Leading up to Christmas

About a month ago I was feeling a little down because the Christmas season was fast approaching and I was knew this was going to be my first Christmas away from home. I never really need to look very deep for a reason to miss home, and I often do my best to keep myself away from thinking about home. The Christmas season on the other hand makes it hard to think of anything but home. At least that is how I saw it at the beginning of December but, even thought I do miss home and the people there I can safely say that I am so happy being here. The last few weeks in particular have just been so wonderful that I can hardly believe that I was lucky enough to be apart of them.

Biscochitos: Made in Bulgaria

Where to begin to explain..... last weekend I went to a Holiday party for the town's (as well as other near by town's) Horo dance group (Horo being the traditional Bulgarian style of dance). I always love going to these events, aside from the dancing factor they are always a lot of fun. For this time in particular though, I noticed how dramatic these dances and dancers are. I mean to say that watching a large group of people all dancing the same way with so much joy, so much life, and so much history behind every single step is something powerful to behold. Dancing inside this group is even more of a moving experience and is intoxicating for the soul, it makes me feel like I am a part of something much greater than me.

My walk home

Needless to say I was feeling great heading into a busy week of school but the last before the Winter break. I woke up Monday morning to snowy day and excited about the planned events for the week, which included several Christmas parties and to seeing the completion of some projects my students had been working on. The first project was my 8th grade class' performance of "A Christmas Carol" all in English for their parents. All 29 students had speaking parts and I can't even begin to explain how proud of them I was. But this isn't exclusive to the 8th, every single on of the students I have the pleasure of teaching NEVER fails to impress me in every which way. My 10th graders made two very impressive fake News Programs that they wrote, filmed, and produced all on their own. They are all so smart and such a pleasure to teach and did such a great job that even a week later my heart is still so full of excitement because of what they did with very little time and resources and most importantly how much fun they had even though it was school related.

My Christmas Tree

The next night was the largest of my projects. I decided to bring a little bit of my own culture here to Bulgaria in the form of Luminarias (many small paper bags with a candles inside of them). In New Mexico we use these to celebrate Christmas eve by arranging them and lighting them in mass quantities. I am lucky because when I brought up this idea to the people at my school and to the city hall they were excited and very willing to help me by aiding in locating the needed materials. I was also lucky because the snow from Monday had melted and even more amazing was over 20 students came to help me set them up and light them and clean them up afterward. I am very sure that the locals really enjoyed them. I was thanked by many people for being something beautiful, different, and interesting to their town. I've already received many requests for making more next year. It is such a nice feeling knowing that you created something that people really enjoyed and I am so happy that I had this opportunity to share something that is distinctly from New Mexico.

Part of the 400 Luminarias in the town center

The very next day it snowed A LOT, when I woke up there was a thick white blanket over Parvomai and when I got to school there was a lot of students outside playing in the snow, of course I had to join in. Once some of the kids noticed that Mr. B, Jake, or the American (they have many names for me) was playing with them I shortly found myself being the only target for all their snowballs, some of the older boys even tried to tackle me in the snow. All in all I had so much fun, I not only felt like a kid again but that the kids are comfortable enough with me that they are willing to throw snowballs at me or tackle me into snow.

Kids playing outside school (view from my classroom)

And now it is Christmas eve and even though I am dearly missing my home I am excited to celebrate Christmas here in the glow of an amazing past week, the curiosity in a new way of celebrating a familiar holiday, and most importantly in the humbleness that this experience is creating inside of me.

