Let's Get Spooky: A Mercifully Shorter Post

It has, for a time, been Fall here, but now we're coming up against Halloweekend.

I like Halloween. It's always been a fun holiday (Candy + Ragers + Costumes = Obviously fun), but I don't go crazy for it like some people, for whom it is the ideal time to let their Inner Child burst forth with the sheer exuberance of someone who loves sugar highs and dressing up. Don't get me wrong - I enjoy this holiday, but there are better ones on the horizon.

Like Thanksgiving. Halloween always makes me smile because its arrival means that Thanksgiving is only 3 weeks away. And for those of you who don't know me, I LOVE THANKSGIVING. Take the best food served at any point in the year, add it to family, a four-day weekend, and my impending birthday, and it is, quite simply my favorite couple of days of the year.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I'm content with merely teetering on the edge of a full-blown Post-Hijacking Tangent. Let's get back to this weekend.

Being in the Balkans, I am in the midst of the mind-blowingly cool opportunity to travel to some incredibly interesting places with little trouble, so a couple other Fulbrighters and I are going to have a Vampire Weekend. That's right, y'all, we're going to Transylvania for Halloween.

Adding to the coolness of such a trip was the revelation yesterday of my great-grandmother Dotty's hometown - Frumuşica, Romania. While not really on the way to our destinations (Bucharest on Friday, Braşov and Sibiu Saturday and Sunday), this may be a good opportunity to scout out the country for a possible return trip to try to find my great-grandmother's remaining family.

But there have been a few things to take care of before I leave. On the research front, I've been continuing with the two sources I mentioned last time, and they've taken the courtesy to converge, so I'm now at a point in both of them where they are discussing the same customs. I can, therefore, follow along concurrently as they corroborate or contradict each other. This is nice and it makes my job easier.

I've also resumed moving forward with my grad school applications. I've winnowed the field, finalized a few things, and begun filling out the mountain of electronic paperwork endemic to this process. I have a little over a month to finish everything, so, for the moment, I'm in good shape vis-a-vis the relevant deadlines.

Tuesday night was a lecture at the American Research Center on the Balkans during the Ottoman period, which gave me a lot of valuable information that will serve as background to my research. Afterwards, a few of us, including a couple of the ARCS fellows, went out to dinner, which turned out to be, as they might say in the UK, a rollicking good time, and I got to meet some more cool people who are doing similar things. Last night, Michael stopped through on his way to the airport, and we headed out for another delicious dinner at yet another hole-in-the-wall Bulgarian restaurant, which I'm slowly beginning to realize are ubiquitous in this part of the city.

The items on the docket for today: Bulgarian lesson, sending emails, finding lodging for the weekend, buying a train ticket, cleaning my apartment, research, packing, gym, and finally, after all that, hitting the road.

So now, away. If you never hear from me again, it's because I've become one of the undead. Don't bother looking for me.

Winning

Not this kind of winning.

This kind.

Sorry for that. I can't help but take a brief step back to take a look at how things have been panning out so far, having just passed the 2-month mark in my stay here.

As I alluded to in previous posts, I came here for a variety of purposes beyond simply doing research. I've already discussed my purposes related to Making The World A Better Place, but, as some of you know, I've also had personal reasons for embarking on this venture. /Sharing Moment Alert (To skip this Sharing Moment, scroll down to the paragraph fourth from the bottom):

I applied for this scholarship when I was in a phase of my life where things didn't make very much sense. I had just graduated from college, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, I had no obvious opportunities staring me in the face, I was facing my first year of independence, etc. The time of year was at hand for applying to grad school, but I repeated my decision of the previous year not to apply, as I wasn't 100% committed to a specific path. A very wise ex-professor of mine had suggested going abroad and doing something, anything, not only for the fantastic cultural opportunities it would afford me, but also for the opportunity to get my proverbial excrement together.

And, if we're being honest with each other--for which I see no reason not to be at this juncture with you, my loyal readership--I needed to get it together. With the conspicuous exeunt from my life of college and all the trappings thereof, I had lost quite a few of the things that had kept me going and working and progressing: Externally-imposed structures and the goals that came with them. Easy social opportunities. A regular schedule. Motivation.

