Good things recently

Spending time with my little sister is a rare treat but always a blast. When it happens in Greece...













...well, it's AMAZING.

Love and loss

My grandmother passed away less than a week after we last saw her. She had been sick for about a year and her death was not completely unexpected, yet, it caught all of us by surprise. She was the most optimistic, {bossy}, fun-loving person you would ever meet which is why, I think, we all just kept waiting for her to get better. We didn't think she would allow this to happen to her, she had PLANS. This is a picture that Kyle took last summer before she got sick. I remember her saying, "I don't think this will be a good picture. The sun was in my face and I forgot to smile". For her, no smile = bad.


These last few days have been really weird for me. I know this would have been hard anyway but it's especially difficult because of the distance. I just keep thinking how much I wish I had spent more time with her and poor grandpa who's reported he doesn't know what to do now because she was always telling him what to do. I wish I had gotten to know her better, visited more often. I also can't help but imagine what my parents' life will be when they are my grandparents' age and need help but I would probably still be living in the States. That part is really hard.

The really odd thing about this whole experience is that I feel that all the answers to my questions are actually coming from the very person that I just lost: Head up. It's all a part of life. Enjoy what you have. Don't worry. Don't be jealous. Be kind. Eat. Drink. Sing at the top of your lungs. Dance when your knees hurt. Have opinions. Ask for help. If that doesn't work, boss people around.

Bulgaria: what you love. Or not.

I keep forgetting about my FormSpring account but you guys keep sending me cool questions. Here's a response to one of them.

Q: Are there any particular aspects of Bulgarian culture, attitude and behavior that you dislike? What Bulgarian peculiarities do you like? Do you consider yourself a typical Bulgarian and in what way?

A: I dislike Bulgarian cynicism. I think that more often than not Bulgarians are unnecessarily pessimistic. I don't think that there's absolutely no ground for it but I think we push it to an extreme. I know I do and I am working on getting over it.

What I really like about Bulgarians is our complete disregard for personal space: we are nosy neighbors, tell people how to raise the children, take a lot of group trips, talk to our parents several times a week, show up uninvited, pick fruit off any tree that's within our reach. When I am in Bulgaria, I feel very connected. I love that.

I don't know if I am a typical Bulgarian. What I like about myself the most is that who I am has been influenced by two cultures that I like.

P.S. A dear friend of mine (name starts with N, has a popular Bulgarian blog wink-wink) is considering moving back to Bulgaria from NYC and I kept thinking of him while responding to this question. I am really curious to hear what y'all have to say about this, especially in the context of considering relocating back to the Motherland.

Cross-cultural vacation planning

Oh wow. It's been more than a month since my last post. Want a piece of advice from me? If you are thinking about starting a second blog: DON'T. It's hard enough to keep one up. Anyways.

The K-G clan is in the midst of planning our summer pilgrimage to the Motherland. As any self-respecting Bulgarian will tell you, in the summer one MUST go to the beach. Kyle is fully on board, of course, the non-questionability (ha!) of beach vacations is one of his favorite things about Bulgaria.

What has been causing some anguish in me is serving as mediator between husband, mother, father and sister. I really want to make sure that everybody gets exactly the vacation that they'd like, by god, we all deserve it! But the questions are endless: where are we going? when are we going? how are we getting there? what are we hoping our days would be like once we are there?


So far we have been able to agree that we are vacationing some place in Halkidiki. The Bulgarian side of the negotiations team is somewhat terrified that we are going at the BEGINNING of July (But it will be COLD?!). Also, Mom is worried that Dad would be too tired from all the driving (6 hours!!!). Sister wants to do NOTHING (no trips, no stops, just beaching all day long!) and Husband wants to make sure that we don't spend all our time just lying on the beach, getting skin-cancer. He is serious about that one, he wants to DO stuff and I know he means it. A couple of years ago, we went on a short weekend trip with a bunch of friends. I had a blast and he did too. But he did mention that "Bulgarians on vacation" seemed to mean "killing time while figuring out where to eat next". The man has energy and he likes activities!