Here is some of my 10th graders and I with a message:

 
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year to everybody

Winter Winds

Winter Fog in Parvomay

I would like to think that I have a full and complete understanding of where I am and what I signed up for when I came to Bulgaria, but sometimes I stop and look around me and see where I am and what I am doing, and it is during these moments that I am not only filled with a sense of purpose but also with an overwhelming feeling that I have left everything I knew and everybody who is dear to me, because I had a greater calling.
 If we are take what is around us as meanings more than their face value than I'll say this. Last night my town was covered in a dense fog and this evening the winds blew it away leaving a starkly clear sky. This evening I stood on my balcony in the freezing cold wind and watched the sun set over the mountains and thought, wow I am really here and this isn't some fantasy or dream that I am in, that the people below me going about their daily activities are real people, walking on a real street, speaking a real language, in a real town underneath an unbelievably real sky and mostly importantly that I am apart of it. Is it possible to be this lucky? To be experiencing this experience that is too good to be true because life is never this wonderful. Life never lets you see your purpose so easily, or the things you need to cherish over the things you don't. Or perhaps this is simply my reflection in the clarity of a foreign sky in a foreign place. Whatever it is, I hope it doesn't end anytime soon

Thanksgiving

I was worried how Thanksgiving would be living in a country that doesn't celebrate it, but it turned out to be one of the best weeks of my life. Not only did I have three Thanksgiving dinners, but each was with a wonderful group of people in a beautiful locations. My first Thanksgiving meal was the Sunday before actually day and it was in Plovdiv with 15 other amazing people from my group of volunteers. My second was in a tiny Muslim village high in the mountains in Southern Bulgaria, and the 3rd was with a group of volunteers who extended their service for a 3rd year. I am so lucky to be friends with all of these wonderful people who have become my family while I am away from my real family.

Thanksgiving Dinner #1

Autumn

My School

The Church in Town

But in tradition of the Thanksgiving Holiday I want to Thank everybody who is in my life. Thank you for all your support and love. It makes being away from home much easier than it is. 

Novemeber Photos

I know that I have had trouble keeping up with my blog but I had the idea of maybe posting more photos here so months at a time don't pass before I add something new. Here are a few pictures I have taken in the last month or so 

Cold November night on the Streets of Parvomay

 

Train station in Parvomay

 

Aleksandar Nevski Church in Sofia

 

October Afternoon in Veliko Tarnovo

The Village of Koprivshtitsa

The Last Two Months

I feel bad that I have not paid much attention to my blog the last two months, to be honest I have been very busy, but also it is because I have been so content with my life here in Bulgaria that I have not found the need to vent about how miserable I am or how hard my life is here.
The truth is, my life here is not at all miserable nor is it difficult. I love being here and working in the school I do. My student are great and not once have I dreaded walking to school to teach a lesson or any group of students, instead I feel the opposite, I look forward to seeing my students and teaching my lessons. So I know I made the right decision coming here. It is hard missing my the most important day in my best friend's life and it will be hard missing Thanksgiving and Christmas with my family but it was a trade off I have, and will have to make for being here and doing what I do but I don't regret and won't regret these choices.

Left or Right, Forward or Backwards, Stay or Go and other decisions

Somebody once told me that life is a collection of decisions that you make. Most of them are minor but sometimes we come across decisions that are so large that they define the direction we take our lives. In the last two weeks I witnessed the profound agony of having to make one of these large decisions and then I had to make one of my own. Two of my dearest friends here in Bulgaria decided that they had had enough of this place and resolved to return home to their old lives. Upon hearing the news of both of these decisions (each a week apart) I was shocked, then sad, and then I left jealous. Jealous because they would soon be returning to their old lives, to the old world, back to the way things were before they came to Bulgaria, a place I have thought a lot about lately. I started thinking about my life before I joined the Peace Corps, my friends, my family, and just how easy living was. Back to a place where I understood everything everybody said, a place where if I could eat more than one variety of food, and most of all a place where I could never feel as lonely as I do now.... But then I realized that the reasons I chose to join the Peace Corps and come to Bulgarian are far stronger than the sum of everything I left behind. I am resolved to no longer be at the mercy of nostalgia