They think they do a good job of preparing you for the Real World in college--and give all sorts of flowery speeches to this end--but the one gargantuan thing they forgot to tell me, at least, is that all of the things I just mentioned must suddenly begin to come from one's own person. You blink, you're a graduate, and from that day forth you must be, 100%, the steward of your own life. One day, you're in an environment where you're guided as much as you want to be, and the next, you're out into the open ocean of the Necessity of Self-Direction.

Suddenly finding myself in this ocean, while I took the steps necessary to ensure my survival (I found a job, an apartment, etc.), beyond that minimum threshold, I floundered in a lot of ways. Without anything definite to work toward (aside from the obligations of my unfulfilling, clearly non-career-launching job), I wasted a lot of time not doing much of anything. And so, without, really, anything else to turn or look forward to, I decided to take the not-so-hazardous leap of applying for a scholarship abroad, to see if it would lead me anywhere that might encourage me to get that aforementioned excrement together.

Fast forward exactly a year, and I'm living on my own in a studio apartment in a former Eastern Bloc country whose language I still command rudimentarily, pursuing a completely self-directed program of study. And, though I know this is in direct violation of every principle I've ever had inculcated within me (those being humility, discouragement of self-aggrandizement, self-indulgence, jinxing oneself, and, perhaps most importantly, committing any of these in a public space such as this one), I want to say it: So far, in the new sense of the word that Charlie Sheen has introduced to our lexicon, I'm winning.

Perhaps my biggest flaw that was up for correction was my lack of self-discipline. But I feel myself--albeit slowly and inconsistently--turning into a more disciplined person. I have begun getting into a routine - putting in 8 hours of work a day, just like a real adult, heading to the gym afterwards, using my new language every day in a focused context, using the weekends as a time to relax and meet people and improve my social being. I have made stop-and-start progress, but I have actually set myself a productive, healthy, fulfilling schedule to which I have sometimes managed to adhere. 

In college, there wasn't much of a choice--I had to go to class on a schedule that was more or less set for me, and they gave us so much work that I was forced to be productive or else I would have sunk--but here and now, in what will most likely be the most independent setting of my life, I have had to make all of these things happen for myself. And I'm actually starting to do it, with more and more regularity. I'm getting that proverbial excrement together. This is me starting to win. I have a long way to go, still, but I can feel tangible progress.

Now, to put that all of that self-indulgence masquerading as an uplifting personal anecdote aside, let's talk about the last week. On the business end of things, I have basically spent my research time reading two items. The first is a book by American ethnomusicologist Tim Rice on Bulgarian folk practices. Especially valuable within this volume is the wealth of ethnographic commentary it contains on Bulgarian society from antiquity up through the age of Communism. The second is a just-published dissertation by Galina Denkova on Shopi folk practices, which, of course, is precisely the kind of thing I've been looking for. So I've had a lot to do at the library.

Wednesday was the feast of St. Ivan Rilski, the patron saint of Pernik (via a semi-humorous connection - Pernik is a mining town, and Св. Иван was known for having hidden out in caves for a long portion of his life in order to escape persecution), so my new friend Stefani and I went there for the town festival, which featured about an hour of folk dancing and singing. Pernik is just about at the center of the Shopluk, within the subregion of Graovo, so it was a fine opportunity to witness music that is representative of that area. We got an impromptu tour of their ethnographic museum from a woman who hit the ceiling when she heard I was an American doing research on the Shopi. (Her enthusiasm was kind of astounding. It was nice to be specially accommodated, to be sure, but she was so eager to show us everything that the museum contained. Not that it wasn't appreciated.)

Thursday I was back to the library, had some extraordinarily strong coffee (that it was noteworthy enough to merit inclusion in this blog should tell you just how strong this coffee was), and began cleaning my apartment (a process which lasted until early Friday afternoon) because Laura came on Friday. We went out to a nice dinner Friday night, and Saturday we made a grand tour of Sofia, including, among other things, all of the important buildings and monuments in the eastern half of the Center, качамак from a little soup place that is quickly becoming my favorite, cappuccino at the National Palace of Culture, ridiculous hot chocolate on Цар Освободител, and many other pleasant things to do on a cold day. Sunday we went and had delicious Indian food, the likes of which we hadn't had since a hot July day in Los Angeles, and we gathered a few people for drinks on Sunday night. I had to take her back to the airport early Monday morning, and it has been right back to work for me since.

