Another week, more celebrations

I feel as if most of my entries begin the same way: I’m super busy, love the Peace Corps, and there was a celebration. Despite my unoriginality, this pretty much describes my time perfectly. It’s difficult to explain, since the things that take up time are hard to classify as activities. My day will seem hectic and overflowing, with hardly any time to do anything, but when I get home and try to think of what I did during the day, it’s not usually very clear. Also, there is usually a holiday for something. Last week was no exception: it was busy and great and there were celebrations.

My counterpart’s boy turned 4 years old last Wednesday. I helped her make rice crispie treats the day before his party. I’m not sure where she found them, but my counterpart had purchased marshmallows: the key ingredient to the dessert, which I previously thought impossible to purchase in Bulgaria. They weren’t quite the same as in America. These marshmallows were colored pink, strawberry flavored, shaped like mushrooms, and coated in sugar. Cornflakes were substituted for rice crispies, and margarine for butter. I thought rice crispie treats were sort of awful, but everyone seemed to love them. The party was awesome. I was took pictures for my counterpart. Definitely an over the top kids party with cakes, pizza, smiley-faced sandwiches, drinks for moms, etc. She also had all sorts of games set up for them (pin the tail on the donkey, a homemade piñata, etc.). Mostly, the kids ran around and hit each other with balloons.

September 15^th was the first day of school in Bulgaria. It is celebrated nationwide on the same day every year. Happy първия учебен ден to all teachers and students! I attended the welcome back ceremony for Petar Parchevich School with a friend in Chiprovtsi. Her daughter started the 4^th grade this year. The morning of първия учебен ден, when her daughter walked out the door of the house, her father spilled a bowl of water in front of her for good luck. Then, her mother gave her a bouquet of flowers for her teacher.

The students arrived at school dressed in their best outfits with bunches of flowers for teachers and queued by class in the schoolyard. They listened to some of their classmates sing, the mayor and school director talk, and stood attentively for the raising of the Bulgarian flag on the school’s flagpole. Parents took photos and watched. It didn’t seem to matter if they arrived to work late. After the ceremony, the students entered the school by class. They received their books and some paperwork and were released by 10am. It made me a bit jealous that America doesn’t have a similar holiday. Celebrating the first day of the school year seems to be a very good tradition; първия учебен ден honors the teachers and the students.

After the ceremony, I visited the tourist information center in the culture center. I described the ceremony I had just witnessed to the librarian (the library is also in the culture center). There was one class per grade, none with more than 25 students and most having significantly fewer. It was a pleasant enough event, nothing spectacular. She then related to me the celebrations of 15 September that occurred during her childhood in Chiprovtsi. Forty years ago it used to be a huge event with 4 classes per grade filled to capacity and students parading through the center and dancing. Times have changed.

While we were chatting, a tourist walked in speaking English! It was the first time I’ve encountered a foreign visitor at site. From Switzerland, living in Germany, this tourist was travelling across Bulgaria with her husband. Somewhere during their travels she had photographed a Chiprovtsi carpet and now wanted to buy one exactly like it. This is difficult since each carpet is unique and made to order carpets take between 3-6 months to make. Also the lady from the museum really wanted her to buy something and kept trying to show her smaller, souvenir carpets. It was interesting to act as translator/guide. My English abilities impressed the tourist, until I explained I’m a PCV from America. Then she laughed. Even so, it was fun to help her communicate with the women selling carpets and to share what I know about local history and culture. She was surprised to learn how few foreign tourists we receive despite the resources and sites located here.