Blogging at Midnight

I pick the best times to do things.

Let's begin in medias res. Midnight is long since past. My wake-up call is four hours hence. Tomorrow, we four intrepid explorers (Laura, Hannah, Alex, and Myself) will board a bus, hop the border, and have a weekend adventure in Serbia. We depart at 7:30 AM, stop in Niš at 11, and arrive in Belgrade at 3:30. There, we are meeting our old friend Keša (not the rapper) for a tour and starry-eyed appreciation of the city, which will spill mirthfully into Sunday.

But let's back up. You know what? Let's Tarantino this one. It's so late, I'm going to go ahead and do it. We'll do this week backwards.

Let's start with language. Last week, I began working out of a basic Bulgarian student's workbook, essentially reviewing and solidifying everything I've learned up to this point. That has meant rounding out vocabulary and verbal repetition of every exercise. And wouldn't you know? It's working. I've hit another plateau in my ability to comprehend and spit out spontaneous (or at least, not-canned) responses to the everyday things people ask me. Today, I made my first successful small talk. About the weather.

And what weather - it snowed! Real snow. We're not talking the pitiful, paltry powder that fell for a few fleeting moments back in October. We're talking accumulation and white rooftops. Alas, my pictures therof haven't been uploaded yet, or you can bet some of your more moderately-valued possessions that they would be plastered all over this screen. But be content in the knowledge that it was beautiful, and boy, did it put me in the holiday spirit.

Another consequence of my new level of understanding of this language was the mildly momentous point I reached this week when I began reading my first sources entirely in Bulgarian, without the help of a translator. It has been painfully slow going, as there are a wealth of words (verbs, in particular) whose meaning eludes me, meaning that I have to consult a dictionary every few minutes. Be that as it may, I've gotten through 17 pages of dense Cyrillic writing this week, all on the abstract nature of Shopi folk music.

Tuesday, I had a meeting with several professors at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Ethnography, trying to come closer to divining the nature and origins of the Shopi. I haven't gotten any definitive answers yet, but it feels like I'm closing in on something. A frustratingly large amount of my time and energy has been devoted to questions of this nature, but I'm hoping it will, in the end, turn out to have been time and energy well spent. Next Tuesday, I have a repeat engagement with these same founts of knowledge, which will hopefully bring me closer to my goal.

Tuesday also witnessed a rather unique learning experience on my part, this one in the field of integrated circuitry. To make a rather long story somewhat palatably shorter, I was graciously offered the use of a deluxe Korg electric piano by a magnanimous fellow I met at the Thanksgiving function two weeks ago. (To expound upon this anecdote for just a bit, his name is Andrian, he got his Doctorate in Composition at Penn under George Crumb, and he is a rather generous soul.) Not five minutes after he dropped it off at my apartment, I, sleep-deprived and robbed of seemingly all my intellectual capacities, plugged it into my wall sans voltage converter. Needless to say, the piano was not happy about this.

After three days of panic (resulting from, just to drive the absurdity of this point home, possibly having fried an expensive and bulky piece of electronic equipment lent to me on complete faith by a total stranger minutes after having received it), I opened it up, and--Hallelujah!--found a blown fuse. This is where my (and now, through the sacred power of narrative, your) lesson in circuitry comes in. Fuses: Cheap and easy to replace. Circuit boards: Not.

Hoping against hope that this fuse represented the totality of the carnage wrought by my idiocy, I tried three different hardware stores, and my prayers were answered when I finally found an appropriate fuse, took it home, popped it in, and--wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles--this very expensive and bulky piece of electronics was restored to good health. This episode merits a shoutout to my friends Mark and Ed, who, to my extraordinarily good fortune, hold degrees in Electrical Engineering from prestigious universities.

My abiding panic resulting from this fiasco aside, my weekend was rather pleasant, as Greg, his sons, and I ventured up to Belogradchik on Sunday to visit the Magura Cave. The drive was wonderfully scenic, the cave was awesome, and we had--stop me if this phrase has lapsed into overuse--the extraordinarily good fortune to pop a flat tire not 100 meters from a repair shop that was, in small-town Bulgaria, miraculously open on a Sunday. A new tire, and the attendant labor, cost 30 leva. I seriously love this country. 

How about a picture or two of lovely Nature?

Open Road

Just another quiet Sunday

Wicked cool mountain

Awesome rock formation in Belogradchik

Magura Cave

30 m (!) Stalactite

This bat's just chillin'

On the way back down from Belogradchik, we stopped in Montana and got a quick tour from Marty, another Fulbrighter. All in all, a nice trip.

So it has been quite a week. Belgrade tomorrow through Sunday, one more manic week to go, and then it's off to Germany for Weihnachten. Stay tuned for stories about the Land of NATO's Wrath.