I am currently in the middle of another busy week that will once again be only four days long, but there will be another post coming Thursday before I leave for the long weekend. To find out where (and it will be cool), read on, dear reader, read on...

Heat!

Things have taken several turns for the awesome over the past few days, but before I talk about the ones that don't involve me being warm, I just need to express my gratitude for perhaps the best thing that has happened to me since I got here.

Heat! I has it!

My landlady, messenger of the Almighty that she is, snagged me as I was coming up the stairs from a long, tired day on Friday, and asked if she could come into my apartment to turn my radiators on. You, of course, know what I said. And just in time, because:

Snow fell on Sofia yesterday. Improbably, beautifully, poetically, the snow was falling when I woke up late Sunday morning, and it pretty much made my day twice as nice. It didn't stick, but I loved it anyway; I love what snow does to the world. Winter is, admittedly, not my favorite season, as I've come to prefer almost anything to the cold. But when it snows, I can overlook the miserable temperatures outside. Snow reminds me of the Christmas season descending upon my old home on the East Coast--don't worry about that fact that it's mid-October--and it means the time for lights and festivity is coming. I hate winter; I love the Holidays.

It wasn't actually snowing that hard, but man, does this picture look epic.

I'm dreaming of a white Halloween.

So, staring out my window for a few minutes while the first flakes of Winter fell--don't worry about the fact that it just turned into Fall three weeks ago--I got all warm and fuzzy inside. It really put me in the mood for cupcakes. 

So, I went and got some. And while I was out, the foolish novel idea struck me to make soup. From scratch. Have I ever done that before? No. But the snow really put me in the mood for that, too. 

And so, while my laundry hung out to dry in the bedroom, I spent two hours committing culinary acts that would make Paula Dean cry in the pursuit of one lousy batch of tomato soup. I won't post a picture because, to be fair, it didn't look appetizing in the least, but it tasted much better than it looked, so while the snow fell, I dined on homemade soup and crackers. Let it never be said that my domesticity won't elevate me to top-notch marriage material someday.

Working backwards: Saturday was another mostly lazy day, though the night was fantastic. I went out to dinner with some interns at the Danish, Norwegian, French, and Belgian Embassies at one of the nicer Greek restaurants in town. Aside from my love of Greek food, it was a great time getting to know still more cool people, and was made the more notable for the fact that the waiters didn't speak Bulgarian; rather, they were Greek, but, thankfully, completely fluent in English. After the restaurant, we headed to a rock and roll bar, where I heard more hard rock in three hours than I had in the past five years. So after an extremely enjoyable night of dancing to Metallica--yes, it can be done--I headed home to my warm (!) apartment.

It was a good weekend. This week will see me do more research, reach out to some people with knowledge on the Shopi, go to Pernik on Wednesday for the folk festival in honor of Sv. Ivan Rilski's Day, clean my apartment, and on Friday, Laura comes to visit for the weekend. Let's get it done. Честит първи сняг!

On Cultural Integration

I came to Bulgaria two months ago for several complimentary purposes. The more visible of my two primary ones has been my research. But maybe, just maybe, the more important one is the one I fulfill just by living here. I say "fulfill" as if it's already a fait accompli. It's not, of course. Not by a long shot. I'm talking about cultural integration; the process of submerging myself within an alien society and adapting to it to the point where I can hide any obvious markers of my identity as an outsider.

Having only been here for two months, it hasn't happened yet. Nor did I expect it to have by now: These things take a long time, and perhaps one of the providential reasons that my stay is for an entire year is to give me the time to make it happen. It's not as though the Fulbright Educational Exchange was designed for the purpose of carrying out research and nothing else; the promotion of "cross-cultural understanding" was one of the expressly stated goals of the program right from its inception.

If you're not careful, it almost seems self-evident: You drop someone into a culture for a long enough period of time, and they will adapt to their surroundings and be transformed automatically through subconscious processes they are not even programmed to notice. Except that it's not that simple. Surely, given enough time, one can make these changes. But there's no guarantee it will happen. Motivation plays a huge role.