I am sort of torn. I don't mind lazing around for a week. Especially if we are doing so in close proximity to salty water. But I do feel there should be more to vacationing that that. Especially when we are spending our time in the Land of the Gods.

Am I projecting cultural differences in this dilemma or is this just what family vacations are always like? I am giggling as I type.

***
Photo by Kirilov-Grady

Gender roles in bi-cultural relationships

When our pipes froze, I started calling people for help. I called Angie whose dad has a maintenance company. I texted friends, I updated my Facebook status, searched the local Craigslist. Everyone and their mother knew that we needed a plumber. I was able to talk to about a thousand plumbers who gave me very consistent and straight-forward directions:

1. Find any vents and/or openings in your basement and make sure they are shut.
2. Find the central switch and turn your water off when you leave your house.
3. Turn your heat up.
4. Wait and listen for sounds of water leaking.

I did a great job of taking notes and communicating their directions but at no point in time did it occur to me that I would be involved in the actual implementation of the advice. I just sort of... well... assumed that my husband would go out into the garage, locate the appropriate tools and take care of vents, openings, central water switches, whatever.

That's exactly what he did. He covered the vents, found the switch, turned the water off when we left the house, turned it back on when we came back, turned the heat up, kept checking the faucets, etc. etc.

I can't remember the last time I felt as Bulgarian as I felt earlier today.


As many of you already know, I find Bulgarians quite curious on the gender equality front. Bulgarian women have been getting higher education degrees in "traditionally male" disciplines forever. Most women work outside of their home. Our legal framework is fairly progressive, granting a variety of provisions that make parenthood and child-care manageable. Women are still paid less, get promoted less quickly and are often harassed by their male colleagues but, generally, women do alright in the public sphere.

The domestic space is a bit different. Most Bulgarian families are quite traditional when it comes to the division of domestic labor. Women do most of the cooking, cleaning, childcare, family networking; men change light bulbs, work on the car, take out the trash and do other "manly" jobs. This angers me quite a bit as most of the time it's women who end up taking up most of the burden in household management. Yeah, sure, men do difficult jobs but those are jobs that happen only once in a while. Women cook, clean, etc. every day.

I see a lot of that in my own family (although my dad is a big helper) and friends. And I notice some of it on my own end... albeit our own dynamic is a bit different. Kyle and I are good about sharing all of our household responsibilities... BUT... I can't be bothered with "typically male" tasks: mowing our small lawn, changing light-bulbs, screwing in lose screws, and, today, closing off open vents.

I am very embarrassed by this and had a hard time deciding whether to write about this but I thought it'd give us an opportunity to have a good conversation about gender roles in our bi-cultural relationships. Based on little stories I've heard here and there, it seems to me that the division of household labor along gender lines can be a big source of tension between people: for example, Bulgarian women expecting their non-Bulgarian partners to be handy-men and Bulgarian men expecting most cooking and cleaning be done by their partner...

Is that how things have been with you? Do share even if you prefer to do so anonymously!

A cross-cultural marriage is an adventure I'd recommend

Anushka Asthana has a great piece on (her own) mixed-race marriage in The Observer. Here's the point that I found especially poignant:

So it is undoubtedly true that getting married highlighted the differences between us. Because before that, it had been about me and him and sometimes our parents. But now he has found himself not just my husband, but a fully fledged member of the Asthana (and Bahel) family. And I'm sure there is a risk that could bring along some difficulties. But the truth is that while our cultural backgrounds are hugely important to our lives, they don't come close to defining us. In fact, I'd say there are more ways in which Toby and I are similar than our racial backgrounds make us different.

That, too, has been my experience. Our cultural differences were never really apparent while Kyle and I were still dating as graduate students. As we became more serious about our relationship, got engaged and then married, family members got thrown in our life and that brought out differences that neither of us had been really aware of before. I'm not talking about anything BAD. Just different. Like daring to put tomatoes in your mostly-lettuce salad. If my father knew we did this, he would probably disown me.