Wonderful Bridges

Recently I had a chance to go on a camping trip with my Bulgarian counterpart (the Bulgarian teacher who I will be working with the most during my Peace Corps service). We went into the Rhodope Mountains to a place called Wonderful Bridges. Wonderful Bridges are naturally made rock bridges carved from stone by a mountain stream. It truly was a beautiful place and even though it was a cold foggy and rainy day, somehow the weather only ended up only adding to the magic of this place. We slept at a small inn next to bridges. My counterpart’s family and I ate Bulgarian food and drank Bulgarian rakia in the common room of this inn with the owner and his family. While I was sitting there eating I could not help but reflect on how beautiful this simple moment of eating a meal in an inn next to this amazing site was. I often have moments like this, where I sit back and think about how lucky I am to be experience them and how I wish that everybody else I know could somehow experience it too because there is no way to describe it

The next morning we prepared for a daylong hike along an old Roman road that has since been used as hiking trail. It is called the Roman Road and it is an actual cobblestone road through the mountains. Even though a lot of the road is in disrepair a great deal of it was still perfectly intact and while I hiked along it I started to wonder about the people who built this road and about all the people who traveled on. I wondered about what their stories were, about what their life was like and if they ever stopped in the same place I did and look across the mountains in front of them and wonder what was beyond them like I was doing at that very moment.

Once we got back to the car and headed back to Parvomay I sat back and stared at the world pass by and realized how lucky I am too have such a great counterpart. I hear a lot of other volunteers talking about how unhappy they with their counterparts or how they have a rough time with them, but mine welcomed me into her family and made me feel at home which has really helped in alleviating the pain of missing my old home and most of all, my family.  

Writers Block

I have not forgotten about my blog, I am just not sure what to write. Every time I sit down and try to write an entry I grow flustered because I don't know what to say. My life has grown so complicated and packed full of events or things I want to talk about, but for some reason I just not been able to pull them out of my head and pour out onto my computer. Just know that I am doing well here in this beautiful country. I am meeting amazing people everyday who both inspire me to do for my fellow human being as well as remind me how lucky I am to have what I have back home in the U.S.. So without mentioning one particular event I see my experience thus far like having always lived in a valley overlooked by tall mountains. Even though the valley is beautiful it grows familiar and ordinary, so slowly, the splendor loses it's effect and thus taken for granted. Until one day I leave the valley to climb the near by mountain. After struggling through the difficult climb and finally reaching the top, I am able to see the valley from a very different and very dramatic angle. With this new view the magnificence of the place I have lived my whole life comes back to life for me but I can also see other places of equal beauty and figure why stop now, my valley will always been there to return to so I set off to discover new things keeping in mind that my home will be there waiting for me, if or when I run out of places to come across.

First three months in Bulgaria

Road between Vrastsa and Pleven

 

Pleven

 Rila Monastery

 Rila Monastery

 Vrastsa

 Vrastsa

 Vrastsa

 Dimitrovgrad

Roman ruins in Plovdiv

Roman ruins in Plovdiv

 

Old City in Plovdiv

 Waterfall near Lovech

Where the water flows out of a cave

From a gloomy day in April to a gloomy day in June Pre-Service Training was a time when I was constantly tested on my commitment to live in Bulgaria for the next two years. Between intense schedules of Bulgarian language and teaching English, and living in a new country with a Bulgarian host family I had a pretty interesting 12 weeks. But they are over, I made it and now I am a full fledged Peace Corps volunteer. Congratulations to those who have endured this before me and to everybody who endured it with me. Now the real work beings

Time stands still and I grow older

I went to Sofia for the first time and it was great to be in a big city again. Sofia really is nothing like the rest of Bulgaria, it doesn’t have the same feel to it as Kneja or Parvomai has. I did not get to see many things because I was only there for 3 hours but I did get to see something so remarkable that it needs to be experienced to get the full effect. June 2^nd is a holiday in Bulgaria celebrating a Bulgarian liberation hero. At noon a loud siren is sounded for two minutes at which time everything stops. Taxis, cars, people, the streetcars, everything stops. The city went from a loud bustling place to an eerie ghost town in a matter of seconds. Looking ahead at the people they just stopped and never moved an inch, it just felt like time had stopped and only you were still free to move around. The only thing you could hear was the sirens and birds flatting their wings. Simply put, it was incredible. I am going to plan of being their next year and either film it or bring somebody from home to experience it