The discovery of the principle that motivation is a key component of language acquisition was a big triumph for the field of psycholinguistics. As the theory goes, instrumental motivation--present in people who acquire a language for a specific purpose, usually business or education--is a far inferior driver of acquisition than integrative motivation, which can typically only happen when one lives in a society that speaks a different language. Having lived this theory for a few months, I can attest to its verity. But the principle extends far beyond the realm of language.

It is evident in the customs, habits, and lifestyle one adopts upon taking up residence in a place far removed from one's home. The degree to which they pick up these things--which, among others, form the basis of culture--depends, to a great extent, upon their desire to integrate into that culture. These are the things that enable them to interact more freely and openly with the people around them, and they are some of the same markers of identity I mentioned earlier.

So how does one go about integrating into another culture? How does someone graft a new identity into themself? Forgive my linguistocentric bent here, but I'd like to start back, if I may, with language. Although I have learned to avoid superlatives, I will dare to say that learning and internalizing a society's language is probably the most important step in the process. If the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is to be believed, the language that a society uses actually determines how that society views the world, and thus, how its people act. Gaining fluent use of its language is obviously a tremendously important step, then.

There are, however, other things to consider. How much time one spends interacting with people. The kinds of things they do when they're alone. The cultural inputs they receive. All of these contribute to the integration of a person into a strange society.

I had a moment, a few nights ago, when I went to my local gym and signed up for a membership. I went upstairs to the weight room and began my routine. (Never mind that it had been many moons since the last time) And as I worked, I noticed other people around me, all presumably Bulgarian, doing the same things I was, paying me no attention. Without any obvious markers of my identity on display, I was, to them, just another guy from this part of Sofia, at the gym on a Tuesday night, just as all of them were. It was cool.

And it was a moment of feeling a very small amount of accomplishment of my purpose here. Yes, I am here to study. I could do that in a whole host of places, including my native country. But I am here, 10 time zones ahead of my home, in a place that was, until 20 years ago, an important member of the Eastern Bloc, because I have other purposes besides this one.

This purpose has not yet been fulfilled, and living here has not always been easy; for all that I've tried to do, I remain an outsider. Since I've been here, I have, at times, felt lost, embarrassed, awkward, scrutinized, and even, once or twice, mistreated. A large share of the experiences that caused these feelings have been due to my as-yet incomplete command of the language here, and others have been due to other things having to do with who I am and where I come from. But the only thing I can do is to try to live among this culture every day, interacting with its people as much and as conscientiously as possible. And yes, learning the language will be a big step in making this happen.

My friend Mark was here for two days, and we had a great time. I showed him around the city, we went out to a couple of nice restaurants, we drank some local beer, and I gathered a few people on his last night in town. The multiculturalism of the group was, if not astounding, then some less intense adjective expressing the same seniment - we had four native languages between us (those being English, German, Serbian, and Bulgarian). But we spent our time, with a few exceptions, speaking English, simply because it was the only language we all had in common.

This night was an exception, though. When I've been in a group setting here, it has typically been with Bulgarians or with a mix of Bulgarians and other Americans. And what I've envisioned as the ultimate marker of accomplishment of my purpose is being in these settings and speaking Bulgarian. To me, that would be the tell that I'd successfully integrated into this foreign culture.

I've found myself thinking about this scenario and wanting it quite a lot. And so, my task is clear for the next eight months. It's time to start making it happen.

Praise Zoroaster for the Gift of Central Heating

...so that he may deign to bestow it upon me. The weather has turned cold. Cold. (Which is colder than cold) And yesterday, on an already dreary Yom Kippur day, it began to rain.

The elements don't typically bother me much so long as I have a warm, dry house/apartment/cardboard box to return to when I finish my business with the Outside World. I will say this: My loft (I've decided not to call it an attic anymore. Who wants to live in an attic? Loft sounds nicer. And more expensive) is dry. But it is not warm. That's because Sofia, desperately hanging onto one of their last relics from the Soviet era, still operates on a system of Central Heating - that is, control of the radiator in my apartment is outside my jurisdiction; the superintendent has to decide that it's gotten cold enough to merit turning on the unit that supplies heat to the whole building. I'll let you do the math.

