Здравейте! Това е първът път, че пиша в български на компютъра. Уф, е много трудно с друга клавиатура…
One of the great things about EVS is that it gives you the opportunity to have proper classes for learning the language of your host country. For us, this means at least 120 study hours over a period of a few months, and right now we’ve done exactly half of that.
We have lessons on Monday and Thursday mornings in Zazy Language Centre, which is located on Vitosha Blvd right next to the Palace of Justice. Quite a central place to have lessons, right?
This is the entrance to the building – okay okay, I know what you’re thinking, but, if you get down to it, it’s nothing more than a photograph of a public place! The relevant jokes one can come up with from the fact that the entrance to a fetish club is the same as the entrance to where we have our language classes are rather obvious and I’ll leave them to your own sick imagination!
This is the place where we get our капучино (cappuccino) during our почивки (breaks). Did you notice that the shop is called “Kinky”? Are you noticing a mysterious pattern here? It’s not just me, right?
On a completely unrelated note, in the class itself I’m always sitting opposite this map.
I’m sorry, this has very little to do with our Bulgarian, but I just have to get it off my chest. What is this map? I’m a big geography and map nerd so bare with me, but what’s that… peninsula jutting out from the East of Finland towards Svalbard? What’s that island to the East of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, like a hydrocephalic Puerto Rico? Oh! Maybe MacMillan accidentally revealed the true location of Atlantis, what mapmakers, satellites, Google Maps etc. have been meticulously hiding for millennia. Thank you, MacMillan! The truth is out there.
Sorry for that. I just wanted to share with this little thing that continually catches my attention during the Bulgarian class.
From left to right: Oles, Hanna, Zanda, Maria,
Zlatko (our teacher), Vicente and Jeroen.
Maria from Spain was absent that day but I really
wanted to take the picture exactly then.
Don’t worry Maria, I haven’t forgot about you!
Now, this is our class. That’s us, the Library volunteers and the guys from Smart Foundation. This is the place where the magic happens. We hope that in the following half of our 120 hours we’ll learn just as much, if not more, than what we have learned already, and some day soon we’ll be ready to walk up to any baba or dyado and ask them for directions, order properly at the underground cantina next to the library with the handwritten menu with the green marker (have you seen handwritten Bulgarian??), understand what they ask us at the supermarket after we say the predictable things, which usually leaves us like deer in headlights… maybe even read some Bulgarian books! Yes, that’d be great indeed.
So, until the next attempts to actually write a post in Bulgarian, довиждане! (dovizhdane)
In Coffee House, Sofia – Bulgaria. Picture by Zanda
Is employment still relevant today? What is there left than needs doing? What’s going to happen to the world’s unemployed? What does automation have to do with all this? Is there an alternative? This and more in this episode of qbdp.
In addition, I mention this episode of The Cracked Podcast (it’s called “What America can’t admit about the Millennial generation” – trust me, it applies even more to the European South). You really need to give it a listen, it’s a must if you’d like to hear more about what unemployment means today, what more it could mean in the following years and why you shouldn’t be listening to your parents when they’re telling you that when they were your age they had already gone through 14 jobs or so. You should check out the rest of their episodes too, they’re doing a fantastic job.
Departure time for Tourist Service’s bus from Athens to Sofia was 8:00 in the morning sharp. I caught it after a full day of melancholy of leaving behind things, situations and, most importantly, people that I love (the long-needed party at my place the day before with all the lovely faces didn’t help). You know who you are, I hope.
I get these very short but intense feelings of regret and of not having appreciated everything and everyone enough before and during every big journey of mine. Does everyone get these same feelings? I wonder about this a lot. Sometimes I think that everyone’s like me, but it is much more often that I feel I’m alone in too many things to count. It is a dangerous and untrustworthy feeling.
Athens to Sofia was an 11-and-a-half-hour ride. It wasn’t so tiring for me: I’m used to these long trips owing to my experience of catching ships to and from Mytilini and waiting for hours in European airports for frugality’s sake. I began reading Carlos Castaneda’s The Art of Dreaming which Daphne lovingly gifted to me before I left. It’s a great book and it made for a more… dreamy journey. Closer to the destination I started watching Skyfall but we arrived before I could finish it.
