Greetings from Skapto 1

Disclaimer: this is very long and detailed. feel free to skim. also, no pictures yet...

Hello! First things first: I arrived safely at AUBG (relatives, time to breathe a sigh of relief and end the prayer vigil). Getting here was sort of a doozy, though. Luckily, I didn't have any travel problems with my flights, considering that flights were being diverted from Sofia due to fog (other people got sent to Greece, Varna, Belgrade, etc). So I flew from Dayton to Washington DC to Munich to Sofia (fun, right?). But it wasn't actually too bad because on the 8 hour flight from DC to Munich the seat next to me was empty and I had an aisle seat. I couldn't really sleep though, so I watched movies and listened to music (and got up to walk around so that I wouldn't get a blood clot...are you reading this, Mom?). I was amused to see that on my flight from Munich to Sofia was an entire professional men's volleyball team. There were all these incredibly tall men in matching sweatshirts and sweatpants. The flight to Sofia was somewhat delayed, and we landed about 30 minutes late.

Once we landed in Sofia it only took a few seconds to get through customs (no forms or anything, just had to show my passport). While the volleyball team and I waited for our luggage, more and more bags went around the carousel and mine were nowhere to be seen (I ended up taking two suitcases, a medium one and a small one, so that mine wouldn’t be overweight). Finally, this woman in a uniform came over and called me and some other lingering passengers to come with her if our luggage hadn’t come out yet. So we had to go in this little office to fill out the paperwork for lost luggage.

I was completely overwhelmed at this point, mostly because I was already really worried about finding my ride from AUBG (the university sends someone with either your name on a sign or just the school’s name on a sign). I guess I thought that if there were a bunch of students, they would leave me behind if I were that late (and my flight had already landed behind schedule). I was practically in tears, but I knew that I was overreacting because I was tired. So I sucked it up and went to fill out the information about the lost bags. The woman spoke to me first in Bulgarian, but when my response was a blank stare she switched to English. The main problem that we ran into was that I needed to give them an address to send my luggage to, but I didn't actually have an address because I didn't get my housing assignment until I got here (more on that later). So she told me to call them once I knew the address and they would send it to me.

I found the AUBG drivers once I got out into the main area of the airport, but we had to wait for a bunch of other arriving students, so we didn't actually leave the airport for 3 hours. It was about a 2 hour drive to get to Blagoevgrad from Sofia, and it was really scenic. The mountains here are beautiful, and the highway (which was a two-lane road for most of it) sort of wound around these interesting small towns. The only bad part was that to pass any cars or trucks, yyou would have to put on a burst of speed, go left of center into oncoming traffic, and then quickly veer back over into the proper lane. At one point, we were passing a truck and there was a truck barreling towards us head-on. Luckily, we managed to get back over into our lane in time, but there was a collective sigh afterwards because everyone in the car had been holding their breath.

It was already dark once we got to Skapto 1, one of three dorms here (Skapto 1, 2, and 3). At the main desk, there were RAs giving us our housing assignments, but my name wasn't on the list (as in, I hadn't received a housing assignment). So at this point, I was even more overwhelmed, since I had no luggage and no home. But the RD gave me a room for the night and told me to go to the office of Residence Life in the morning to get it sorted out.

Unfortunately, I couldn't go to sleep because I didn't have any sheets or anything (I had planned to buy them once I got to Blagoevgrad, but I didn't think that I'd be getting in that late in the day). Luckily, one of the other American exchange students met her roommate (a second semester freshman from Albania) and she showed us around. First she took us towards the main part of town and pointed out different restaurants, banks, bars, etc. Then we went to this supermarket that is basically the Blagoevgrad version of Walmart (it's called Kaufland). And we were able to buy everything there. But you sort of have to walk down this muddy path through a field to get there from the dorm, and on the way back, since it was dark, I fell in the mud. It was just sort of one of those days, you know?

So, my first impression of the country was not the best. Everything that could go wrong seemed to be going wrong. Luckily, I had no internet access so I couldn't really communicate with anyone from home to complain about how upset I was, so I just showered and went to sleep.

This is the turning point in the story. The next day was so much better. I woke up early and went to the main building with two other Americans to get my student ID card made. However, I was also not on their list (at this point, I was beginning to think that it was their fault and not mine). I had to go to a different office to have them look up my student ID number, but then I got the card. Then I had to go to the first orientation session, which was basically just a bunch of people from different departments related to student life (athletics, res life, counseling, etc.) introducing themselves and explaining what services they provided. Afterwards I talked to Lydia, the dean of students, who is also my academic advisor here and one of the people I had emailed prior to coming. I explained how I wasn't on any of the lists, and she took care of it.

I think what happened is that I sent in my application pretty early, so they had me down as a fall semester student until this summer, when Lydia emailed me something and I said that I was coming in the spring. Apparently, there was some glitch and although I was registered for classes, I wasn't marked down as a new visiting student for the spring semester. But it all got sorted out; the Residence Life office arranged it so that I could stay in the same room I had slept in before, and everything seemed much less catastrophic.

From then on, I was much more relaxed and was able to look at Blagoevgrad from a less-emotionally-charged perspective. The town is actually really neat. The dorms are alongside of the this river/canal thing, and you cross the bridge and walk towards the center of town to get to the AUBG main building, which is actually an old Communist headquarters building. There are a few cute little parks/squares in the town, and the streets are all wobbly. It's not too cold here, but it's perpetually foggy. I like it, though. It gives the town this mysterious feeling to it.

Most of the businesses in town are geared towards students. There are a lot of clothing and shoe stores, restaurants, cafes, and bars. There are also little convenience stores and a couple banks. It's bigger than I expected, and I really like it. It's nothing at all like Pittsburgh or Dayton.

Last night after the orientation activities for the day had ended, the RAs invited everybody (at this point, the only people moved in are new freshmen students and visiting students) to go out to a bar with them. Not exactly something that would happen in the U.S...but it was really cool. I went, along with maybe 5 other American students, a handful of freshmen, and a big group of RAs. The bar was in this basement in town, with lots of exposed brick and all of these different posters. The music that was playing is hard to describe, but definitely different from what you would here at a bar in the U.S. It was really fun, though. We were worried that the Bulgarian students would be really dressed up to go out (mainly because they dress up a lot during the day even), but it was actually pretty casual.

I've been eavesdropping a lot whenever I hear conversations in foreign languages (mostly Bulgarian and Russian). I haven't really told any of the non-American students that I've met that I speak some Serbian and Russian. It's kind of intimidating, especially since their English is much better than I am at either of those languages. But it's cool for now to listen in on people and try to understand. I did meet a freshman girl from Serbia who I told and she said she would help me practice it sometime. For the first time in my life, I am incredibly grateful that I can read cyrillic. I think that I'm the only American (of the new visiting students) who can, and it makes life much easier to be able to read signs. Also, I can piece together a lot of stuff that I read, which helped in things like figuring out what sheet size to buy or identifying bakeries, etc. It is really really cool to have such direct access to a foreign language while still having your native language (ie the fact that everyone at the university speaks some English) as a safety net/source of comfort.

Sorry that this post was so long, and sorry for not talking more about what the people are like. So much has happened since I got here that it was really hard to possibly try to cover it all. I haven't met either of my roommates yet, but their stuff is here (and I can tell that their names are Sonya and Gergana). Other than that, though, I know nothing about them. The general feeling I have now about the university and city is that I am really going to like it here. I promise to give more general cultural observations later at some point, but this is certainly enough for now. Until next time...