***
If you like this blog, please subscribe to it via RSS and consider becoming a Follower. It helps me keep track of who's reading and provides a fun way for you guys to get to know each other!

From the mailbag: US Visa from Bulgaria

A couple of weeks ago I received an email from a reader, K, who had some questions about getting American visas for her Bulgarian in-laws. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to help her but, with her permission, I am re-posting her email here.

I need some advice on getting my In-Laws approved for US Visa from Bulgaria. My husband (Bulgarian) and I have been married for 2 years. In 2 months we will be having our first baby. Last Sept we had his parents apply for US visa and both were denied. Our plan is to have them re-apply after the baby is born but here is what I want to have them do instead. First, have his mother apply and a few weeks later have his father apply. I think because my husband is a only child, that's why they got denied (reason was could not prove they would return to Bulgaria). Our only worry now, what if they check see we have them applying separate??? I need some advice on how to fill out the form and apply for the visa, in a way they will be approved.

Please help if you can!

Photo by D3 San Fransisco

***
If you like this blog, please subscribe to it via RSS and consider becoming a Follower. It helps me keep track of who's reading and provides a fun way for you guys to get to know each other!

Don't be afraid of Santa

This holiday season, Kyle and I have been mad about video montages of crying children having their picture taken with Santa. I was telling my parents about it and Dad sent me the following portrait of me at the age of 3, I think. The picture was taken minutes after I got my glamorous purse-present from Santa (We called him Grandfather Frost in Bulgaria at the time).


I emailed the picture to Kyle and here's what he wrote back in response.

Some observations:

1. You are adorable.
2. You said you were "almost" crying...
3. You have the same haircut!
4. Kude e Diado Mraz?
5. Mnogo te obicham, tikvarina.

kailcho :*

Happy New Year to you all! Don't be afraid of Santa!

This Thanksgiving

I am grateful for my mom and my dad who are the sweetest, most caring and giving adults I've known in my life.

I am grateful for my little sister who is funny and smart and inspires me every day but also fills my heart with heaps of joy.

I am grateful for my American family who always remind me that home is not a place. Home is people that care.

I am grateful for friends: here, there, everywhere. Old and new. I am always amazed at how generous and gracious y'all are and how much easier the rough times are when you are around.

I am grateful for technology that helps us all stay in touch even thought we are thousands of miles apart.

I am grateful for this little life we are living: Midtown, our feather bed, our jobs, our cute house, our pots of herbs, our record player, the old film cameras we purchase on Ebay and the produce section at the local Kroger, my Borders discount card. For the first time in a long time I feel like I live HERE. This is where we are AT.

I am grateful for a wonderful Thankgiving day with Dr. J's family who are the most welcoming bunch you'll ever meet.

I am grateful for Dr. J sharing her Memphis with us.

I am grateful for finding a great recipe and making coconut-and-oats macaroons that might have just become my favorite dessert.



But most of all, I am grateful for my husband who not only had the brilliant idea to dip the macaroons in melted chocolate but also makes me feel like I am the luckiest girl in the world. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

Much love to you all!

Translating Tolstoy

Earlier today I came across Translating Tolstoy: an interview with Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the husband-and-wife duo behind some of the most beautiful translations of the Russian classics in the last couple of decades. Oh, my! I thought. These two are the superstars of mix-breeders!

Mr. Pevear, 66 years old, was born in Waltham, Mass., and initially translated works from French and Italian. His wife was born in Leningrad, Russia, and emigrated to Israel in 1973, where she lived for two years. The couple met in the United States in 1976 and married six years later. They've been translating books together since 1986. Ms. Volokhonsky provides the first translation of each work, with running commentary on the author's style; her husband works from that draft to render his own version. They then confer and work on that text together.

The interview is obviously focused on their work but as I was reading it I kept recognizing familiar patterns of interaction:

WSJ: How do you resolve your differences over the work, and do disagreements ever spill over into your personal life?

