Fulbright in Bulgaria

Greetings from the beautiful mountain ranges of Bansko, Bulgaria! This week, I used what's left of my vacation days to do a 5-day study abroad program in the Balkans. I'm happy to report that so far, the Fulbright International Summer Institute has been an incredible experience.

Before coming, I had no idea what to expect since I had never been to Eastern Europe. I figured that things would be cheap and that I wouldn't be able to read any of the signs (damn you, Cyrillic alphabet!). That much was true, but I was also pleasantly surprised by the hospitality of the locals and much-needed change of scenery - the Western European cities have all been meshing together into my mind as a giant clusterfuck of Roman Catholic cathedrals and dirty rivers cutting through major metropolitan cities.

To start off, Mang-Git and I arrived at the Sofia airport on Sunday afternoon and from there, we took a 3-hour bus ride up to Bansko. According to our program coordinator, Bansko is especially popular during winter months because of its reputation as a ski resort town. Bansko also just recently started hosting an annual jazz festival, which has also attracted a lot of attention to the area during summer months. Luckily, the week of FISI that I was participating in coincided with this year's jazz fest, so there was plenty to do after classes ended for the day.

In recent years, there has been a lot of development in the area (which is why FISI only just moved over to Bansko, because there was so much construction before this year), but because of the economic downturn, a lot of the building projects have been abandoned. On our bus ride up the mountainside, we saw a lot of nearly-finished hotels and resorts, but they were missing windows and obviously hadn't been touched in months. Hopefully things will start looking up soon, it looks like a really promising tourist spot.

I took 2 classes during my stay here: Projects Writing & Management and Bulgarian Culture, both of which were taught by professors from Sofia. What's really cool is that the classes are made up of students from all over the world, so we have a different languages and global perspectives constantly flying back and forth in the classroom. During lectures, we also often heard car stereos blasting 7-year-old American pop music and horse hooves hitting the pavement as they passed by the classroom windows. Some of the Bulgarian students joked that since the country was a communist state up until 1990, they are still in the process of catching up on American pop culture (which explains why Des'ree and Jewel are still perceived as "cool" here).

In between classes, we have a lot of time to just wander around Bansko. I actually walked into town on my own during the day when it's just the old people and children running in the streets, and it was so weird because everyone just stared me. I guess Bansko (or the rest of Bulgaria and Eastern Europe for that matter) doesn't really see a lot of Asian tourists. It's especially different to walk around the city in the daytime than at nighttime, like during the jazz fest for instance, because young people are more acclimated to diversity and would have the courtesy not to gawk at unusual sights (like Asian people...? lol). So for the first time while in Europe, I felt really out of place, especially when a group of 10-year-old boys started pointing and whispering about me. I have to admit though, sticking out like a sore thumb does have its benefits. Later that night, Mang-Git and I walked into town to get ice cream and stood outside of the gated jazz festival area. Just as we were about to leave, one of the security attendants whom we met on the first day to ask about ticket prices approached us. She said she recognized us from earlier in the week and asked if we wanted to watch the band play a little longer, and offered us free admission, which was pretty freaking awesome.

Anyway, just a few pictures from this week:

Classes ended today, and I'm so completely burnt out. I guess I forgot what it's like to sit in a classroom and listen to lectures since I haven't done that since December!

Fulbright is taking us on a tour of some of the nearby villages tomorrow, which I'm looking forward to. After that Mang-Git and I will either rent ATVs and check out the rest of Bansko or stay the night in Sofia since we didn't really get to see the city when we first landed.

My week off is coming to a close, I'm not sure if I'm ready for that yet!