Teaching English (ESL) in Bulgaria and other questions

I get a lot of questions from readers who are interested in teaching English in Bulgaria. I'm re-posting my answer to one such question that I got on FormSring, I hope it helps.

Question:
I want to teach English as a second language in Bulgaria but I don't know anything about the standard of living there nor if they need English-Bulgarian speaking teachers. Can you give me some advice or just your thoughts on the matter?

Answer:
I don't know much about this but I have an idea. Why don't you contact Berlitz? The school has a great reputation in Bulgaria (and worldwide, I believe). If they don't need teachers at the moment, they might be able to point you in the right direction. You can email the Sofia office directly at sofia@berlitz.bg. Also, you can search for other ESL teachers in Bulgaria online (both for standard of living/professional questions). You'd be surprised how many blogs you'd be able to find. Here are some of my favorite:

• Window to Bulgaria: MY FAVORITE. Check out his Baba of the Week series. Peace Corps guy.
• Karolinka in Bulgaria: English teacher at The American College in Sofia, I believe.
• Bulgarianna: another Peace Corps blog. She doesn't update very often but every entry is a treat. Check out her recent story about her little friend learning Bulgarian. So sweet!
  

If you are a not a Bulgarian and are moving to Bulgaria soon AND have questions about what to expect, please don't hesitate to ask! If I can't answer your question, I'll try to put you in touch with someone who can.

Which reminds me that I recently discovered that in an attempt to be better organized, I've been stashing how-to-marry emails in a separate folder of my email account that I FORGOT ABOUT! If you wrote me an email and never heard back from me, PLEASE FORGIVE ME! I wasn't being rude. I just spaced out. I am working through all the emails and you will be hearing from me SOON.

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.

Apartment hunting

I must say, the financial crisis is great for those of us who are employed and apartment-hunting. Looking at real estate in Memphis doubles the pleasure because there is plenty to go around and all of it is insanely cheap. Earlier today we spent a total of maybe one hour looking and sent out about 10 inquiries.

We really liked the description of a house near Rhodes where Kyle will be teaching, asked the guy for pictures and he said that "Google Earth took some for him but they are blurry". Google Earth did what?!

And then, of course, there was the great 3-bedroom apartment that's "close to everything". Everything?! Really?!

But the one that really stole our hearts was the luxury condo apartment in downtown Memphis that you get for free for a month, pay a $200 security deposit and after that your $725/month includes utilities + "Multiple pools, several tanning beds, a workout room plus more".

Kyle, having some Irish in him, and I, having been land-bound for about a year are both awfully pale and could really use an extended session at the tanning salon but what we are both most nervous about is telling Leigh Johnson that we actually looked at Downtown apartments.

***
P.S. This is the one that we really want.

A summons to Memphis

When Kyle was visiting Rhodes College for his on-campus interview, he was given a goodie-bag containing college brochures, Memphis periodicals, a Rhodes coffee-mug and a couple of "local interest" books. Last night I started reading one of them.

It is Peter Taylor's Pulitzer prize winning A Summons to Memphis, which I am finding insanely enjoyable. It's such a great Southern novel... with all its idiosyncrasies, and old-money, and plain people, and being only allowed to "deb" in one city and that's it, and people saying the most offensive things and still sounding like they are paying you a great compliment:

"Nashville," the old woman had said, "is a city of schools and churches, wheras Memphis is-- well, Memphis is something else again. Memphis is a place of steamboats and cotton gins, of card playing and hotel society. Anyway," the woman went on to say to Mother, "you, my dear Minta, will love Memphis."

I find it VERY funny that the search committee, or whoever was in charge of putting together the goodie-bag, thought about which books to include and picked Taylor's story. It is a novel about an Old South family moving to Memphis and subsequently falling apart. Not exactly the type of story you want to share with someone you are trying to CONVINCE to move there, is it?!

Les Frenchies

We've spent most of weekend packing. Kyle and I have been stressed out about packing, both individually and together, so many times that this time around we decided we are not letting it happen. We have already decided which pieces of furniture we are keeping, which clothing items we are taking with us and most of our decorative possessions have been packed away. We are placing everything in boxes and marking them properly so we wouldn't have a hard time unpacking in Memphis come August.

This is one of Kyle's boxes. It contains books by French philosophers AND... his brown sweater.


If you've got any good packing and/or moving tips... send them my way.

Love is... a kitten

Last week we moved to a new apartment. We love it for a variety of reasons but mostly because together with the apartment we inherited a brand new pack of kittens: fur, and silliness, and fake bravado and all.


See, we placed this cabinet drawer out on our balcony to air it out. Of course, we forgot it out overnight. And when we got up in the morning, we found a cat with her four baby-kittens sleeping in it.

They are shy and jumpy but they surely love that we feed them cheese. And every morning we wake up to find them sleeping just outside of our bedroom in their little drawer. We are not cat people, but we are completely in love with them.

Isn't this what love is, anyway? You find yourself completely incapable of recalling all that stuff you thought you knew when presented with a different option in the presence of your loved one...

***

Photo by Prof. Grady. He found them first!

Anything once

Kyle is officially MOVING to Bulgaria later today. This past weekend he got drunk with his friends, packed two suitcases, mailed out some papers and hopped on a plane to come and be married to me.

I know that he must worry about some of the complexities of moving to a foreign country he's barely visited: this crazy language of ours and our never-ending pessimism. But I admire him so much for being so open-minded about it and being so willing to give anyone and anything a chance. Hell, he keeps giving ME chances when I think to myself OK, that was the peak of stupidity. Please, do all of us a favor and disappear from the face of the earth!

When we talked on the phone yesterday, he told me to make sure I've stocked up on лютеница. He also worries that global warming must have gotten all the storks confused, that they would all fly back to Bulgaria pre-maturely and we would have no time to enjoy our мартеници.

He often says that he would try anything once:


Starting today, we'll try to be, among other things, Bulgarian TOGETHER. We'll keep you posted on how it goes.