Once again, much time has passed. It keeps managing to do that. I really enjoy writing about things that happen— but also to be enjoyed is the actual happening of the things, so writing has taken a back seat. Pretty far back, in fact, possibly hitched to the rear bumper of this metaphorical vehicle. And I think it’s fine that way. This particular word fest is a third attempt; the other two sit in the trash bin on my desktop as long-winded, nonsensical, and incomplete tries to recount an experience that continues to prove itself beyond recounting. Like most of the best parts of life, there's no way of putting it all down in words. In trying, I feel like a madwoman, sitting at a wheel and spinning ludicrous tales. Let me spin you some of my tales anyway— an assorted few that have made for themselves comfy and important spots in my memory. First is the tale of May (long over, according to my calendar, although I'm still looking for a second opinion on this). It was a month for the books. Four short weeks brought me to five different countries, while everyday life in Bulgaria still, somehow, wove itself in between. Sitting still at the end of it— all the planes, trains, boats, buses, and spaceships behind me— it starts to seem as crazy as it actually was. I have so many new feelings and favorite moments to spill from just those weeks that I could go for hours and still fall short in the retelling. There was May first, approximately three centuries ago, when school was out for International Workers Day and Reni invited Allison and I to the nearby village of Bozhuritsa for an afternoon. The atmosphere was anything but mellow— people buzzing everywhere, yelling, dancing, playing paintball and taking turns drifting skyward in a small hot air balloon, while the sun beat down and a giant grill covered everything in its radius with smoke and the scent of meat. But it was easy on the heart. Hiking up a hill covered in forest, sitting down in the tall grass and eating kebabche, talking with each other, and nothing more. The day had a really lovely quality to it. For all the farther places I’ve decided to go, it was neat to know that, even after nine months, there was still a place that could feel so new only half an hour down the road. And people to go there with like Reni, who takes care of my cat whenever I travel and always leaves my apartment tidier than it’s ever looked upon my coming home. Not only a superhero of a helper, but a genuinely good person whose company I love. She has made my time here so much better. There was Santorini— with a quick stop in Athens on the way, where sandwiches were constructed and devoured mid-metro ride as fuel for a speedy walk up to the Acropolis and back down again. Then the island itself, the uniform white of its buildings all crawling out to the edge of the water and bouncing back sunlight. The outsider-esque feeling of being in a dreamed-about vacation destination, but on a slightly more worldly budget than the median of the crowd around us. Hiking north from Fira to Oía, taking in the view from Skaros Rock along the way and guessing aloud at the per-night cost of luxurious resorts that dotted the path’s periphery. Retreating, at the end, from the spot that claims some of the world’s best sunsets to somewhere farther away from the mass of perched tourists with ready cameras. The sun still fell behind the clouds quite to my satisfaction, and all the while, we had enough space around us to breathe while watching it. There was a weekend in Cyprus. A bike ride to the island’s eastern edge, where the quiet and dry and awesome Cape Greco national park reaches out into the Mediterranean Sea. The vivid blueness of the water on the jagged shore was like jumping inside a picture on a calendar page. The ride back, rolling down smooth hills toward town with the road stretched out next to us, and watching the sun rise over the water before a morning bus to the airport. It was good in every way. Then there was Italy. A nighttime walk to the Leaning Tower (we were there on research— turns out it is, in fact, still leaning). Hiking through the five towns of Cinque Terre, paths framed by rows of grape vines, patches of flowers, and incredible coastline views. I never remember taking more than two steps on level ground; always laboring up or down, I was certain that my knees would stop working, and even more certain that I would’ve given up before the end if not for having someone to follow. It was beautiful and hot and a sweetly satisfying day. Moving south by train, trying to get to the Amalfi Coast but coming face to face with life’s Alternate Plans— like getting on the wrong bus, waiting three lightyears for the right one to arrive, shaking a fist at the sky and cursing our luck. And then, the best part, finally getting there and taking a huge breath. And taking two-hundred-something steps down to a