My host family had never taken me Na Gosti before, but I had heard the term mentioned somewhere. I and the five others from my training group in Byala Slatina decided that it more or less translates to "going guesting," like visiting someone and hanging out, but for semi-professionals. Last Thursday, we visited two colleagues of Tsvetan's, my host brother, who lived two towns away in a small celo of about 700 people.
When I got home from class at about 5:30 that Thursday, going somewhere was the last thing I wanted to do. Language classes were intense, the room in the community center where we learn is incredibly stuffy, I didn't know my teaching schedule for the next week and a current volunteer was coming to observe me, my class had big national exam coming up and I had wanted to set up tutoring hours for them. How am I going to learn all this? I'll probably have to speak Bulgarian with my students. How can I make friends and "build local capacity" if I don't know my colors? Also that day, we had had a resilliancy training session with a Peace Corps staff person. Some of the signs of stress that he mentioned: less talking, wanting more alone time, sighing, are things are part of my normal behavior. Maybe I'm stressed a lot. I am sensitive, and sometimes prone to internalize every little thing.
I walked in the door and Yoshka, my host mom rused me to the table, fed me tarator (a cold, yogurt soup), lentil soup, and a kyufte (small meat patty), then we got in to Tsvetan's car and drove off. How far away is this place? How long will we be out? Good think I already planned my lesson for tomorrow...We drove throug the celo of Popitza and continued on. It was hot, but beautiful. There were fields and big treen on the sides of the road. We drove in the middle, where the yellow line would have been, and swerved to avoid pot holes and farmers in horse-drawn carts.
The town in which we arrived had old houses and a big, old church. The house that we stopped in front of was on the edge of a field. We walked through the gate and in to their back yard. It had a big, big garden growing tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, grapes, and other fruits and vegetables that I couldn't understand. The couple and their daugher showed me their animals. They had a lot like my host family--a cow, which they said would soon be slaughtered, chickens, a pig, sheep, rabbits and geese. I sat with the wife while the husband, Yoshka, and Tsvetan, went to dig up some beans. White bean soup is a common dish, and really good. We sat under a cherry tree, shooed away flys, and ate keks, an egg bunt cake that Yoshka had taught me how to make and other sugary things.
The little farm was beautiful, but I was thinking, another akward conversation is not what I want right now. But the woman was very nice and I was able to communicate more than I thought I could. I wasn't even too tired to try miming, or maybe the sugar had hit my bloodstream at that point. The more I could try to say and the more questions that I was asked, the better I felt. When the three came back from bean mining, there was home-made cirene, a white, soft cheese, and rakia. I couldn't always answer the new questions, and I spoke like a deaf four-year-old, but these people were so gracious. It's amazing to think that they didn't even know me, yet they still spoke to me and included me in the conversation. Their kids brought out some of the animals, and I held one of their rabbits and one of their doves.
By the time we left, I wasn't stressed at all. I'm not sure why. It could have been the rakia, or the animal thereapy, or maybe the change of scenery helped. How does a stressful stiuation make even more stressful become not stressful? In conclusion, if you're stressed, you should probably go na gosti.
