), or really anything about this experience, except that I don't like teaching.  I never realized how invested a person has to be to be a teacher!  I come home utterly exhausted - mentally, emotionally, physically - every day.  I can't imagine teaching all year long - I would go completely  insane.  Thank goodness for the summer "break".  Anyway, I think I've gotten over the getting used to the new job hump though.  I don't think I'm going to quit - at least for the first year, we'll see about the second.  I have decided that I do not want to be a teacher.  I suppose that's not all that surprising.  I had hoped that I would grow to like it.  Maybe I will, but I'm not holding my breath.  When we leave Bulgaria I will find a job back in the GIS world.  That is my passion.  And I'm good at it.  And I'm comfortable doing it.  And even though I regularly swear at my computer, it doesn't ask anything more of me than some electricity and sometimes a connection to the internet.  I can do that.  :)

So, back to the long week.  I had a lesson last week that included a slide show with pictures of the Mount St. Helens 1980 eruption.  I think this was the first time I actually saw some interest from the students.  So apparently I have to show cataclysmic events to get their attention.  I felt like that lesson went fairly well.  Then on Friday (which right now is the first day of my teaching week, so I start a new lesson then) I gave my first quiz.  I think my students hate me now.  I gave it to two sections.  Out of nearly 40 kids only 5 or 6 were able to finish it.  I have not graded them yet - that's this evening's task - so I don't know how anyone did.  But I'm afraid there are going to be a lot of really bad grades.  Is this because they don't know how to study, I didn't teach the topics well enough, I simply made the quiz too hard?  I don't know.  I've only met the kids 3 times prior to the quiz, so I haven't been able to pass along a lot of information.  Plus we're all getting to know each other.  I guess this quiz will be an assessment of my communication skills as well as the kids' study habits.  I teach the 9th grade.  When these kids were 8th graders they studied 4 major subjects: English, math, science, social studies; and then had a few more fun classes like PE and music.  Now in 9th grade they have 14 subjects!  Can you imagine how hard that would be to adjust to?!?  So it falls to me and the other 9th grade teachers to help them figure out how to manage their time well so they can pass all these classes.  I supposed by giving them a really hard first quiz they will learn quickly how much work they're going to have to do to keep up in my class.

Oh and the longest thing about the week was writing the quiz on Thursday evening, along with writing a homework assignment (actually Jeff did that for me), coming up with a group project for the kids, and figuring out a lecture for this week's lesson.  Ugh.  I was up way too late and still didn't get everything as ready as I would like it.  This is the thing that I promised I would never do again.  I seriously need to be at least one week ahead in my lesson planning.  Thus tomorrow will be a lesson planning day.

Wow - I'm just blathering away here.  I hope you're still reading...

Today we had an open house at the school.  This is where parents get to come in and meet the teachers and find out what is expected of their children in each class.  I think about 20 sets of parents or grandparents or aunts and uncles visited me today.  About half spoke English.  I had an interpreter with me - she graduated from this school many years ago and is working in Sofia right now.  Most of the parents just wanted to meet the new teachers, but a few were curious about  my first impressions of their children.  Having only met each child 3 times prior to this it was a little hard to express my first impressions.  I remembered all of the students and all but one stuck out in some way - that is I remembered them because they have been participating in some way or another.  It was interesting having a conversation through an interpreter.  I wasn't sure which person to look at as I talked!  I heard some words that were familiar, but still couldn't tell exactly what they were saying in Bulgarian.  The open house was for 4 hours.  So during the time that no parents were in my classroom, Valentina and I chatted about her experience here, her university studies and what she's doing now.  She said she loves to hike, so we swapped emails and hopefully will be able to go outside and play together sometime.

So I've set up a website for my students.  It's really bare, but it keeps them informed.  If you want to look at it click here.

Jeff went out with a mixed group of international and Bulgarian teachers to Murphy's Irish pub in downtown Sofia this evening.  I couldn't bring myself to join the party, though.  I'm pretty peopled out.  But I will definitely have to visit the Irish Pub in Sofia, Bulgaria.  Tee hee.  That just makes me laugh.

Still here?

