November 2011
4 posts
Elections in Bulgaria
Turns out I’m still a huge sucker for the democratic process and having elections in my village, in which my boss and friend was running was really exciting.
People here constantly asked me if I’m voting or who I’m voting for etc. I of course do not have the right to vote here since I’m not a citizen, what’s more, my role here is to be somewhat impartial to the...
First Weekend of Hunting Season
All Pictures
Up at 5:30, at the cafe by 6 - it’s hunting season.
I’m sure there’s some science lurking somewhere ready to explain why the air is so much more crisp and clean, enjoyably so, when you’re up and out going somewhere so early. I defer to the people in the white lab coats for such musings, sadly they didn’t come to the first day of hunting season.
My...
OCCUPY YOUR NEIGHBOR'S HOUSE! (or, "Halloween")
Soooooooooo Halloween was a huge hit and excellent fun. Just what I needed.
ALL PICTURES HERE
Kids, man. What awesome miniature people they are.
It started when I walked into a class in session and told them we were going to celebrate Halloween and go trick-or-treating, which, thanks to television and globalization, required little explanation in order inspire maximum...
October 2011
2 posts
Letter sent to CA AG Kamala Harris
Earlier today I sent this email to CA Attorney General Kamala Harris in regard to her potential participation in a weak settlement with big banks being accused of fraud.
Her contact information is:
Electronic mail form is here.
Mailing Address
Attorney General’s Office
California Department of Justice
Attn: Public Inquiry Unit
P.O. Box 944255
Sacramento, CA 94244-2550
I strongly urge...
4 tags
"Help"
A friend of mine had a homeless guy living in her neighborhood pretty close to her apartment. She got to know him over time and one night when it was particularly cold noticed he had a pretty bad cough. She resolved to buy him a sleeping bag - that she could do and it’d keep him warm.
The next time she saw him he was beaten and bloodied. Someone had come upon him, seen his new found wealth...
September 2011
1 post
3 tags
Gift Giving
For a brief time I tried to include every possible future cost in a budget. I say brief because I’m referring to a period of maybe 2 hours when I tried to write that personal budget and, finding accounting for the future to be impossible, stopped.
Still, not having reached that kind of perfection that time didn’t alter my notion of “perfection,” of including and accounting...
July 2011
2 posts
2011 July 22 Running and Working
From 2011-07-18 Road shots for subor invite (that’s the new road the government just finished building using Euro-Union infrastructure money).
During up-periods I tend to think a lot about specific quotations from various people that happen to resonate with me. It’s one of the reasons I admire the various holy books in the world as pieces of cultural technology - written and spoken...
Special Report from The Economist on how news is... →
May 2011
2 posts
The Familiar and the New
Sooooo today I found myself doing something I’ve done far too many times before, installing Windows XP on a computer that will no longer work:
For some context I took a picture of how super green the 2nd World has become in the last two days:
The Osama-ning
I’m happy that “Osama ‘been shot.” (Like that little pun there?) The world is better without such a jacka$$ running about plotting and executing senseless and mass violence.
Clearly.
So since we all, probably, agree on that, let’s take a moment to consider the “next thing.”
What that is, is: was Osama Bin Laden worth two wars, over $1 trillion,...
April 2011
3 posts
When to Not Tell the Weather What to Do
(The spoilers:)
Wednesday we met in the center of town around 8:15, heading out around 8:30 for a trash clean up a half mile outside of town. It was a good solid half day of work, though it was somewhat exhausting. 12 of us picked up and hauled away some 80 large trash bags from the drop-off off the side of the road.
I think we made a dent in the total amount of trash but the general...
tumblrbot asked: WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST HUMAN MEMORY?
1/2 Marathon, Abrupt Seasonal Changes, too many...
Sooooooooo…I ran a 1/2 marathon Thursday. 13.5 miles, 2 hours and 13 minutes.
I had wrapped up some work a little early, came back to the office to catch up with the Boss-Man and found our office full of people having some kind of less-than-formal meeting so I simply said, “hello,” to everyone and, “another time,” to him.
As I left the office the weather was...
March 2011
2 posts
At the Moment
I’m designing the new website that a very generous friend of the village has offered to code while listening to 90’s music I didn’t know I had on my computer.
