I have probably been asked this question hundreds [edit: thousands!] of times since I moved to Bulgaria (date of arrival: June 20th, 1991).
Politicians, ambassadors, actors and actresses, movie and theater directors, entrepreneurs, apparatchiks, military men, academicians, musicians, students, mafia heads, and random people I meet at parties, alike: they all want to know how a Californian like me could ever leave the splendors of the United States to wind up in a poor, tiny, Eastern European (though "Southern" is more appropriate a term along geological and cultural, rather than political, lines), former satellite country of the Soviet Union. Though the answers I have given to "Why are you here?" have varied drastically at different times, one of my favorites is "Because I can be." :D
But now that I have been challenged by my new steemit friend @kayclarity, I have decided to give a more extensive, and hopefully truer, account of my journey. The short answer is: I was lucky.
Coming from a large, religious family (I have two brothers: one older, one younger) and primarily smaller towns (born in Riverside; raised since the age of one month in the following: Elsinore, Antioch, Lamont, and Yreka), the outside world always somehow appealed to me. At the age of 6, I was already the expert on insect and arthropod species in the neighborhood. (See that tree in the above picture? Mom mom found me eating a bug under it when I was just 3 or so years old.) By the age of 12, I was the local herpetologist. (Toads were a treasure to uncover in those bushes behind us.) Always exploring, always discovering -- that was my gig. And then I started traveling.
On the verge of leaving the Southern Baptist church as a 23-year-old, I made one last desperate attempt to rediscover (I thought it was to strengthen, at the time) my faith, serving as a summer missionary in Thailand. Instead, my faith was shaken to its core (the subject of another article, perhaps), and I was reborn as a person. I mean, traveling awoke my senses. I felt as free as a child again. At that point, I knew I had to live abroad. I briefly flirted with the idea of becoming a full-time missionary, but my desire to lead a "normal" life trumped my religious devotion and ambition, shall we say.
I changed my major from mathematics to English, so I could teach abroad. (Even back then, we were well aware that English was becoming the "world's language," so it was a wise career move.) I also wanted to finally lose my virginity, and having only religious friends didn't help :D So, I started looking for possibilities to live and teach abroad, and after a brief hope of going to Japan, I came across a friend of mine who had served in the Peace Corps.
Joining the Peace Corps was the perfect option for me because I was in the classic position of wanting a job, but first needing experience to find a job to get experience. But the Peace Corps trains, intensively, before sending you off somewhere to serve your country. So, after nearly a year of tutoring during the application process, I got a call asking if I wanted to go to Poland to serve. I was like, hot damn, those Slavic girls are insatiable when it comes to Western pantyhose (or so I had heard), so I was all for the idea :D Unfortunately, the Poland post fell through, but my second offer, Bulgaria, has even more sophisticated and attractive women, so who am I to complain? ;)
The story of my acceptance is kind of funny because, when they called and told me that the offer had changed to Bulgaria, I was like, "That's cool," knowing it was in "Eastern Europe," but I really had no idea about Bulgaria or Bulgarians.
I didn't know that Bulgarian yogurt is the best in the world, or that Boris Karloff, Hristo Stoichkov, or Christo (the conceptual artist) were Bulgarians. I didn't know Bulgaria occupies Thracian land and has soaked up both the blood and the culture of the Thracians -- though the Greeks claim Thracian mythology as their own. I didn't know that Spartacus was born here or that Orpheus descended into the underworld in the Rhodope Mountains near Trigrad or that Alexander the Great received his prophecy that he would conquer the whole (known) world at Perperikon, near Kurdjali.
I didn't know that the oldest gold treasures in the world were found here, nor some of the earliest European settlements. I had no idea that Bulgarian kings and their people defended these lands against the Byzantine emperors, or that the Romans had conquered the territory, a thousand or so years prior, and had also left their indelible mark upon the landscape, the culture, and the people. I didn't know that Bulgaria was #3 on UNESCO's list of Cultural Heritage in Europe -- after Italy and Greece -- or that Bulgaria was the oldest surviving name of any European nation.
I had never heard Valya Balkanska's haunting renditions or cried to Macedonian folk songs ... I knew nothing of the sort, but without hesitation, I said I would love to go to Bulgaria. After closing the conversation and hanging up the phone (yes we had those big home phones back then), I grabbed the nearest atlas to find out where my new destination would be:
Wow, that's cool: ... on the Black Sea, just north of Greece (must be tropical there, I thought :D), surrounded by Romania, Serbia, Macedonia, and Turkey, in addition to Greece and the sea ... Very interesting, indeed.
Anyway, that's the short story of how I came here, 26 odd years ago. And just for the record, I've never regretted the decision!
I would really love to hear your comments and your own stories, either below or in your own posts. You can use the tag #howicamehere if you'd like! Also, I hope you like this and make it go viral, 'cause I could really use the support right now. Thanks!
