Dear friends…
One year is all that remains between now and homecoming. My close-of-service date is set for the 20th of July, 2012, and I can already sense the mood of everyone’s work taking on a more urgent tone. The sea legs are gone and we volunteers are spending more time in productivity than in the butchery of good Bulgarian grammar.
It won’t be long before the sun sets on our service and for Peace Corps Bulgaria as a whole. We’re packin’ up and movin’ out. Two years from now, no one will truthfully say “I am a Peace Corps volunteer from Bulgaria” and maybe that’s a good thing. I hope the world one day doesn’t have need for any Peace Corps volunteers.
I taught English to the bar owner’s daughter today. As I was leaving, her mother insisted on paying for the lesson. I explained that I am a volunteer; I work for free and I’m not allowed to recieve money for my services anyways. They’re not the first to be surprised; I’ve been called a “hero” a couple times for working free of charge. But we’re no heroes.
You know who’s a hero? Indiana Jones. Optimus Prime. Oprah. Iron Man. I don’t want to live in a world where volunteerism is seen more as extraordinary than extra ordinary. By enjoying the benefits we’re born into, we accept the civic responsibility as Americans to propogate them to our children and, as world citizens, to share them with the have-nots.
And Bulgaria, although not a third-world country, has many have-nots. Something that personally saddens me is the lack of palette development in my students. Their world of food is mostly populated with cucumber salads, poorly-grilled meats, and french fries. I wish I could bring them all to Taiwan. I’d show them how to eat fried bees.
One of my former students in Taiwan emailed me yesterday, asking me to come back. She told me that I should return because I like beef noodle soup and, well, Taiwan has beef noodle soup. It makes sense. In fact, I’m tempted to go back to Taiwan plainly because all of the food is delicious whereas the food in Bulgaria is incredibly not very delicious at all.
I remember spending two hours on the bus, train, and on foot to eat this bowl of pho. It turned out to be the best pho I’ve ever had in my life. The same restaurant also served an astronomically good banh mi.
And of course, there are the xiaolongbao, little bite-sized dumplings that are partially filled with soup. The kitchen at Din Tai Fung, one of the top destinations for top-notch xiaolongbao, is paneled with windows for the customers to observe the cooks’ nimble fingers frantically folding in each pouch’s creases.
My first experience with prosciutto pizza was in Taiwan, too. It was at a restaurant called “Fifteen” – a homage to Jamie Oliver’s restauant in London.
Anyways, that’s er… quite a bit of a tangent I’ve gone on. Ha! So… last year in Bulgaria… I hope everything goes smoothly and that we end up leaving a meaningful legacy for the Bulgarians to enjoy. The Peace Corps organization deserves to be more than merely a shibboleth among young, idealist twenty-somethings; It was formed with a purpose, and I hope we are successful in playing our part in it.
Daniel