The thing hanging by a telephone cord in the window is my satellite modem. The house I live in is made of concrete and so the reception is best if it’s by the window which is above my bed so there’s no place...
Yes We Will - 50th Anniversary of PC
to members @ Eatwell Farm
Peace Corps – Yes We Will
Peace Corps is meant to be difficult, something personally trying and a way to do good in the world.
Thousands of Americans world-wide work to improve the circumstances of the people with whom they’ve opted to live for a two-year period of time in some of the most remote and most trying locales and circumstances.
We don’t just sample a...
January 2011
4 posts
The Kindness of Strangers
Living here I get told a lot of cautionary tales about being robbed or pick-pocketed typical things to look out for in any foreign country when the awe of novel experience overloads our senses and we lapse on basic security habits.
Far from being a hostile place however, my experience here in Bulgaria, has been beyond outstanding.
(A nice day in Smolyan on the way home)
(On the walk home from...
December 2010
2 posts
American Thanksgiving in Bulgaria!
A couple weeks prior to T-Day I had somewhat casually asked the Mayor and the Deputy Mayor how they felt about putting on something for our Thanksgiving. There is a “Day of Thanks” here in Bulgaria but it’s not a big deal, in fact when the topic came up, they had to think for a bit about when it was exactly.
That said, they were very excited by the idea of celebrating our...
November 2010
5 posts
To the Reservoir! (11-07-2010)
So I know this guy. I can see where he lives and it’s not that far, as the crow flies anyway. We’re friends too, so on occasion we’d like to take a break from the busy village life and have a little lunch, exchange stories and work tips and so on but we can’t, because there’s mountains, forests and a reservoir in between us with no direct way across for 50-100 miles....
Ходихме на Лов!//We Went Hunting! (Nov. 6, 2010)
We were up before dawn, the sun was beginning its slow move into the valleys and onto our side of the mountain. It always takes longer to get here, leaving us in the dark that much longer. Thermal wear under throw-away clothes, shirt with a picture of a pig on it for luck (we were hunting wild boar), knife, coffee. Ready. Also, I’m not a hunter, I’m just along for the ride. We’re at the...
October 2010
3 posts
It was Bound to Happen (from 22-Oct.-2010)
One of my students quit before he even tried today. It was like his brain told him he couldn’t do anything and so even though he wanted to he didn’t even really try. Depressing. As for what inspired the title (something thankfully much more funny and light): I make a lot of mistakes here. I’ve gotten used to it, developed a thick skin when it comes to messing up and carrying on....
Work and Language Lessons
*Full title* Работа//Rabota//Work and Уроци//Urotsi//Lessons (language, in this case)* I’m translating a project outline document that I typed up with the Mayor. The process is this: 1. We talk 2. I type 3. (later) I translate 4. and Make note of the words I don’t already know 5. Later these become homework, but now… 6. I’m going to...
The Day-to-Day
I’ve got a request for things that generally fill my days. So here it is!
I usually get up around 7, though if I get to bed early enough I get up around 530 to go running. It’s still dark until 630 or so on our side of the mountain so when that happens it’s usually, well, dark and I need musical motivation. This generally comes in the form of NPR Planet Money or Dimmu Borgir.
...
September 2010
4 posts
A True Fact
First and foremost - the Title. It refers to how fashionable I am in this following picture.
(Thanks Grandma Barbara for the sweater, I had a feeling it’d help me fit in, and indeed it has.)
This my Teacher’s outfit - boring and very utilitarian I know. I like it that much more.
So yeah, I’ve been teaching English! I started around the beginning of September and it’s...
Unrelated: Advertising+Technology.
This: Part 1: The Reptilian Brain - Why Advertising Works Made me think this: With all of the coming-together of our media (TV, computers, related information, comments at the bottom of news articles..) and also our better understanding of how our brains work, it seems reasonable to imagine that some day your TV could have a “Left-brain/Right-brain meter” on it for the commercials. Or...
Pictures are Back Up!
So after much dilly-dallying with the computers here, the slow Internets and the glitching and what-not, I’ve finally gotten the “Pictures!@” button to work again. You can find this button on the left of the second row, just below the heading of this log. Check it out!
