Sounds of Spring

Spring has (hopefully) sprung here in Sofia. I'm sure we'll get some more snowstorms, but the grass is greening up, flowers are starting to appear, birds are chirping, and martenitzi are getting taken off of wrists and hung on flowering tree branches (I myself am holding out a few more days). As I soaked in some sun this fine morning over breakfast on the patio, I couldn't help but enjoy the sound of the birds. I think the birds here sing much more than in other places I've lived. Woodpeckers (several kinds), owls, jays, hawks, various songbirds -- so many kinds withing 300 meters of my house! I don't know if it's because of the deciduous forest here that there is more bird diversity than in the Western US, or because the park-like school campus provides a refuge from the concrete jungle of Sofia, or because my ears are just tuned into hearing things that don't sound like snow. :) I'm also happy to report that, as much as we miss Montana, winter is probably 2-3 months shorter here, something I'm totally OK with. Sofia had a lovely fall, and I think spring will be nice too -- two seasons that don't really exist in Bozeman. Spring break is coming in less than a week (Dad will be here on Wednesday!), and we're ready! I walked around the woodlot behind my house with my still camera, trying to catch the sounds of spring. I put the video on lowest quality, just because I was really trying to catch the sounds more than the visuals. My apologies for the sometimes jerky Blair Witch-like footage. Maybe I'll try this again soon with our camcorder, which I suppose might do better with audio & video. In the meantime, enjoy, and you'll probably have to turn up the volume on your computer to hear much. You also can appreciate Saturday-morning construction, traffic noise, bees, barking dogs -- I think it's a nice mix. The first video is a close up of some bees in the newly bloomed wildflowers in-between the faculty housing and the classrooms, and the second & third are taken along the path in the woodlot.

Fun with words

So today in our Bulgarian language lesson we learned that there is no word for "fun" in Bulgarian.  Here was the conversation:

Laura (our instructor): Study your verbs because next time we will learn the different forms of past tense.

Jeff (in a very sarcastic voice): Fun!  That will be fun!

Shannon: So how do you say "fun" in Bulgarian?

Laura: There is no such word in Bulgarian.

Shannon, Jeff, and Carolyn erupt in laughter.

Shannon: Seriously?

Laura: No, there is no word for "fun".  It doesn't really translate.  We would say "it will make a party".

More incredulous laughter from us students. And the end of our lesson for the day.


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We looked up "fun" in our Lonely Planet phrasebook and on Google Translate and found the same word there: забавно (za-bav-no).  So now we have to ask Laura to explain the connotation of зававно.

We would love to hear comments about this from any Bulgarian readers out there!

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Speaking of connotation.  Jeff had a discussion with some other teachers about trying to teach the connotation of words to students whose first language is not English -  more specifically, how some synonyms are not interchangeable.  During this conversation, the words facetious, sarcastic, and snarky were discussed and the conclusion, thanks to John the English teacher, was that they differ in their level of "dickishness."  Perfect.

Looking forward to Saint Patrick's Day tomorrow!

Heather & Bajji come to visit!

We love to get visitors, and recently we had the chance to host our friends Heather and Bajji from Colorado. They were on the tail end of a 3 week (or longer?) trip to India, Switzerland, and Bulgaria (I bet not many travel agents handle requests for that combination!). They were jet-lagged and travel weary, and we were exhausted from semester exam (and grades/comments) madness that had lasted for weeks. The weather was a rainy/snowy wintry mess. Still, we had a lovely time.

Their first night here we went up to a brewpub on the lower slopes of Vitosha to celebrate a friend's birthday. The taxi ride was epic. The unplowed streets were too steep for the little front-wheel drive with no snow tires. At several points the car was sliding backwards down the snowy hill, though our fearless driver Kiril kept the accelerator floored (all the while calmly chatting with his girlfriend on his cell). We kept trying to say "This is good enough, please let us out here!" and walk the rest of the way (probably 30 minutes up a snowy mountain road, but still) but Kiril would have none of it. I think he enjoyed the challenge, and when he got us to the nearly deserted (but open) restaurant, he gave me his personal number so I could call him for the return ride (which I did).

