questions

I am SO tired of size 12 Times New Roman font.  I am tired of manipulating budgets.  I am tired of goals, objectives, aims, цели, подцели, blablabla.  What I’m trying to say is that I’m tired of SPA (Small Project Assistance).  Mostly because I don’t feel like it’s really fulfilling any of its purposes.  Now, you may ask if I actually mean my purposes.  I do not.  My purpose is to help the school, as my community, meet its stated needs.  Anyway, I don’t feel very good about the whole thing and it makes me ask some questions…  

I know most of the PCVs in my group are asking these same questions.  We are asking if we are content and most of us hear a resounding “НЕ!!!”  We are asking if we are being the best PCVs we can be, the best English teachers, the best members of our communities.  We are reevaluating the professional standards and our program goals.  

April 25th marked one year of my life- Bulgarish style.  I could review all the highs and lows of the last year.  I could also review all the things I’ve missed out on at home.  I could list my failures or my feats.  I could recite the things I’ve learned and choices I will not remake next year.  That would take such a long time.  I’ll tell you simply that since I moved to Razlog last July, I am in a much healthier place, mentally.  That doesn’t mean I’m happy, or even content.  That doesn’t even mean I’m sure being here is the right thing for PC Bulgaria and for my school.  It simply means that I’m not on the edge of a breakdown.  Not this week.  Two weeks ago I was.  Two weeks ago I was ready to take the next flight to BNA!  

Here is my question for the week:  I am not a good teacher.  I am not a good English teacher.  I could perhaps teach students literature or poetry.  I could teach something that in and of itself contains inspiration or beauty.  English grammar with limited resources and so few sessions is beyond difficult for me.  I’m at the point to which I do not even attempt to look like a teacher.  I am clearly not a Bulgarian teacher, and I never claimed to be an American teacher.  I can’t make anyone learn.  I’m beginning to wonder if it is enough to be friends with my students.  Their English is incredible, and their teachers do much better at teaching them than I do.  Maybe I can just expand their horizons somehow.  

But is that enough?  Being friends with several Bulgarian teenagers?  Playing language games with rowdy 8th graders?  I don’t know.  When I consider all that I have missed in America, in my family, I think it’s not.  When I remember all the amazing highs and tough but enlightening lows of the last year, I understand that I am a better person and would not change that.  Is my own personal change worth it?  Worth being a crummy teacher, a miserably cold winter, a year of memories made with out me?  That is the question on my heart these days.