Ms. Volokhonsky: Richard is a native speaker of English. I'm a native speaker of Russian. My task is to explain to Richard what is happening in the Russian text. Then it is up to him to do what he can. The final word is always his. I can say this is not quite what the Russian says. Either he finds something that satisfies me or he says no, this is how we're going to do it. We discuss endlessly and sometimes it becomes a nuisance because we return to it again and again even after the manuscript goes off. But we really don't quarrel. It would be much more interesting if we did.

Kyle and I do that too. When I am moved or offended by an article, an email, or a comment on my other blog that was originally written in Bulgarian, I translate it to Kyle. Then: explain, explain, explain, go back and forth, explain. We do quarrel sometimes, though, and it definitely IS interesting.

***
Please become a Follower of this blog. It helps me keep track of who's reading and provides a fun way for you guys to get to know each other!

Anniversary?! Whose anniversary?!

Do you guys celebrate anniversaries? My parents have been married 30 years and have NEVER celebrated. When I called them to congratulate them a couple of weeks ago, Mom was reading the paper and Dad was sleeping on the couch, "watching TV". When I asked my mom about what they'd had for dinner, she said, Petya, let's talk about something interesting. No party, no candle-light dinner, no fuss.

It has nothing to do with their relationship. I am not sure if they are in love anymore, but they definitely show a lot of love and respect for each other. Also, they are still very silly around each other... which, in my book, is a pretty solid sign that things are not half bad. In the picture below, for example, my dad is pretending he's not listening to my mom's looooong story and she's pulling his ear to make sure that he DOES listen. That's just how they are.


But that anniversary thing... I just can't get over it. It's really strange. And now that I am thinking about it, I can't remember any of my immediate family ever celebrating a wedding anniversary... Not my aunts and uncles, neither pair of grandparents, not my cousins. I never celebrated anniversaries before I met Kyle and ours are kind of tame.

What is this about? Are all (older) (Bulgarian) couples like that or is it just my family? Help me figure this out.

Saturday night at the K-G's

Kyle and I have been BUSY. This new city we live in is wonderful and we are both excited about our jobs but today we both felt like we needed to have a quiet day at home. Reading, watching baseball, and eating lazy food. It's divine.

Updated Mix-Breeder Blogroll

Hey, kids. Just wanted to give you the heads-up that I updated the Mix-Breeder Blogroll. If you know other people who are in bi-cultural relationships AND blogging, let me know, OK. I would really like to expand the list!


On a totally unrelated note, this is a picture of my Baba Vessa. She's my mom's mom and lives with her husband (my grandpa) in the village of Lopian, which is about 60km North-East of Sofia. She is posing in front of her epic bean garden and is a little bit unhappy about being photographed in her gardening clothes. She is the sweetest woman in the world.

The photograph was taken by Kyle this past summer and is a part of a bigger family portrait project he is working on. You should check out his photo-stream on Flickr.

Raising a Bilingual Child

There's a great discussion on the New York Times Motherlode blog about raising bilingual children. Obviously, you want your child to learn whatever languages you and your partner speak. But how to go about it is not as simple as it might seem at first glance:

My husband and I are both bilingual (Spanish/English) and are trying to raise our daughter to be the same. We’re taking the same approach our parents used: all Spanish at home until she’s two or three and then start teaching English.

...

The differences this time around, though, are that we live hundreds of miles away from our families, our bilingual friends are either childless or live too far away to make weekly visits practical, and we live in a predominantly English-speaking suburb. The local playgroups and mommy-and-me classes are all English speaking, so our daughter (10 months old) never hears other children speak in Spanish. On top of that, she hears us speaking to other people in this strange other language.

I think that most of us here on this blog find ourselves in similar situations. Maybe if you live in Chicago, where there's a large Bulgarian community, things are different, but for most of us... speaking Bulgarian outside of Bulgaria is a mostly domestic activity.

How do those of you who already have kids go about passing it on to the little ones? Do you even try?

P.S. For those of you who are wondering, Kyle and I do not have kids yet.