Heather and Bajji did a little exploring of Sofia on their own while we were teaching, and after school one day I gave them a tour of the more interesting parts of campus, including the old creaky water tower that you can surprisingly still climb (which of course we did).

Bajji climbing the tower, and grinning at the top.

On Saturday we rented a car for a short trip to Rila Monastery before they had to return home to the US. It was nice for them to see the countryside, Rila is quite pretty in the snow, and it was my first time driving in Europe. On the one hand, Shannon and I loved the freedom of being able to drive again. So many more travel opportunities suddenly seemed reasonable. On the other hand, Sofia traffic was sucky, the ice-slicked highway was often terrifying, and the potholes were relentless (more on that later).

My beautiful wife at Rila.

Heather & Bajji getting tourist-y.

Shannon & Heather taking in a brief moment of sun.

Rila Monastery in mid-winter.

On the way home, I nailed a pothole at highway speeds in our little tiny Euro rental car. Bent the rim and got a flat. Suck. Luckily there was a spare (we had neglected to confirm this when we picked up the car in the middle of the pouring rain). Luckily Bajji is craftier than I at figuring out leverage and how to make the most of a mini-tire iron (standing/jumping on it seemed to do the trick). Not so luckily for us the repair cost over $150, and of course it was not covered by the "premium" rental insurance we sprung for. Oh well...it was still a fun outing.

Thanks for visiting Heather and Bajji! Hope to see you this summer in Colorado!

Oreos

We just saw Oreos for the first time at "Hit," our local Austrian supermarket chain. I'm not really an Oreo fiend back home -- might only buy a package or two a year, although I do enjoy a good Oreo blizzard at Dairy Queen. They don't the have regular cookie packages (50+ cookies) here, but instead come in either 6-cookie "snack packs" or boxes with four 4-cookie packs. We were going to buy a box for novelty sake, but realized that we might never see them at the store again, so bought two.

They taste like America.

The package describes them as "Cocoa Flavoured Sandwich Biscuits," which I suppose is true, but seems wholly inadequate to describe the Oreo experience. They are delicious with a side of disgusting and a helping of addiction. They are not really food, but a food product. It is not something you could conceivably imagine ever being able to make in your kitchen.
Fantastic.

An Ode to Onda

Onda Coffee Break is an Irish-Bulgarian coffee shop chain in Sofia.  Luckily for me (or maybe not so luckily since caffeine is something I strive to avoid), there is an Onda shop conveniently located on campus in the building next to mine - not a 20-second walk away from my office.  They bake fresh  muffins every day.  I'm so glad I don't have an office in the same building as Onda, otherwise I would probably become a walking muffin - muffin for breakfast, muffin for a snack after lunch, oh and I'll have a croissant right before school is out, and I might as well get a muffin for an after-dinner snack.  OK, OK, I exaggerate, but I must admit that I have become very addicted to these muffins.  I'm eating one right now, thus the idea for an ode to Onda.  And really, I guess this isn't an ode, since I have no idea what makes up a proper ode, but instead I will write a haiku since that is what I traditionally like to write when being "poetic".  (I thank my pals in Jellystone for getting me into writing haikus)

So, without further ado:

Onda Coffee Break
A muffin makes me happy
Thanks for being here!

Our National Television Debut

It only took 6 months of living in Bulgaria before we made it on national television! Our colleague and friend, Carolyn, has been writing an excellent and quite popular blog about her life here, and has managed to attract a regular audience of Bulgarian readers, including many she has never met. As part of a social experiment, Carolyn wanted to try, as best she could, to live within a typical budget of a Bulgarian for a month. She had a rather long online discussion on just what that meant exactly (her housing, like ours, is provided by the school, although maybe a 20-something single Bulgarian would still be living with parents, etc etc...you can read some of the posts on this here, here, and here), but she settled on a budget of 400 leva (about $280) for the month. That is almost double the minimum wage, but less than the roughly 600 leva she determined would be a normal salary for someone in her position. Carolyn recognized that there were definite limitations to the experiment, such as her already-purchased plane tickets for a weekend trip to Rome, her ability to put off major purchases for a month that she might not be able to do if this were her actual salary, and her lack of a true local's information network to save money, but she thought it would still be worthwhile. (My apologies Carolyn, if I'm butchering your experiment...it's my best attempt to summarize it.)