On another note, today I have been alive for 27 years. It feels like just yesterday I turned 26 and only a week ago I was 16. This will be the first of three birthdays I will have here in Bulgaria and I have to say that today was a great day. My host family surprised me with an awesome birthday gift. Then I spent the better half of the day at a High School here in Kneja helping kids paint some rusty playground equipment they have in from of their school. It is difficult being away from my family and friends. I wish I was there to have dinner with my family. I picture my nephew running around a table at in a restaurant my parents take me to for my birthday. While my dad and brothers talk about sports my sister-in-law and mother would be talking about future plans for the weekend while I would be entertaining my niece and enjoying the pleasance of my company. Or my friends and I in a nice restaurant eating a fancy dinner over a nice glass of wine and after dinner we would ride our bikes to their house and listen vinyl records. Sadly all of this is happening without me and it tears me up on the inside that I can’t be there but at the same time I am so happy to be here in Bulgaria experience things that very few people will ever experience. The only gift I ever really want or wanted in life is the ability to travel and see new places and new cultures, and that is exactly what I am doing, and I could not be happier about it. It defiantly has been a rollercoaster ride of emotions, but it is good because that is how you grow as a person. It is days like today that you can mark that growth. I hope that next year I can look back at my 27^th year and think about how different I am now just like I am doing with my 26^th year.

Summer Storms

           It is a stormy night here in Bulgaria and I am sitting at my desk watching the curtain dance from the air the rain is pushing into my room as it makes it’s way to the earth. Every minute or so my room is illuminated by the bright electricity striking in the distance, which is followed by that sound that never fails to make my soul quiver a little every time it hears it. I can’t help but remember an evening of the same caliber not too long ago; only this one was in New Mexico. I could not of been older than 10 and I remember lying down to sleep when a storm rolled through as they often do that time of the year. At this time I had a hard time sleeping without a light on in my room, so when this particular storm knocked out the power and left me lying in total darkness I could not help but feel slightly panicked. I remember sitting up thinking that I had to cross the house and get the sanctuary that was my parent’s room. With my hand against the wall I slowly groped my way to their room, but I did not get very far when my path was completely illuminated by a flash of light and I stopped dead in my tracks. The sound of the rain pouring against my roof, the sweet smell of wet dirt, and the earth shaking from the powerful bolts completed this scene and it made me feel so alive. It was a moment that is so engrained in my memory, not because something significant happened. It was one of those moments that you see or feel something so beautiful and you begin bursting at the seams because your body cannot contain how big your soul becomes.

I feel this now, but not because there is a storm of the same magnitude but because it is bring forth many memories of home and the people who are there. As I mentioned it reminds me of my childhood and the nostalgic sensations of summer storms, but it also brings forth a flood of other precious memories with people whom I love. I remember getting caught in storm under a porch with my best friends, I remember my dad pulling my brothers and I out of the house and into his truck so we could watch a storm. I remember being in Philadelphia running through the streets soaking wet looking for an umbrella. The point of all of this is that even though I am very far away and in a foreign place I am still surrounded by things that remind me of where I came from and who I left behind. My mind is always looking for something that can reconnect it with the world it left behind and this is one of them.

Say What?!

 I am not a stranger to taking foreign language classes. I have had several Spanish classes throughout elementary school and high school. In college I also took some French classes. Unfortunately none of it really stuck in my head, so I was really excited that joining the Peace Corps would mean that I would learn a new language and that I would really learn it because it would be an important part of my work in the country. Here I am two months into living in Bulgaria, two months into intense language lessons and... I still feel like I hard hardly know anything. I still cringe when I buy something and the seller says something outside the normal, simple script that only involves ‘hello’ and ‘how much.’ Most of the time I just throw down more money then is needed because I don’t understand what is said when the total is told to me. I get so frustrated when my Bulgarian friends try to help me and I understand nothing they say because I have learned everything they are saying before but it gets so mixed up in my head and what comes out is a mixture of French, German, Bulgarian, English and whatever else is floating around the depths of my brain. I know I will learn more as time goes on and that I have only been here two months. I have a strong desire to learn Bulgarian so bad that it blinds me to the progress I have made. I just need to remember 'споко' (relax)

