Settling In for Year Three!

About a month ago I moved into a new apartment, which isn't very far away from my old neighborhood in Sofia. I love my new place for a couple of reasons. First, it's well-connected by public transportation to the city center and other places of interest. I have a metro stop, two trams, several buses and a few marshrutki (also known as shared taxis) within easy walking distance. Second, the layout is great for having guests over because there is a separate room with a pull-out couch and the living room (which doubles as my bedroom) has a big sofa with comfy chairs and plenty of room to sit, chat and watch movies with friends. As you can see, I had a few friends over shortly after I moved in:

I hope to have many more gatherings like this one here. The only drawback is that there really isn't enough space for more than ten people here at a time. But I prefer more intimate settings, anyway. Third and most important is the amazing view I have overlooking Mount Vitosha and the sports high school next door. Why is it advantageous to be located next to a sports high school, you ask? What is a sports high school, you ask? It's a fantastic spot because with two large football fields directly behind the building, my windows look out onto green grass and open space rather than directly into other people's apartments. And a sports high school is another category of specialized secondary schools that have been established here in Bulgaria since the socialist period. It was thought that education should be highly specialized into different practical fields so that students could be more prepared to enter the workforce upon graduation. The foreign language schools where I used to work in both Pleven and Sofia are also legacies of that system.

I really can't emphasize the view enough. It's simply wonderful, especially at sunrise and sunset when the mountain is illuminated by pinkish or orangish light. From the eighth floor I also have a view of the southwestern corner of downtown- including the Military Hospital and the distinctively unappealing Hotel Rodina, one of the tallest buildings in the city at just 25 stories in height.

In other news, I'm still working on getting my project ready for implementation in the fall and waiting for the paperwork to be filed so I can really start canvassing schools. Ideally I'd like to work with one school in Sofia as well as one school outside of Sofia, mainly because there are a lot of differences between urban and rural (or less urbanized) regions in Bulgaria. This is largely due to high levels in unemployment resulting in dwindling small town populations. Many factories which once dotted the countryside have closed over the last twenty years, displacing hundreds of thousands of workers who have left in favor of higher wages in urban areas. Parallel to this trend is the so-called "brain drain" of educated professionals such as doctors, lawyers and educators who move abroad for better pay, resulting in local deficiencies in numerous sectors.

So my goals for this year are to see "Learning Through Our Differences" through to its completion (and reapply for future funding, as well as disseminating information about its results across the country) and to study more Bulgarian! I keep getting frustrated with my lack of vocabulary when talking with colleagues and friends, but it's really up to me to stick with it and push myself to learn more.

Searching for pre-war architecture in Warsaw

A little over a month ago I was in Warsaw visiting my relatives on my mother's side. I've been making pretty regular trips to Poland over the last several years, at least since I've been living in Eastern Europe. I wrote about my visits during my first year as an ETA in Pleven, again that summer as well as during the fall of my second year. Over the course of these visits I have become more and more interested in my family history. And this time I got to do a little more research on putting together the puzzle pieces of that story.

My Polish grandfather was born in 1909 in a small town in the south called Częstochowa, most famous for its shrine to the Virgin Mary which is believed to have saved Poland from Swedish invasion in the 17th century. We don't know much about his life there because the family moved to Warsaw when he was still a young man. His father was an auto mechanic, I imagine a lucrative profession in the first decade of the 1900s. Back then Poland was still partitioned into three sections by the Prussian, Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires. My great-grandfather used to travel to Russia often on business, but mysteriously disappeared on a trip there in 1914 at the onset of the First World War. His family never heard from him again and he was presumed dead, leaving his wife with four children to look after. After the war ended Poland was re-unified and became an independent country, but this was to be short-lived; in just over twenty years Nazi Germany would invade Poland and set off the beginning of World War II. At some point between the wars my grandfather's family moved to Warsaw, where they lived in an apartment on Puławska Street. I found the address on my great-grandmother's German identification document issued under Nazi occupation and while I was last in Warsaw my aunt and cousin took me to visit the building. We weren't even sure if it would still be there, but it was!