Apparently one of her regular readers was a producer at Zdravei, Bulgaria, an equivalent to the Today show on NBC or Good Morning America on ABC. He thought this was interesting, and asked Carolyn if he could record some of her regular life as she carried out this experiment. And so they did...they taped her making oatmeal, riding the bus, teaching class, ordering food in the cafeteria, and (this is where we come in) Balkan Dancing.

Shannon loves dancing. Shannon hates speaking in front of people. So you can imagine how excited she was to have Carolyn's film crew at our Balkan dancing lesson. Many of the Bulgarians there (mostly moms of our students, actually) also did not want to be on camera, and kept shoving me over to stand next to Carolyn. Things got more entertaining when after only about 10 minutes of the lesson the power went out on campus. No lights, no music. Whoops.
Luckily the light on a professional video camera is quite bright. We did the rest of the lesson with only the light from the camera. Stoyan (PE teacher and the Balkan dancing instructor) carried around his tiny netbook computer for barely-audible sound. It was all rather amusing. After the lesson, Shannon and I were slow to get out the door, and the camera crew cornered us.

"How much money do you spend in a month?"
"Er, I don't know really."
"C'mon, give us a number!"

Shannon and I tried to keep track of our expenses when we first got here, but the bookkeeping was inflated by lots of one-time moving-in type expenses (shoe rack, sheets, bookshelf, etc). We also found that we were spending a lot less than we were making, and found it hard to care enough to keep track of everything. I also was used to paying for most things in the US with a credit card, which gave me a quick and easy record of my expenses, so having to keep track of lots of little receipts for cash just seemed so, you know, annoyingly 20th century. :)

What I said on the video (I spend roughly 50 leva during the week, maybe another 70 leva on the weekend) is probably reasonably close, if I don't count weekends where we travel (and we haven't since New Year's) or do any major shopping (I had to replace some broken jackets last weekend, but I'm definitely not much of a shopper). I probably underestimated (I sort of forgot about the big weekly grocery shopping trips), so maybe my monthly average for day-to-day living is closer to 600 leva. I'm thankful that when your housing is provided and your utilities are cheap ($10 month for cable/internet, $15 a month for my cell phone), your salary goes a long way.

I didn't really mean to come off negative about Bulgaria, but when he asked me "What surprised you the most when you arrived here?" I had to answer with my first impressions. (Dogs and litter). Mostly I didn't really have any idea what to expect here, so the best answer is everything surprised me. I also was unprepared for how much harder teaching here would be than I remembered it being at Westridge, but I didn't feel like getting into that on camera.

At any rate, several of my friends found the video hilarious. Not so many of my students have seen the video (it airs at 7:30 am, when they are likely in transit to school), but they probably will soon with the magic of the internet. I really needed a haircut. Shannon really didn't want to be on camera. But my dancing could have been worse, and I think their stray dogs video clip was nice.

I'll try to get a Bulgarian to translate some of the audio for me, and I'll post it in the comments. You can turn off the YouTube "pop-up video" comments if you want. Go to the lower right corner of the video player, click the "up" arrow, and the top button says "Turn off annotations." The anchors of the show chit chat for a while on this clip, so you can skip ahead a minute or so if you want. This is video #4 of the 5 part series. Other clips can be seen here: Part 2, Part 3 (can't find part 1).

Enjoy!