Where I come from Part II

 

South of Albuquerque

         Nob Hill/UNM area Albuquerque

White Sands. Southern New Mexico

Outside Taos, Northern New Mexico

 Mountains in Northern New Mexico

Highest Peak in New Mexico 

13,161ft/ 4,011m above sea level

Buglarian dinners.....

I can honesty say that until I came to Bulgaria I forgot about how wonderful sitting down for dinner with my family was. Eating dinner in Bulgaria is an important event, one that every member of the family is required to attend. I don’t mean this in the negative sense because gathering for dinner is something that is looked forward to and is by no means a dreaded mandatory occasion. It is a time when the family collects together and discusses, argues, and converses about anything and everything important in their lives. Lately when I sit down for dinner with my host family I am reminded of days long ago when I sat down with my own family for dinner to do the same.  Looking back I never really valued these times and I regret that. Until very recently I could not identify with any part of my family. I felt this to the point that I didn’t see any physical resemblance or feel any emotional obligatory identity with these people. I imagine that I had the same connection to my family as an adopted child feels to his or her family. I don’t mean this because I was neglected or mistreated by my parents. On the contrary, I could not of had a better up bringing. Even though my parents split during the first years of my secondary education there was never a vacuum of attention or love. I had, so called, internal demons to deal with that hindered my emotional development beyond the shelter my family could provide in the current society, but the important thing is that they were there and that is more then a lot of people can say. The problem was that I was the one who couldn’t be there, at least with my true self. To a great degree I still feel this, the very few times of the year that we do gather around a meal I cannot be myself. I feel that I can never walk into our Christmas gatherings with my own family and be on the same level as my brothers or cousins, and it hurts. It hurts so much that I recoiled and to the best of my ability disconnected myself from it all.

Bulgarian society pretty much slapped me in the face with that nostalgic feeling of family and meal times with them. I remember a time when I felt on equal footing with my brothers and didn’t feel that dread deep down difference with them. I remember a time when we all sat around that table eating and laughing and just being simple. I don’t think life will ever feel that simple again but at the very least I can spend time with the people who I can call family and melt into a place sheltered from the trials and tribulations life constantly volleys towards us. I know I just got here but I can’t wait to gather with my family after my service in Bulgaria and settle into a meal where the conversation will quickly be forgotten but the warmth from the familiar interaction will live on for so long that it takes a foreign event to recall that nostalgic feeling of belonging to a loving family

Growing pains perhaps

 

Today was the first time that I thought, “what am I doing here?” My first attempt at teaching an English lesson did not go well at all, my lack of Bulgarian was made painfully obvious, and I found myself craving a hamburger. Normally in situations like this I could always find solace in the fact that it is temporary and that I will be returning to my normal routine eventually, but today I felt that is not going to be the case this time. I am not going home soon and that suddenly seemed very real. Before I crashed and burned teaching that lesson I considered myself to have a great grasp on teaching and that it would transfer Continents with the same ease as the rest of my luggage. Don’t get me wrong I was never under the impression that it would be easy but somewhere deep down I thought that I would be good at it and that I could rely on my profession as the corner stone of my time in Bulgaria. I am sure I felt this because everything around me would be different but I knew that classroom dynamic of teacher/student would be the same or at least familiar and I could find a home in that but when it came time for it, that dynamic felt as foreign as the grocery stores here.