I apparently had a few things to say.  Well, I'll close up these musings with a picture or two for your viewing pleasure.  First, there are some trees on campus that grow these almost tennis ball size fruits that basically look like lime green puffer fish.  I don't have any pictures of the fruits when they're green, but I now have pictures of the fruits after they have dried up and fallen from the tree.  I've heard that these are either buckeyes or chestnuts of some sort.  You can hear the seeds falling and you have to be wary as you walk under the tree or you might get pummeled.


The red things are the seeds - about the size of a large marble.  The brown spiky things are the outer shell of the fruit and the yellowish thing is also the shell but the inside.  The leaf was just on the ground but is not from the tree that these beauties fell from.

Another view for scale:


And one more completely random pic from the far distant past.  I finally reconnected with my friend from many years ago, Lori, from Ohio and she sent this picture to me from a time long, long ago...



Lori is on the right, I'm on the left (did I really have such blonde hair?!?) and Lori's little sister Chris is in the middle.  I hope that puts a smile on everyone's face!  Happy Saturday!

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

This is not the post you're looking for...

I still will post Greece pictures and stories, I swear. I even edited the hundreds of photos down to a semi-reasonable number. The whole thing just takes a while, and we've been busy.
Sorry for the non-post. I just didn't want all of our loyal followers to think we've abandoned this site. I've been pleasantly surprised since I installed the visitor counter a few days ago how many people have been stopping by our site, even though we haven't posted anything.

Life continues here in Sofia. We're trying to get our heads above water with lesson planning (and soon grading), advising, life in Bulgaria, etc, etc. I've been surprised at how hard this teaching transition has been for me, even though I've taught before. The schedule and resources are very different, not to mention the challenges of teaching to english-language-learners. Of course it's all been much more difficult still for Shannon, as a first-timer at most of this.

Life also got tragically crazy here too...one of the students at our school was killed in a car accident, causing much upheaval in the community. Though I was actually faculty advisor of this student, I'd only met him once (and didn't teach him), on the first day of school. I've been involved in helping various communities deal with trauma, but I felt very helpless this time around, as I didn't know the student and don't know the rest of the student community yet either. Hard to watch so much sadness. There were 500+ people in the auditorium when they made the announcement, and you could hear a pin drop. Needless to say, the school was pretty disrupted in many ways last week. I'm learning that other people's grief seems to bring up my own as well, things I thought were pushed down out of the way enough to let me live my day-to-day life. [Miss you mom...]

We've had two weekends where we've stuck around Sofia, mostly resting up, doing schoolwork, and taking care of chores.
One fun outing was when we climbed up Mt. Vitosha, the 7400 ft mountain just outside of town. It was fun to hike (we took a ski gondola up and then hiked about another 1.5 hours up), but the weather was cold, foggy, windy, with very low visibility. Just about every other day for the last two weeks I could clearly see the summit from campus. Oh well.

Last weekend we did a variety of chores, trying to acquire boring things like more teaching clothes, a bookcase, and cell phones. We were definitely foiled on the cell phone front. That's a confusing enough experience in the US, but far worse here. After nearly 2 hours (yes, 2 hours) in the cell phone store, talking through an employee at the store next door (who didn't know anything about the phones or the plans) acting as an interpreter (because he spoke a little bit of English), we threw our hands in the air and gave up. We'll have to do our homework on the internet (where there are often english-language webpages of Bulgarian companies, and Google Translate is a decent option when there isn't) and go in knowing exactly what we want. Asking detailed questions of salespeople is not a luxury we have here. Part of the problem is that we were considering getting "smartphones" (wi-fi, web browser, GPS), but didn't really know what we wanted. Any fancy phone recommendations out there? The phones are much more expensive here (the new i-phone runs close to $1000, for instance) due to the lack of large long-term-contract discounts.

We just started doing Balkan dancing and yoga classes, both taught after-school by other teachers here. I had fun, despite my lack of bendiness or coordination, but I'm going to be mighty sore tomorrow, as the classes were back-to-back today.

Well, we surely will post Greece pictures/stories soon, and maybe some other stories about life. Thanks for all that are thinking of us.

-jeff

p.s. Our thoughts and prayers go out to my Grandmother Helen, who is in intensive care after a nasty fall down some steps, breaking several bones. We love you and are wishing you a speedy recovery, Grandma!