So, it is cold, but, for the moment, dry. (Praise the Pantocrator for half-victories) I can only hope, pray, and make supplications to Buddha that the superintendent will relent someday (and may the day be very soon!) and have mercy upon the Cold, Ravaged, Collective Soul of the residents of my building.

I'm sorry for all the snarkiness, sarcasm, pessimism, and the mockeries of religion contained herein. I don't mean any of it (Well, most of it). The dreary weather aside, it is a rather lovely-looking, overcast, quiet Fall Sunday here.

Things in general have gone well enough since last I wrote. The resources that I'm looking at to build a history of the Shopi people continue to trickle in, allowing me a steady stream of material, though not enough to overwhelm me. I have also been introduced, over the past week, to a veritable host of people who are experts on the subject, or tangentially related ones. I don't really have a clearer sense of direction than I did a few weeks ago, but the more I read, and the more people I talk to, the more likely it is each day that things will snap into focus.

I have also been hanging out with some of the people I met at second orientation, a pretty cool crowd. Between cleaning my apartment, reading treatises, spending some quality time with my ukulele (I am about to restring it), expanding my social circles, getting myself lost on late-night runs and significantly increasing the chances that I will be mugged and brutally murdered, and attending synagogue for Yom Kippur, I have kept myself fairly busy over the last five days.

Yom Kippur was a fairly interesting experience for me, coming from the background that I do, as was Rosh HaShanah before it. As you may or may not know, I come from a semi-observant, hazily denominational, Ashkenazic family. So to be thrust into a Sephardic Orthodox experience (in the Balkans, no less) was, while not a complete shocker, a surprising experience in a few respects. I won't go into much detail--both because I feel like it wouldn't be that interesting, and because the more I talk on the subject the greater the risk is that I offend someone--but it was a not unpleasant experience, and I found myself a few times having to roll with something I either had not expected, had never experienced, or both. But the synagogue is beautiful, it was an eye-opening experience to attend an Orthodox Yom Kippur service (the Highest of Holiday Services, you might call it), and I found myself adjusting to it with few problems.

I have always tried to use Yom Kippur as a pivot point in years past, and this year is no exception. I always strive to fix things that I'm doing wrong, recommit myself to things that matter, and to be, in general, a better person, both to people around me and to myself. So right now, I'm writing from the standpoint of someone with a healthy sense of optimism and a commitment to doing things better over the course of the next year. Go-go-gadget-improvement.

Now, I'm off to the airport to go pick up my friend Mark who is in Europe for two weeks and Sofia for two days. A recap of our adventures to come in the next entry. Stay warm!

The Last 10 Days (In 10 Paragraphs or Less)

I am so, so (In honor of Steve Reich's birthday yesterday: so, so, so, so, so, so, so...) sorry that this post is coming so far in arrears. Last week threw me a few too many curveballs, and as a consequence, I spent too much time having experiences and not enough time writing about them. (Wait...) But here we are, and all I can do is to give you an enjoyable and informative retrospective. So:

Last weekend started off with another Folk Festival, При шопите в Казичене ("Of the Shopi of Kazichene"). I got up bright and early to go meet Xristo, who agreed to come with me. We got to the center of town and found all manner of people, every one dressed to the nines - dancers, singers, instrumentalists, spectators. Particularly abundant were the баби (Literally, "grandmothers," these are the older women of the villages who still sing in the old style) and some (incredibly good) junior dance ensembles. We stayed and observed for a few hours, giving me my first live taste of what I came here to study. Have a few pictures:

3 баби

Super good U-14 dance troupe

In action

We headed back to Sofia where I ran some errands and hurriedly packed, because I had a flight to catch to Germany. I got to the airport with less than an hour to go before takeoff, sailed through, and made it to Vienna without incident (whew!). After a protracted layover in Vienna due to a missing crew, we finally boarded and made it to Munich 90 minutes late. And, dear Lord, was it good to see my girlfriend after nearly two months? It was.

The next day, we went on a tour of the city for a few hours. Noteworthy were the Englischer Garten, the surfers therein who were surfing in the river (!), the historic architecture in the Marienplatz, and other items of Historic Value, of which there were many. After an obscenely pleasant afternoon seeing all these things (and eating what was perhaps the most delicious pretzel of my life), we went home and changed to go to Oktoberfest. 