The first I saw of Sofia, I didn’t really see much of it. It’s been almost completely covered in fog since yesterday. I would expect that to be a normal thing for this city (it feels like the right kind of city to be foggy as a natural state, you know?) but even the locals were taken by surprise.
View from the window on that first foggy night in Sofia
I was welcomed and taken to the flat by the very friendly Valentina, an employee of the Sofia City Library. The flat is on the 4th floor and guess what? There’s no elevator (or lift, if you’re American!), which might sound like a problem, but it’s in situations like this that a running schedule really comes in handy! Of my three fellow volunteers, only one had arrived yesterday and that’s Maria, the Danish girl. The other two will be coming tomorrow and the day after. This is the last fateful night I’ll have the boys’ room for my own. I shudder at the idea of having to share it for nine months! Let’s hope everything turns out alright and I don’t find sharing my private space for so long a little bit too overbearing!
I didn’t see much of Sofia today apart from the area close to the library, but I already find it an interesting city. It might look gloomy and run down in a lot of places (nothing I didn’t expect before I came here) but I can sense a history and character waiting for me to discover.
The library itself has a similar air: it’s an old building in obvious need of repairs and renovation, but the people working in it, such as Valentina and Boryana who are involved with the EVS project, but also the rest of the employees that we got to meet today, are full of life and joy. To give you an example, every Wednesday they have an English speaking group practice session for every library employee willing to join, and today they invited us newcomers as well. Everybody was delighted to meet us and Valentina also brought a bottle of fine red wine to welcome us with. I sense we’re going to work very well together and that they’ll take good care of us – they already do.
Not only that: their selection of books makes me want to just stay in the library and never leave – it doesn’t help that there are whole sections and rooms dedicated to books in languages that I’ve been meaning to practice on (German and Spanish) and many many books in English to choose from. Who knows what other treasures I might find in the meantime!
A funny little episode from today: I went to Billa to shop for some pasta (got some by Stella; surprisingly many Greek brands here) and stuff to make a Greek salad with, plus beers and a strange Bulgarian beverage I haven’t tried yet. I took everything to the cashier and it all amounted to exactly 10,00 leva – a little more than 5€. I thought this was amusing and so did the cashier. For some reason I don’t like speaking English when I’m in a foreign country; it feels uncomfortable, like I should know the language otherwise I’m little more than a product of globalisation and cultural domination. Like “what the fuck is a Greek and a Bulgarian doing speaking English in the Balkans?!” There I was though, having a fun little moment with a Bulgarian cashier – in English.
Sometimes I feel really messed up with my strange self-limiting ideals.
Anyhow, the salad and the pasta were delicious and today was a great day in general. Here’s to a good start of our 9-month EVS project, and here’s a link to the library’s existing blog that we’re going to be taking over soon.
Ulitsa Shar Planina no. 55 – the entrance to our apartment building
A month ago I was halfway there; today, after the most exhausting run yet, I’m proud to say that I can run 5 kilometres and then some.
To be more precise, I finished Week 9 when I was in Loutra last week, but the distance I ran within the time limit of 30 minutes was 4k instead of 5. Today I did Podrunner’s Week 10 Graduation Run 1, which was 35 minutes long and at a higher BPM than usual (the whole idea of this podcast is to run with the beat provided – usually techno, house or electronic music indefinable by me). In the introduction for the graduation week it said that it would make me feel good about how far I’ve come and that I would find it easy to complete. It wasn’t easy at all, but I pushed through and finally did run 7 circuits of the Alsos in 35 minutes, with an unplanned 30 second pause to say hi to Alex and Ilias who I ran into while, um, running.
7 x 820m, which is the length of the circuit, equals 5740m. Considering that the Alsos isn’t flat (the highest point is 20m higher than the lowest one, which adds a bit to the difficulty level), I think I did quite well.