small beach to sit, while the cold tide inched closer and the sun went down. It was a really pretty place to be— and that’s what sticks. Naples, wandering around with nothing on the agenda but to take in the honesty of the crowded streets. A city not so perfectly painted and dusted and chiseled to please every tourist’s darting eyes, but more true to life. Doors open to people sweeping up their houses, or cooking a meal, or shooing their kids outside to go play. It was plain and good, rife with hole-in-the-wall spots and pizzerias that didn’t leave a single thing to be desired. And what a hoot it was to sit down to a perfect meal, while watching a 2-hour line spill out the door of a restaurant nearby, all because Rick Steves dropped its name on his YouTube standup comedy show (sorry Rick). Then a train to Rome, and a ciao for now in the airport to the fellow traveler who made it all so much more worthwhile and good. Multiplied was the joy of the experience for being able to do it with someone else; it felt like two of life's best things colliding. There was Seville, Spain, where I battled with the weird loneliness of eating tapas by myself, and also revelled in the unfamiliar easiness of being my own company to journey through a new city with. Meeting a past coworker and her huge dog and her kind friends, watching a crazy religious parade pass down the street by her apartment, eating snails, and leaving— feeling like the city, in all its parks and markets and friendly people and purple flowered trees, had showed me everything it could. There was waking up in Portugal (possible band name/ adventure novel title), the bus station still silent at the crack of dawn, and the loopy signature of sleeplessness in my eyes. Roaming through Lisbon, Belén, and Sintra, and the wide, solid beauty and sunny easiness that I found there in things that just kept working out really well, though not due in the least to my own planning or skill. The world’s most perfect day to peer over the cliffside of Cabo da Roca; a definite moment of wondering how such extraordinary things keep landing in front of my eyes, and such a range of places under my feet. It was really over, I knew, when I slid onto the purple vinyl seat of my last Wizz Air flight after midnight on a Sunday. There ended all these travels; the incredibly fortunate (and admittedly ridiculous) chance to hop around Europe for ten months in between teaching, the actual job that brought me here. It all blends together into mesmerizing ribbons of boarding passes and train rides, long walks and Google Maps, monuments, rivers, and bridges, foods and drinks and parks and oceans, metro tickets and long waits, sunshine and umbrellas and buses and backpacks and rolled up laundry— and then it stops, and life returns. And life can make it feel, sometimes, like none of these things ever happened. I feel it most when I wake up to the same pale yellow of my apartment walls, moving through my day with the hum of a routine that doesn’t care that I just came back from somewhere completely different or incredible when it asks me to get on with the daily drumbeat of doing what needs to be done. But my favorite thing in all of this is that these trips and these moments with people and these really cool things all did happen. Their memories are so good that they can either sting me if I ruminate on how I’ll never relive them, or they can bring me that crazy idea called gratitude for having lived them in the first place. I’m working on making it more of the latter. Now it’s the tale of June, and the thought that I’ll be home in less than two weeks is kicking me in the pants. Even June, though, and its rudely quick arrival has proven full and interesting. This month opened with a hike in Vitosha Mountain and a really good weekend I won’t forget. And then it let me slip into the gray of fear and confusion for a few nights, anxious over what I have and haven't done well and how in the world I’m going to say goodbye to everything and everyone here that I love. Then it found me in the park by the Danube, walking and eating ice cream and talking words with a fellow teacher, and one of the people who has been the most kind and loving and impactful to me since I came here— and my head felt kind of clear again, and I thought I could crank out a blog post. Then along came the Fulbright wrap-up conference: 10 hours on a bus to the other end of the country, two days full of watching the other grantees present on the achievements of their year and feeling like a little speck of dust in my chair, a slew of weird goodbyes that still don’t seem quite real, and 10 (hot) hours back. It wasn't altogether bad— I saw the Black Sea for the first time, which definitely cannot be complained about, and any chance to share air and a few moments to chat with these 30-something other people who have also been here and done this