Reset

My time here in Bulgaria has so far managed to divide itself neatly into more-or-less coherent, theme-oriented chapters. Chapter 1, were there to be a forthcoming book (there isn't) would detail FISI and my first two weeks here. Chapter 2 would cover the first days in Sofia up through the High Holidays, including my first trip to Munich. Chapter 3 would comprise the month of October and my trip to Romania, and Chapter 4 would be the story of the rest of my time up until the Holidays - rushing to finish the allotted amount of research, my weekend trip to Belgrade, and tackling the titanic task of finishing my Grad School applications. Chapter 5 would, of course, be about merry, merry Christmas in Germany.

Chapter 6 would be the account of how I delved back into my research, traveled to Istanbul, found out about my Grad School auditions, and began putting all sorts of undue stress onto myself because of them. Chapter 7 would be the month of February back in the States, the memories of which remain a nightmare and a scourge unto my psyche. Chapter 8 would tell all about 'Conference Month'--as I've taken to calling it in my mind--and my trips to Berlin and Thessaloniki. And Chapter 9 would include the euphoric episodes of Spring Cleaning and Passover, making my final trip to Munich, heading off to the States for my brother's wedding, and what has transpired in the past week.

On Thursday, I interviewed Kremena Stancheva, one of the featured singers of Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, to ask her about how her craft changed between the time when she was an amateur singer in her home village of Kovachevtsi and when she began singing professionally in Sofia. It was truly awesome--and a little surreal--to sit in the living room of one of modern Bulgarian folklore's celebrated figures and to get to chat with her about her experiences, having her get up halfway through to serve tea and banitsa, continuing to pick her brain about the state of modern folklore, and to get what was my most direct firsthand account of the stuff I've been trying to assimilate and understand for the better part of 8 months. And when it was over--having completed my archive work on Wednesday--I was officially finished with the research portion of my grant.

In my Fulbright application, I had originally proposed a deadline of April 30 to get this done, which would give me exactly 2 months to write my thesis. While I missed that deadline by 3 days (and I won't actually begin writing until tomorrow), it's a nice feeling to be (roughly) on schedule, especially since I proposed that deadline with no knowledge of my subject and absolutely no conception of what the situation on the ground would be.

So I'm in good shape, more or less. I have 5 full weeks to pound out my first draft, which I'm hoping will come in somewhere around 50 pages. You can do the math--all I need to do is to produce 2 pages per day for 5 days a week--and it doesn't seem that daunting. We'll see how things actually progress, but I'm optimistic that I can do a satisfactory job in that amount of time, it will leave me with 2 full weeks to revise, tweak, edit, and proofread.

To celebrate the end of this long slog quest for knowledge, I headed back to the Black Sea, along with a number of my Fulbright compatriots, for a long weekend starting on Friday. I'm on the bus back to Sofia right now, in fact, and as we fly past the forests and fields of Bulgaria, we are surrounded by largely untouched, heartbreakingly beautiful landscapes that conjure up in my mind images of an isolated, far-flung pre-modern agrarian society. It really puts me in the mood to come out here, into the Balkan Middle of Nowhere, and just sit for awhile. Ah, to be a monk, with the sole purpose and quest of finding enlightenment.

At any rate, we stayed the weekend at a little for-rent apartment complex in Byala, a resort town of moderate size located on the coast halfway between Varna and Burgas. Most of us arrived on Friday afternoon and spent a few hours resting up from our travels before making dinner and having a not-crazy party before collapsing, exhausted, into bed before midnight. Yesterday was spent largely at the beach (and what a хубаво beach it was) before we packed it in to repeat the previous night's festivities. Today, we packed up to leave, spent a little more time in the sand, and miraculously made it back to Varna on time and without incident before going our separate ways. It was a lot of fun, considering it may have been the last chance we had to party mostly together before our collective year here is done.

So, this was a weekend to reset, to mentally sweep away the entirety of the complicated, confusing, convoluted process of living--academic, emotional, and personal experiences alike--that has brought me to this point, and to prepare myself to climb this last, entirely new and unbekannt mountain that lies in my path, the one through which, by virtue of the work necessary to crest it, I will earn the right to conclude my year and leave this place satisfied and at peace. After this weekend, nothing that I've done up to this point matters any longer; I am left only with the knowledge I've accumulated, the growth I've experienced, and the people to whom I've hewn close. Nothing else.

This thesis is the last thing standing between this point and the end of my stay. I'm not going anywhere, save a long weekend trip to Vienna, and my focus is now narrowed to the singular task of finishing the year up strongly. Whereas the last 8 months have been marked by variety, the next 2 will be defined by their simplicity, consisting of nothing more than writing and celebration. It puts me back in the mindset of those years when I was in high school, when, as soon as the weather turned truly, gloriously warm again (as it has finally done this week), every one of us, to a student, was checked out and ready to finish up.

But it's overarchingly strange to think that this will truly be the final chapter in the story of the year I spent in Bulgaria. I've gotten used to this place, my travels to destinations abroad notwithstanding, and while I'm definitely ready to go home, I'm finally realizing just how great it's been to me and for me. I can say with confidence, regardless of how these last two months turn out, that it has been one hell of a year, and it's been genuinely good for me.