Big bursts and little bursts

Just finished reading Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. I didn't go ga-ga over it like many people told me I would but I found Strout's treatment of middle-aged and/or elderly, middle-class couples quite fascinating. Reading Olive made me think (and worry) about marriage and aging in a way that I had never considered before. It also made me think about some of the long-term relationships I have observed in my life: my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. I think that when a book makes you look inward and has you guessing about your own experiences, that's a pretty good sign it's a book worth reading. Not always, but most of the time. So, I'm happy I read Olive even though I didn't particularly enjoy the process of reading it. I will leave you with a passage that really struck a chord with me:

Olive's private view is that life depends on what she thinks of as "big bursts" and "little bursts". Big bursts are things like marriage or children, intimacies that keep you afloat, but these big bursts hold dangerous, unseen currents. Which is why you need the little bursts as well: a friendly clerk at Bradlee's, let's say, or the waitress at Dunkin' Donuts who knows how you life your coffee. Tricky business.

YES.

Quoting Chandler

My sister Ina is a huge fan of Friends, the sit-com. She has watched it so many times that she can provide relevant quotes from the show for pretty much any situation.



Earlier today, I was telling her that I am sort of looking for a job in Memphis but I am not quite sure what I would like to do and while I do that, Kyle will be the primary bread-winner in our family. Do you remember the Friends episode in which Chandler gets an unpaid internship, Ina asked. Let me think, errr, NO. Do YOU?! I replied.

Well, turns out that Chandler and Monica were in some kind of a mix-up and Chandler wants to act LIKE A MAN and make Monica feel safe and secure and confident that he can figure out a way out of the dumb thing they are in. So he tells her:

Don't worry, Monica. I am going to get us out of this, even if it means you will need to work twice as hard!

Made me laugh for too many reasons to list here.

Dealing with distance

I am currently in Bremen, visiting my little sister. It's great to be with her but even though I just arrived, I am already sad that I leave in a couple of days. Ina is my best friend and a wonderful human being and I just wish our lives did not pull us in such different directions. Literally.

I feel like when we were younger the distance didn't matter so much. We just took our time together for what it was, had fun, appreciated the opportunities we had to hang out. The older I get, though, the harder it is to get used to the idea that our times together will be rare and far in between. I know I need to accept it, but I just can't.

For those of you out there who live far from the ones you love... how do you do it? I know that there is no right way to "keep in touch" and we all just sort of do what we can to feel connected... But still, I hope that our collective wisdom and experiences can help us figure out how to get over the sadness that distance creates and replace it with joy.

Do share.

Death from a distance

My mom called today while I was in the shower. I missed the call and figured I would talk to her later. Fifteen minutes later, I got a call from my sister and my heart sank. Someone died, was the first thing that entered my mind.

Nobody died. It's my Name Day today and she was calling to wish me well.

As my grandparents and parents get older, death is constantly on the back of my mind. Most of my communication with family members happens electronically, so every time someone calls, I take a second to breathe in and out before I pick up. I worry that they are calling with bad news.

Is this why immigrants always have this barely noticeable sadness in their eyes? Not because of anything bad that happened to them but because of the constant worry that if something bad did happen to someone back home, they would not be able to participate in the collective healing?

Either, or

I am in Bulgaria right now. Kyle had to stay in Germany because he needs to teach German philosophy to German kids in English. I miss him so much and I find it difficult to be here without him. When you get married you become so used to having your buddy with you at all times. He is my husband, yes, but he is also my thinking partner and my sounding board and I have a harder time making sense of things around me without having him around to talk them over with.

I have either become co-dependent or I have really found a true partner. Either way, life is better when we are together.

It runs in the family

I call my sister at 6.55PM:

Ina: I only have 5 minutes to talk.
Petya: What are you doing at 7?
Ina: I am working out.
Petya: What are you doing now?
Ina: I am smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer.

Which reminds of the times when Mom and I would go running and after we were done exercising, I would grab a burger and she would have a beer.