I only began running less than 2 months ago. It was October 5th that I did Week 1, Day 1. I had to run 60 seconds for every 90 seconds I had to walk, for 20 minutes. I’ve come far. I didn’t expect I would make progress this quickly, but here I am. HabitRPG, the proximity of the Alsos to home and the variety of places to run in to shake things up a bit – I had runs in Prespes, Loutra and Ommen, as well as the Alsos – probably helped. Another factor I still can’t say with certainty whether it helped or not but my gut says it did, was my abistence from PMs since the beginning; still experimenting with that one.
I will continue running, probably starting next week with Gateway to 8K or Bridge to 10K, I haven’t decided yet. Sofia will definitely find me running in the parks and pumping those legs! That post by The Oatmeal… Now I understand perfectly what he meant. I feel the same. It’s a goal, it’s exercise. I’m doing it for myself. What could the next challenge for me be?
I don’t want to toot my own horn here – at least, not just that, for if I didn’t want to boast just a little bit for achieving what I thought was something I could never do, I wouldn’t be posting here; no: I mainly want to encourage everyone to re-evaluate what you think is and isn’t possible and start with small steps in order to become whatever it is you would like to change into, or do whatever it is you would like to do. We tend to see the best of the best on the Web – that guy who walked across China, the other person who draws amazingly, the girl who can play the piano and take everyone within earshot for a trip – and we forget that there’s hard work, discipline, failures, self-doubt and probably years or decades of dedication that we never see. However, everything starts with something, “Rome wasn’t built in a day” or “Even the longest journey must begin where you stand” and I’m thankful that the Web isn’t just teaching us to constantly compare ourselves with the world’s best, but also provides us with the tools and community to start doing what it had never even occurred to us we could.
This post has been was a work-in-progress ever since I got back from France in August. A major contributing factor for this delay has been a certain game I’ve put close to 4 full days into in the past month. Another has been my enduring inability to prioritise my activities, declutter my life and put my thoughts and feelings in order. I have found that creation is what I need, a positive step in the right direction. Writing more and returning to Cubilone’s Dimension will prove to be, I hope, a step towards solving these problems. Actually, solving them sounds a bit alien; I can’t really imagine myself living without these aspects of my personality. Is this my personal story sabotaging my development? Have I made a self-fulfilling prophecy out of trying to form or carve my identity? Hmmm…
As the months pass by and my post-study period grows longer, the dilemmas grow larger and scarier and often I feel as if I’m stuck in the middle of two worlds.
The first one was that, after many years of thinking it over, I finally did my CELTAcourse, which means that I’m now an internationally certified English teacher, or at the very least I’m elligible to teach pretty much anywhere in the world. For four weeks, eight hours each day, I learned how to teach the English grammar, vocabulary, phonology, various methods, what one should and shouldn’t do… At least the basics, for it’s of course a lifelong process, as is everything. The toughest part was that my 9 colleagues and I each had to teach eight lessons, totalling six hours, which we had to plan thoroughly beforehand as well as execute the best we could in the classroom, teaching real students (who by the way did not have to pay money to learn English because it was trainees teaching them) and later receiving feedback on those lessons from our colleagues and tutor.
The Received Pronounciation phonetic alphabet.
Oh, the things I heard about my teaching! I had never taught before, at least not in this “official” sense, and it showed. I was extremely nervous, kept staring at the whiteboard while writing my nonsensical teaching aids, had great trouble explaining in simple words things like the form and function of the present perfect or the lead-in for exercises… If those students hadn’t been as accustomed to other confusing teachers before me, they would have surely performed completely different tasks half the time, which they sometimes did. The tutors were brutal with their criticism at times, but it was all beneficial in the end: it helped me realise that one of my main and enduring weaknesses has been explaining things in simple and unconvoluted words even though, ever since (I remember having the same problem as well many times before), every time I realise I’m explaining something awkwardly or maybe unintelligibly, the self-consciousness still makes it almost impossible to explain in an empathic and efficient way. This will come with experience I suppose but it was one of the most important lessons. On top of that, we had to complete one assignment each weekend, which left us next to no free time at all.