Living "Lа Vida Добре" (through 30, Aug., 2010)
-Boris and I
In the conversations I had with my boss leading up to my actually living and working here, there was a lot of talk about me mapping out trails, what he called, eko-pateka//екопътека, or “eco-trails.” I figured these were trails that didn’t have signs and weren’t on a map. “Great,” I thought, “easy, interesting and as far as tourism...
August 2010
2 posts
tumblrbot asked: WHERE WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO VISIT ON YOUR PLANET?
An Exercise in Decision-Making Simplification...
I’ve worked out a really good, short exercise to help simplify making difficult decisions. It takes less than 5 minutes to go through the process.
Describe your project, plan or idea in 2-3 sentences.
Below this short paragraph title two columns “Why you should” and “Why you shouldn’t.”
Take three minutes or so and write down all of the most serious and important reasons under each column....
July 2010
7 posts
“Яж! Яж!” (Eat! Eat!) 20-July 2010
We are nearing the end of this Pre-Service Training (PST) thing. We’ve got a week to go before we swear an oath to uphold the Constitution and officially become Peace Corps Volunteers. This will mark the end of the 11th week living with a Bulgarian family for all of us trainees, a time which has brought with it a diversity of experiences as well as some common themes, and common frustrations....
Корупция 15-7-2010
There are a lot of words in Bulgarian that are funny when you hear them because, after straining to understand the conversation, you immediately know what is being discussed. These are words like, “Корупция,”// pronounced Koh-roopt-see-ya// korooptsia. A lot of adopted words have this “tsia” sound at the end of them. It sounds like corruption, and guess what? That’s what it means. My host brother...
12-7-2010 Projectcetera
11 days until I move from our training city to my final placement. 11 days until I switch from being a “trainee” to a “volunteer.” It’s funny to be graduating between two “low-grade sounding” terms. Laticia, the granddaughter of Litka, the Baba I live with currently, is gorgeous. I’ve mentioned her before. She’s 3 years old and couldn’t be cuter - makes me happy about the future, and a little more...
Pictures, pictures, pictures 4
Pictures, pictures, pictures 3
Pictures, pictures, pictures 2
Pictures, pictures, pictures 1
June 2010
9 posts
21 June, 2010
I came to my permanent site yesterday, on the 20th, which is the day after a dear friends’ birthday. It took us about 8 hours of travel, by car with some breaks, to get here from the regional sub-capita, Vratsa, that the conference was in. More or less, our travel time was 9-5. It makes me realize two things quickly, how big the US is, and how small ubiquitous car ownership and use makes it feel....
Skype names
Some of you have already given me your skype name, the rest of you, please email it to me so that I may add you, and when the time is there, we can have some face time. Also, mine is cameron.ottens.
16-6-2010 Update
Today:
Simple future tense, dinner with the Mayor the town “biznezzman” and his star football player friend, and this:
“Най-обичам луди луди жаби! луди луди жаби на сън, йе!”
“nye obeechum loodi loodi zhabi loodi loodi zhabi na sun, ya!”
“I love(the most) crazy crazy frogs! Crazy crazy frogs in my dream, ya!”
More importantly, we leave town tomorrow morning for Vratsa, where we...
Out of Order/Right on Time
Site placement today: After Pre-Service Trainin, which we are 6/11 weeks through, I will live for 2 years in a small town in the Rodopie mountains. In my town: There are more sheep than people, I will work for the grammar school, the mayor’s office and the cultural center doing business development, language and computer classes, trying to find markets/clients for goods produced in the town...
THE TEXT FOR 9-JUNE UPDATE
BAAAHHH
My life here is a lot of studying, drinking coffee in breaks between class and then studying again. I usually then eat dinner, read, study, go to bed and restart. My host mother/g-ma accused me of “always studying” the other night when I tried to excuse my self from dinner to go study. I stayed at dinner longer which interfered with my studying. The theme is quite...
Emersion Learning 5-30-2010
Regular language learning, as I’ve experienced it, is basically this: read/pronounce, translate, memorize translation. Throw in a rudimentary learning/understanding of the foreign grammar and you start to arrange translated words/concepts into sentences that are palatable to native speakers. The experience of emersion for me has been very informative and incredibly interesting. It is a truly...