Bye-bye, Bansko; Zdravei, Sofia

My apologies for the criminal length of time between posts herein - it has been an incredibly busy two-weeks-and-change. So I'll make it up to you in the form of THREE separate posts. Won't this be fun?

While I would love to wax on and on (and on and on) about the last week of FISI, and as much as it merited my potentially doing so, I'm afraid that that would run counter to the interests of my time and your attention span. Nevertheless, I shall wax for a few lines, at least:

The second week of FISI was quite possibly better than the first, despite the still-greater abuses of our collective sleep schedule. Classes this week were Bulgarian Language and Human Rights. Added to the mix were a large (verging on titanic) contingent of MBA students from UMichigan. While I didn't get the opportunity to meet all of them, I did have a few conversations about the school and about their personal experiences. They seemed like an OK bunch for the amount of time they were there, and they--of course--participated in the festivities of the Last Night.

This second week of FISI, I got out into the town of Bansko a wee bit more, and even got over to the neighboring town of Razlog. With the help of my new friend Xristo, I ventured over to the Vivacom store in Bansko to pick out a Bulgarian SIM card; thus, I now have a local number. (A quick aside - The Bulgarian system of phone carriers is depressingly similar to that of the States, in that the three largest providers--MTel, Vivacom, and GloBul--provide something like 98% of the service to the country. Chalk this up as one of a few small ways Europe has disappointed my expectations in the Somebody Out There Must Have A Better System Of __ Than Ours category) It has been a strange feeling going back to working within the confines of a finite (and rather small) number of minutes per month. Call that another perspective-generating experience.

The following day, Xristo and I tested fate and went down to the bus station (na Bulgarski, Avtogarata) to buy a ticket for Razlog. Anticlimactically, the ride took 5 minutes, and it didn't take long for us to find what we had come in search of - the notary. We used this trip to check out a little bit of Razlog, and found that not much was different from Bansko. Satisfied, we returned, and I squandered another beautiful late Bulgarian afternoon attending to the mundane details of my business-oriented life.

Not strictly relevant to the content here, but Xristo and I saw this kitten on the way back from Razlog and OMG LOOK AN ADORABLE LITTLE KITTEN

Well, all good things must come to an end, and before we get to the juice--TMZ be damned--I wanted to offer my little tribute to Bansko, which represented my first interaction with Bulgaria. The town was lovely, picturesque, and really a nice place in every way. The people, I found, were pleasant enough, and imbued with what I'll go out on a limb and call a universal small town citizen quality - that quiet, welcoming aura that, it has been my experience, most citizens of small towns around the world share. Being there for the Jazz Festival was a real plus, and I got to see some really good music take place, for free, a five minute walk from the hotel. I never once felt threatened, or alone--although this sense may have had the most to do with the by-design bonding experience that was FISI--or overwhelmed by a sense of geography or anything else. Beyond that, it's quite difficult to separate out the experiences with my fellow Fulbrighters from my experiences purely with Bansko, so I'll conclude this little tribute by saying that my two weeks there, among Bulgarians, Americans, Those Of Other Nationalities, students, small town citizens, musicians, teachers, colleagues, and friends, were quite pleasant, and just about the best way I could have begun this adventure.

And yes, the Last Night happened, and it was everything that the collective Summer Camp-like energy leading up to it anticipated. The night started out innocuously enough, with an awards ceremony and farewell banquet at the slightly-more-upscale-than-our-host-hotel Hotel Gardenia. After the banquet came dancing, followed by a bout of packing back at our hotel by numerous members of our party who had left preparations for our departure until the last minute. There was a palpable buzz in the air as the clock ticked down those last few hours, and so we decided to do the only thing we could do to fight it - we went to the club.

From L to R: Katelin, Keša (Not the Rapper), Katerina, the Author, Naadiya

L - R: Delvina, Tijana, Melissa

I believe, though without conviction, that this was to Chalga

Aside for some antics afterwards back at the hotel post-club, that effectively did it for the night, and a good thing, too - by that point it was already 3 AM, and--more was the treachery of circumstance--we had to be up, packed, and down to breakfast by 8 AM. And down to breakfast we somehow made it, though none of us had gotten a full night's sleep, some of us staggering across the deadline with 2 hours or less to our coherence's credit. Nevertheless, sleep deprivation or not, it was time to say goodbye (Not the Andrea Bocelli song) to Bansko and to our first taste of Bulgaria.

I could not have been more excited about the trip

FISI was a superb way to begin this long journey. It was functional, practical - we learned some things about how this part of the world works, got acclimated to a new language and culture in a safe environment, surrounded by our peers who knew just as little about them as we did, and got to practice being on our own in a setting in which we weren't really on our own. But perhaps--dare I say it and risk a reprimand from those who organized the thing for the aforementioned serious purposes--more importantly, it was a chance to meet and network (read: party and bond) with peers who are going to end up being, in all likelihood, our primary source of support during what will be, at times, a scary, intimidating year.

So with that, Chapter 1 so ended. To find out what happens in Chapters 2 - ?, read on, dear reader, read on...