This rowdy, alcoholic mainstay of German culture (Wait...) was everything I had imagined (i.e. a 50,000-person frat party) and more. We started off by checking out a few of the beer tents, ended up at the Armbrustschützenzelt (I dare you to pronounce and/or translate that), had a €9 (!) liter of beer each, made friends with a group of Australians, then went in search of more fun. At our second tent, we made friends with a very nice couple from Düsseldorf who led us to a Biergarten after the tents shut down. At 10 PM. What? No matter; we managed to extend the night for quite a while after that. We somehow got lost in the woods (along with hundreds of other revelers), took two cabs and a bus, and missed our last bus home by 30 seconds. Luckily, the night buses run every hour, so we waited out in the blistering cold for 59 minutes and 30 seconds before finally getting home at 3:45 AM. Of course.

The next day was, to unabashedly plagiarize the author of a certain Text from Last Night, a beautiful one for a hangover, and Laura and I spent part of it on the lovely chore of childcare. Luckily, the kids she's taking care of are adorable, and I had a nice chance to practice my German, my command of which is similar to that of a young child. After a most welcome nap, we went out to a nice dinner at a cool little Italian restaurant somewhere in Munich (Don't ask me where anything is. I couldn't tell you).

The next day we saw a little more of Munich (including, most notably, the Frauenkirche, the Pope's old stomping grounds) and then it was time for me to fly. Though I pulled the same routine as I had on the way there (arriving at the airport in less time than was probably advisable), I made my flight, and, after another delay in Vienna, made my way back to Sofia where--surprise!--it had gotten cold in my absence.

Wednesday night was Erev Rosh HaShanah, and I spent most of the day cleaning and getting ready. Before sundown, I headed over to the synagogue with Greg, and we sat through the most disorderly High Holiday service I had ever attended. Not that it was that bad, but there was a lot of (very audible) confusion coming from the masses. But for all that, it was a cool experience, as it was my first time in an Orthodox service (other than Shabbat services once or twice), and one in the Balkans, at that. It was over in an hour, everyone wished each other L'Shana Tovah, and we went home. The next morning I showed up ready for anything, and found a rather small group for Rosh HaShanah morning. The service was a marked departure from the Conservative/Reform blend I've gotten used to in the States, but it was cool. I took the rest of the day off, as I was starting to get sick and it was an important holiday besides.

That night, I met up with a few Fulbrighters who were in town for a second round of orientation, and we went out to dinner. It was delicious Moroccan food, and I met a couple cool new people. The next day was Official Day 1 of orientation, so we spent the day in seminars, presentations, and such. That night we had a swanky reception, and we finished it off by heading to a pretentious little bar for a few drinks afterwards.

But, sick as I was, I called it an early night, and a good thing, because early on Saturday, we took a day trip to Plovdiv. Now, I had never been there, and it's a cool city. At least, the parts we saw were. We were limited to the Old City, but there was lots to see, including old Roman ruins. We had a semi-swanky lunch at a semi-swanky restaurant, walked around a little more, saw the city's mosque, and headed home. Why not some pictures?

Roman-era fortifications

One of the hills upon which Plovdiv is built

The house of Nacho Kulturata, the Culture Tsar of Plovdiv

Roman amphitheatre

That night we headed out to dinner again, got drinks afterward, and I was home in time to listen to Roy Halladay's first pitch in Game 1 of the NLDS.

Sunday was my typical lazy-productive day, with the exception of a delicious lunch of Lebanese food with Melissa, Irena, and Laura (one of the newly Sofia'd Fulbrighters, not that Laura). Taking the day mostly off set me up to get back to work this week, and thank the Lord I did, as I was starting to feel useless, having taken the whole week off. Combined with the fact that I was sick and tired, I had had a pretty Down couple of days. But, over the course of the last two days, I have successfully remounted the Productivity Horse. And now off into the hinterland I ride. I hope you've enjoyed this rambling account of a random string of days that happened to be adjacent. I will see y'all later this week.

Bonus Paragraph: WFC.