My tutors, Alexander Makarios, George Vassilakis and Marissa Constantinides were all exceptional in their own ways and did an excellent job in making me kick off my teaching career. Thank you guys! My colleagues -Vaggelis, Daniel, Ioni, Chrysanthi, Pedro, Panayota, Margie, Theo and Kelly- I grew sick of and am glad I didn’t have to spend any more time together with them. Just look how much we hate eachother’s guts in the pictures and video:
Left to right: Margie, Pedro, Ioni, Vaggelis, Dimitris (that’s me by the way), Marissa, Kelly, Daniel, Chrysanthi, Panayota, Alexander, Theo
Four weeks of hard work; at least as many glasses of wine to make up for it.
After I was done with the CELTA I was pumped to leave Greece and go teach English somewhere in the world with the coming of the new school year, preferably at a place in which I would be able to communicate with the locals in their native language. That was something that would exclude Japan -it’s a whole different chapter and dream- but would include Spain, Latin America and Germany/Austria, my B2 certificates for both languages fresh from early last summer and making me eager to get some real life experience with them as soon as possible!
But then the second thing happened.
Even before I had hugged my colleagues and tutors goodbye, desperate for some rest and some time to either think or not have to think at all, at the very least until the time I’d have to leave Greece to do my English-teaching duty, right then came the call for the Trip to Heterotopia. “For 21 days in Southern France we’re going to be a caravan visiting eco-communities, festivals, solidarity projects and groups. We will be wildcamping, so bring your tents, sleeping bags and headlamps!” At first I was very sceptical. I was tired and longed for doing nothing, as I mentioned above. It was only little more than a month since I’d been abroad last and, frankly, I felt as if I’d had enough flying around with backpacks, having to wait in airoports and making new temporary friendships, for the year at least. I reluctantly applied anyway; the idea seemed just too good to skip altogether.
To my surprise, I was actually selected, albeit at the last moment. When I talked with Chrysostomos, the head of European Village (the sending organisation) about the specifics, I warned him that my financial situation was at its usual low. He told me that all the costs together would amount to 120€. A hundred and twenty. I was shocked.
-“What’s the catch?” I thought I was being clever. “What’s the cost of participation?” -“None. We’ve decided not to have one. Our current budget allows us to handle all the costs; it will be better and more convenient than passing them down to the travellers.”
That was it. 120€ would be cheaper even than staying in Athens for the same amount of time. Dafni wasn’t too happy with the suddenness of it all (we had made various plans for August already) but she was a sweet little understanding raccoon in the end and anyway had her own plans.
So there was us: 10 Greeks, and another 15 French people in it for the three weeks of the exchange. Together we visited five different locations and stayed some days in each, did wildcamping in every place, took part and volunteered for local festivals, picked organic vegetables from the community gardens and patches, learned how to build and use dry toilets (it’s not as bad as it sounds actually), participated in workshops on eco-building and local seed trading, there even was a Greek night dedicated to the Crisis. Our flag”ship” motor vehicle was the Vagabond Sage, a retrofit ’70s coach complete with dry toilet, wind generator and solar panels. We did not use all of its features but it was the symbol of our Trip in the French Heterotopias, the utopias that really exist.
The Vagabond SageInside the Vagabond SageSelf-organisingLautrecNettle salad. Guess who helped pick it… It was delicious and the numb fingers somehow made it better.Lots of camping was had.
All pictures by Marina, Myrto and Caro (I apologise for the terrible formatting of the pictures above. The gallery couldn’t come out right. I think it’s time for a new theme anyway...)
