Holidays in Bulgaria

So before I knew it the year was over! Yikes! I’ve officially been in Bulgaria for over 5 months! Which may not seem like a long time to you, but it really is.

Man, so much has happened. I mean, the holiday season is crazy in general, but then I added another holiday to celebrate this year: Biram. Ahh, Biram. It was lovely. Biram is a Muslim holiday (so it’s only celebrated in Muslim parts of the country) that takes place every year during December or January (the date changes depending on the lunar calendar or religious calendar or something like that). And basically all the families and people who work outside the village return home for 4 days, literally making the village double over the weekend, and they kill a lamb in the backyard and eat “korban,” a traditional Bulgarian dish made from lamb. Luckily, I was busy the morning they killed the lamb so I “missed” seeing that, but don’t worry, since then I’ve been able to witness the massacring of a baby cow in the backyard for New Year’s and I even helped cut up some of the insides. So the younger kids in the family go visit their older parents and relatives and eat korban and they read, or rather sing, this hour long rhythmic chant in Turkish. I sat in on the reading for a while and it was absolutely beautiful. Two people lead and then the others join in at certain points if they know the reading. I was also able to wear a traditional Muslim headscarf and help serve the korban meal at the house where I live. My landlords had all of their relatives over for korban and I was honored to be invited to help.

The rest of December was pretty busy with activities for Christmas in the kindergarten and the school. For Christmas I traveled to the northern part of Bulgaria to celebrate with a bunch of volunteers from my group and it was awesome! We even cooked Mexican food or something like it for Christmas Day dinner. And then for New Year’s I was back in the village. In Bulgaria on New Year’s they shoot off fireworks, so there I was in the tiny center of my tiny village and right across the street the men were shooting off what looked like WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) into the air right over our mosque. I was a little more than nervous, especially when a few didn’t go straight up but rather sideways! Luckily, no one was injured and we were able to blissfully carry on our horo dancing into the wee hours of the morning.

This whole month has been rather sad for me since it’s my first Christmas away from my family, but everyone in the village, and especially my landlords and their family really have taken me in. I am seriously starting to feel like the 4th child of my landlords and I spend time with their family and relatives he way I would back home. And that has been such an awesome support.