Today I also found out that one of the other volunteers in the group I came over with decided that he had enough and would be going home and I felt a bit envious of him. I thought, “soon he will be back to his life, to his family, to his friends, and to what felt comfortable.” That is when the stronger half of myself spoke up and said there is a reason you left that comfort, that normalcy, and it was so you could grow and be a stronger person. It is suppose to rain tomorrow, that always cheers me up

Time to get real

 It has only been a week since I left home and headed off for my big adventure. It has seemed like it has been longer because the bonds I have made with the 39 other people who came with me to Bulgaria as been not only made, but solidified in the stress of traveling to a completely foreign world, under the idea of promoting peace and cooperation. We left our mountain retreat this morning, the last bastion of normalcy we had left, and have been fragmented into groups of five and placed with host families in small villages throughout Northern Bulgaria. In route to our home for the next 3 months we were able to see more of Bulgaria than we had before, and on this cross-country trek it really became real for me because after coming down that mountain I finally saw Bulgaria. Bulgaria really is a beautiful place full of amazing and proud people, but it is clear that it is not like it’s Western European neighbors. I fell truly honored to be invited here and I hope to help this country in everyway I possible can.

But before I can do this I need to not only be trained on how to speak Bulgarian, understand their culture, but also how to teach English as a foreign language. This is why we have been fragmented, separated, and placed in a home with a Bulgarian family. I have been placed with a family of four. Two middle aged parents, who both work, and their two children, one boy and the other a girl. They have generously housed me in a cottage behind their house with all the amenities a person needs to live comfortably for three months of intense training, not to mention feed me delicious Bulgarian food and drink. I almost feel bad because I am cared for so well by my host family and also Peace Corps, I only hope that I will be able to repay this hospitality to my host family, their country, and to mine for sending me here to help make this world that much better. I hope my fellow volunteers have been made as comfortable in their new homes as I have.

Leka Nosht e Dovizhdane.

A stranger in my own head and a bitter-sweet goodbye for now.

 

In only a matter of hours I will be embarking on a journey the farthest outside my comfort zone possible. This has left a bizarre feeling in my mind; a kind of feeling that is beyond my ability to explain in such a way that it does justice to my skewed state of mind… but I will, of course try.

To me New Mexico has always been a prison; a place that I have always dreamed of escaping but always had a hold on me. Growing up I never felt that I belong in the desert southwest, despising sunshine and the stress-free living, I felt like I was an alien.  I mean what person longs for a place where traveling across town would be an adventure of colorful characters and countless aggressive encounters? I saw myself yelling, “I’m walking here,” to a car that come uncomfortably close to me as I cross the street, or being in a place where I am the only person who knows English for more than, a comfortable, hundred miles.

With the Peace Corps many of my life long ambitions are coming true, so then you may ask, why am I not jumping for joy only being a few hours away from my life long dreams being realized? Well I am right there with you in your bewilderment. Faced with the prospect of leaving, suddenly I realize how beautiful the Sandia Mountains are, or just how nice the sun feels against my face as it emerges from behind a large cloud. Moreover, I realize how important my family is to me, but that is a whole other can of worms that I will have to open another day.            

I once heard this radio program about the strange affects larger-than-life concepts have on the human mind. They used a story about how an extremely stoic man becomes a sobbing mess while in an airplane. He talked about how when he an atypical emotional moment in a movie or in an interaction around him, he would uncontrollably start to cry. He deduced that it was because he was in the mist of experiencing something that the mind could not wrap around (in this case it is the act of flying in an airplane at an extremely fast speed and an unimaginable distance from the earth) has some adverse affects. Now, I know what you may be thinking, “it is human nature to long for things it suddenly does not have,” but I do not think that is the case in this instance because my disgust for sunshine and how I view the same unchanged landscape has not change. I think that my mind is unable to comprehend what is about to happen and that is why I have this bizarre feeling.

There is only thing that I do know for sure. I am going to miss all of the friendships that I have established in my life. Every single person I call a friend has brought a their own light to my life and I know that the light my family has brought to my life is by far the brightest and I feel guilty that I realized this so late in my life.

Cheers,

Jacob

Where I come from

This is Cuervo, New Mexico.  Where my grandma was born and it's where I spent many of my summers growing up