The experience from those three weeks is hard for me to put into words, not unlike much of the rest of my life. The trip was very practical: we had to pack stuff, unpack stuff, cook most meals from scratch (and cater for close to 30 people at times), deal with stuff changing places and having to ask about their whereabouts (looking at you, coffee and coffeejugs!), set up tents, build dry toilets and showers, empty said toilets, and many more things I’m generally not good at, the cerebral rather than practical, abstract rather than present, clumsy and unwieldy person that I generally am. I was much happier sitting somewhere writing my morning pages (more on those in the near future) or enjoying the sun than really helping to prepare dinner, for example, but not being really useful filled me with guilt. I felt that this separated me from the rest of the group and made it harder for me to contribute to our common goals and tasks. Sure, learning about eco-friendly and transitional practices was heaps of fun and super-interesting; connecting with the French and the Greeks was exciting and fun and there was all this adventure and thrill of moving from place to place and exploring rural Southern France, but I always had this nagging feeling that alone I could not do this, that somehow I wasn’t the right person for it. Once again, as I have too many times before to count, I felt like the black sheep. Or rather a sophisticated, colourful goat among a herd of sheep that has none of the definite deviant prestige that black sheep usually have but instead has a certain, perhaps misplaced, idea of superiority. When that idea is threatened and attacked by no-one in particular but, at the same time, everyone at once, I can be very reclusive and pensive. I was the city kid in a group of people who lived and breathed nature, it seemed. Thankfully, there were other people in the Greek group with whom I could share the feeling.
(Video I made with Phoenix for Daphne. Phoenix is the little fox she got for me while we were in Finland. The video is in Standard Definition, unfortunately.)
At the same time, I know that what we did in that trip is important and is the future. Anything that could make me and others more self-sufficient, make us able to take our own situations into our hands, free to lead our lives as we please, is important in this age of destroyed opportunities, slave wages and fear-mongering. We had some discussions on self-reliance around our almost daily nightly fire, watched a couple of movies that inspired me to take action one way or another (more specifically Να Μην Ζήσουμε Σαν Δούλοι), but most of all it was the people who took part, with their lifestyle and their choices, that made me think and feel.
Departure day
To cut a long story short, by the time we had got back to Greece I didn’t really want to leave immediately to find a job abroad. I had this feeling that staying here in Athens might not be so futile if I can find a way to use my time actively and creatively. Additionally, I felt and still feel that there’s lots of shit I have to figure out, reconcile, get over or leave behind before I can start something new. Putting some order to my digital belongings, selling or giving away stuff, giving time and energy to learn from everything that has happened in my life recently is really what I need but keep postponing due to distractions. Part of me tells me it’s all still being lazy and that purposefully skipping the opportunity to work abroad when I had it is regrettable, not to say of suspicious motivation on my part.
What appeared instead, however, is an excellent testament to the power of serendipity and letting the flow guide your path. Even if I missed the teaching abroad deadlines, there’s a very good possibility I will still be leaving the country after all to do my EVS (European Voluntary Service). Since there’s nothing urgent to do, might as well take advantage of my extended gap years while at the same time being independent for a change.
The real big questions in my head right now have to do with what path I should follow: one focused on living in the moment, taking advantage of opportunities as they come (the EVS and YIA side), discovering the Heterotopias that exist right under our noses and applying myself to that, or the other, in which I’ll make myself more qualified for actual work (which could be in the form of a MA in Prolonged Indecisiveness) or, yes, getting money and building the foundation for future survival? Certificates or Heterotopias? Playing it by ear as I’ve done a lot lately, or gearing up for the mystical tomorrow-never-comes “adult life”, which some would argue can’t include working as an English teacher abroad? /s
I have the EU and the YIA program to thank for giving me time and time again the opportunity to flourish!
From where I’m standing at the moment, the hopefully upcoming EVS looks like it might be able to combine the best of both worlds for me: independence, creativity, new experiences as well as involving myself with things that might benefit my future options of getting by. Still, it’s too fresh to announce anything concrete. If I’m finally doing it (my application’s in the notorious EVS red tape maze right now), which I should know by December, I’ll be leaving for Bulgaria in January 2014 and will be living there for close to a year working for Sofia City Library. That will involve updating their volunteer-run blog, creating promotional media for the library and, from what I can tell, having relatively lots of freedom to pursue my own projects.
What will happen next and whether or not I’ll manage to take advantage of the months ahead will depend entirely on my own ability to balance, prioritise and purge, while at the same time not leaving the flow. OK, maybe not entirely: the current monumental instability of the world will provide us all with some interesting distractions, surprises, dangers and wild card paradigm shifts. One thing’s for sure: we already have absolutely no excuses to feel bored.
