Back to Bulgaria

NERVE-WRACKING: adj- translating from bulgarian to english to romanian to english, and back to bulgarian. infront of regional television crew. live. eep.

let's say that today was humbling. one of the cool perks of my new job is that performers from different countries come as soloists or entire ensembles to play in our facility. Sometimes they are bulgarians who've migrated, and more recently, the performers are plain ol' foriegners who speak english. Today, a classical quartet from Romainia played a program as part of a three-city tour in bulgaria. An hour beforehand, the local media held a press conference with yours truly as a translator. Inter nerve-wracking, stage left. I think i made up a LOT of words and messed up a lot of names...but the important thing is that the Romanians didn't even notice that English was my first langauge, versus Bulgarian... (but wait, what does that say for my english? whoops...)

but as my heading says...I'm back to Bulgaria!! I spent an entire week in the fabulous republic of macedonia, our neighboor to the west. Thanks to two other volunteers, i was invited to participate in a youth worker's training course as part of the European Commission's effort to educate youth and youth workers. This particular course was on the topics of Citizenship, Globalism, and Consumerism. Guess why I wanted to go...

anyway, I was pretty pumped to go see Macedonia for myself. As far back as i can remember (read: understand what people are saying), most Bulgarians have had some type of story for me about how macedonia is the same country as bulgaria, that the langauge is simply a dialect of bulgarian, etc etc. Well, i'm not going to make any huge revalations about this age-old conflict, but I can say with assurance: macedonia is cleaner, the boys are cuter, and people actually speak english! oh yeah, they've also got great ice cream!

okay, this entry is actually pointless. appologies!