thing is a heck of a good source for laughs and strength. But it was hectic and overwhelming enough to take the calm out of my head, and so went another draft into the trash can. Megan made it bearable. Sitting at my side for 18 of those 20 bus hours, sharing my deep frustration at the man in the seat behind us who made loud and inexplicable sucking noises all the way from Burgas to Stara Zagora, cueing up the 90s Rap and Punk Goes Country playlists, and making fun of me for how I looked while sleeping. Listening, listening, listening to my feelings, chiming in with reason and insight, and listening some more. Pushing me along on that slow, rugged path to peace. When I questioned whether or not we’d actually learned or grown or made any kind of progress at all throughout this whole year, she pointed at a sign in Bulgarian listing destinations of the bus next to us and said, “at least we can read those words!" Everyone needs a Megan. And, of course, the tale of teaching. The school is getting hotter, my classes are getting thinner (attendance- wise, although maybe in size, too, from profuse sweating), and I'm growing a bit more nostalgic about leaving those who I've grown close to and will miss. My lesson plans are unspectacular; lately the name of the game has just been seeing how many students show up each day, and making sure I keep showing up also. In this way, my teaching journey may not have changed too much from the start— every week I prepare at home, walk though 16 different door frames with something to do, and walk back out with a level of success that’s all over the charts. What has changed, though, is my grip on it all. Funny moments and little connections now define a good day for me, rather than any kind of perceived success at teaching a concept or maintaining flawless control, and bad days seem to have a lot less of a lasting hold. So I guess I'll add that to the Growth List, right under being able to read Cyrillic letters, and I'll leave room for the ways I'm sure I'll realize I've grown in retrospect. It’s now my second to last week of walking the halls of Yordan Radichkov Foreign Language School as a celebrity who everyone loves (this is not true). I love them, though, and their loud voices and their goofy antics. Their attempts to get me to take them “outside” for class, then to keep walking on past the yard in a direction suspiciously similar to that of a nearby cafe. Their questions about people in America (are you all nice? Do you all have gym memberships? Does everyone live in a house?), and their willingness to express ideas and share openly about themselves in ways that I definitely never had the guts to at their age. I'll miss the ones who wave at me all around town and make me feel at home here, the ones who come up to hug me after class, even the ones (@ 9B) who put a giant "spooky!" sticker and a bunch of smiley faces on the cover of the register today, then all crowded around for the last ten minutes of class to help me scratch them off after I explained that the Director and the other teachers would definitely not find it as hilarious as they all did. I still sometimes think that, when the day rolls around for me to leave Vidin, they're going to have to pry this place from my cold dead hands. There will never be another year in this city, never another time where things are the way they are now. But, although I still have to re-convince myself of this here and there, life still has a lot more good and adventure and newness to offer, even if it'll never look exactly like this. I've thought so many times throughout these ten months that something incredible I experienced— some place or thing or feeling— would surely be the last of its kind, but then a new one would always come after. Then another, and another. And so will that continue, or at least I'll repeat it in my head to help me square myself with leaving this place. And while here, I was as absolutely lucky as I could have been. I don't think I had the best school, best students, best city, or anything like that— but I think all of these things were the best for me. I've paid my last electric bill, crossed all the Ts on Sharon's pet passport (she is going to America before me, the little trailblazer), and said goodbye to my mentor teacher who I won't see again before I go. With a cappuccino in my hands and a citronada in hers (I think she chose better in this thousand degree weather), we shared a final half hour, her calm and easy demeanor reminding me of the first time we met and how she's always made me feel comfortable. Dropping a major ego boost on the table, she gave me the push to finally tie together a final blog post— and I do suppose it'll be my last, based on my record. To any soul still reading, a hearty благодаря. I'm grabbing the minutes while they're still here.
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