Zipperless, Cold, and Sad in the Balkans

Ok, maybe not so sad. But that was the subject line of an email I sent to Mountain Hardwear's Warranty division ("lifetime warranty!") when I told them how I now have not one but two broken jackets with non-functional zippers. What follows is a portion of the letter I wrote to their warranty division. At any rate, I thought you'd enjoy these photos. I posted them on Facebook as well, but maybe the wider world would like to appreciate the suckiness of Mountain Hardwear's zippers. Hopefully I'll soon be able to add a comment to this post about how awesome their customer service is, although so far all I've gotten is an auto-reply that their warranty division was short-staffed and not accepting emails right now.

Dear Mountain Hardwear,


I have been a loyal customer of yours for over ten years, and have convinced many of my friends that your products were worth the extra money due to their quality design and durability. Last summer I moved from Bozeman, Montana to Sofia, Bulgaria (I miss the Rockies, but the Balkans are interesting) to teach high school biology. It was a big move, and while I couldn’t take very much of my gear with me, most of my Mountain Hardwear items made the cut. I kind of looked like a Mountain Hardwear commercial when I would layer up with my SubZero Vest, Windstopper Tech Jacket, and a mountaineering shell you don’t make anymore. (I could have added my SubZero parka, but that would have been overkill!) A colleague of mine moved here from California and bought a whole line of new North Face attire to keep him warm, so of course I teased him about how he had chosen the inferior brand. That teasing didn’t last long.

Me, in happier times, in my fleece jacket. Oh, how I miss you, zipper.

Walking home from the grocery store one chilly October night, my jacket zipper got stuck. Not a big deal, except that it would not pull free. Even after I got home, I was trapped in my coat. You can see the ridiculous pictures below of my attempts to escape. My wife had to cut the zipper head off with pliers to free me! Had this happened on one of my more adventurous outings in the mountains, it could have been a real problem. As it was, now the only fleece I brought to Europe was broken, and backed by a lifetime guarantee that required spending big money for international postage. Worse than that, winter was on its way, and I didn’t want to wait several months for the jacket to make a round trip to the USA via mail. Frustrated, I decided to suck it up and try to muddle through until summer when I would return to the US for a few weeks.

Stuck in my Windstopper Tech Jacket. The pit zips came in handy for attempts at freedom, but ultimately, not handy enough.

Unsuccessfully trying to force the jacket over my giant head. I can't blame the jacket for my apparent mushroom head. As I couldn't really go to school like this, the only option left was to attack the jacket with pliers.

And then another zipper broke, on a different Mountain Hardwear jacket! This time it was my mountaineering shell. What are the odds of that? I was out skiing this time, but luckily it was a sunny day and I was close to home. If I had been in the backcountry or on a week-long trip, I would have been much more upset. My friend with the North Face gear is really starting to give me the hard time now -- at least all of his zippers work!

Check out the cool broken zipper. I now leave it half-way up to keep warm (the Velcro closures also don’t stay closed at all), making my nice mountaineering jacket a rather awkward pullover.

Showing off my two broken jackets next to a lovely map of Bulgaria.

I would try to take the jackets to a local tailor to try to repair the zippers, but they are technical jackets with expensive parts. There is a windstopper liner on one and gore-tex on the other, and I didn’t want them damaged any more than necessary.

So now it’s mid-winter in Bulgaria, and I’m now down two jackets due to zipper failure. If only I had some extreme story to explain how I broke my zippers…sadly I do not. I would like to go skiing, but I no longer have any reasonable gear to do so that doesn’t require safety pins to keep even a little of the snow and wind out. This is not really acceptable. I would like to continue to be a loyal Mountain Hardwear customer, so I hope your lifetime warranty will come to the rescue. Even though the jackets are in terrible shape right now, they still are all I’ve got, so I don’t really want to mail them away for months. Do you have any possible suggestions? Does your European office deal with issues like this (as I am living in Bulgaria), or should this go through the USA office (where I bought the items)?

Thank you in advance for any help you can offer.

Feel free to hang these photos around the office – I’m sure they’ll brighten someone’s day. I don’t really know how my head got to look like such a mushroom while trapped in your jacket, but that is indeed how it looked.

Sincerely (and coldly)

Jeff