The exterior wasn't very remarkable (although it did have a fresh coat of paint, something lacking in most of the older Warsaw buildings outside of Old Town or New Town) and the ground floor on one side is currently occupied by a supermarket chain and a gym. One surprising detail was that there is a pharmacy which has been standing there since 1930. They even have a display case full of antique medical equipment. Going inside of the inner courtyard, however, was the biggest highlight. Tall, cream-colored walls surrounding curved balconies with wrought-iron railings and an open patio decorated with bright red geraniums awaited our discovery. Although I don't know the floor or apartment number where my family lived (or if the building has ever been remodeled or changed) it was still an exhilarating experience to stand there and imagine my grandfather walking into that building every day as a university student. 

After finishing his degree as a mechanical engineer at the Politechnical University, my grandfather enlisted in the air force. Just a few years later he would become one of thousands of Polish airmen who fled occupied Poland to the United Kingdom, where they were incorporated into the Royal Air Force as a separate Polish division. I recently came across military archives from his service there and found out that my grandfather was promoted twice and awarded the Polish silver cross medal of valor. Due to political reasons he was never able to return to Poland permanently after the war. I also know that he didn't like talking about what had happened; it must have been difficult leaving his life and family behind. His mother actually died on Victory Day in 1945 without knowing the fate of any of her four children (one son had been arrested as a prisoner of war and summarily executed, another had joined the Warsaw underground resistance army and her daughter was also working with the underground). There are so many stories from that turbulent time that have probably been forgotten, but as I put together details and facts that I come across it makes me feel like I'm making our family story more complete. 

On a related note, I also visited a former vodka factory that was recently converted into art galleries and loft space. It's located on the right bank of the Vistula River in the Praga District, one of the least damaged areas of the city after its destruction at the end of the war. You can still find old brick buildings left standing from the 18th and 19th centuries there, a rarity in a city that was made 90% rubble just over 60 years ago. The outside walls are covered in colorful graffiti, and inside the main building is a temporary exhibition of old photos from Praga before the war. The Museum of Praga is temporarily located in the old Koneser factory until the original building (formerly a Synagogue) reopens after restoration.  

New (and Old) Beginnings

This week I returned to the Fulbright International Summer Institute as an alumna to share my experiences with the new group of English Teaching Assistants. Now that I've been in Bulgaria for two years, I keep thinking back to those first couple of weeks in Bansko: adjusting to life in a new place, making wonderful new friends, getting confused all the time by the language (oh wait, that still happens to me every day), and most of all being excited to learn about everything around me. I'm still just as curious as ever about everything Bulgarian, but things seem to move more slowly now. I feel comfortable here in Sofia, and I never would have imagined two years ago that I would be getting ready for yet another year of teaching in Bulgaria.

Meeting the new group of ETAs was a great opportunity to make acquaintances (hopefully many of them will come visit throughout the year!) and also to reflect on my time as a Fulbright grantee. I'm happy to have been able to share some of the best and worst parts of my tenure as an English Teaching Assistant, and I hope that through networking and sharing new experiences, this year's grantees will be even more successful in their projects. By the way, the topic of my presentation was "lesson planning and resources." I know that Maria promised to email all the presentation to the FISI group, but I wanted to also publish it here in case anyone else teaching English to high school students might be interested.

Fulbright ETA Orientation 2012

In the slideshow, I give a rough overview of what ETAs can do in the classroom, an example of a standard lesson plan, 12 activity plans and 9 links to helpful websites.

Now that I'm moving ahead and away from teaching high school, I wish the best of luck to anyone taking on the challenge of working with teens in the language classroom- especially the new ETAs working in Bulgarian foreign language schools. Have a wonderful school year!

Summer Update

A lot has happened in the past month or so. A lot of months have been like that over the last couple of years, in fact, but July 2012 was a particularly intense exception. I finished my last day as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant at the end of June, attended the farewell party for U.S. Fulbrighters and Bulgarian Fulbrighters who are going to study in the States next year, and I left for Poland to visit my family in Warsaw for three weeks.

Staying with my relatives is always a relaxing experience (lots of reading, picnics and swimming in the river by their summer cottage), and once again I took a trip with my cousin to a new destination in Poland. Last year it was the Baltic coastal city of Gdansk, but this time we headed south for the Tatra mountain resort town of Zakopane. While there I managed to check my email only rarely, but I did receive some startling and exciting news about my project, ""Learning Through Our Differences" (working title). Several months ago I applied for a grant from the Open Society Institute, who agreed to fund my project!!! So I'm working hard on that (more updates to come).

I hope that everyone is having a sunny and restful summer!