Life as a Celebrity

(Me Dancin' The Horo)

Being the only foreigner living in a small town of 5,000 can be nice. Remember the TV show "Cheers." They sang, "Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name." Bratsigovo is that place for me. I am sorry to say I can't remember all of their names. It's so difficult because the names are so different. I don't know if she is Desislava or Tvetanka. If he's Trendafil or Karamfil.

This celebritydom does bring a lot of attention with it. Highschool girls love to say "hi" to me from accross the street and call me "sexy." Ha ha! At parties, I am often the main attraction. Sometimes it's because they think of me as a novelty and other times it's genuine interest. When I walk in a bar, I often encounter a record skipping moment. ReWeeRT! Everyones eyes are on me. I don't know what they're thinking. Maybe, "Oooh look! It's the Amerikanets!" I also don't know what they say about me, but I'm not sure I want to know.

I'm sure they think I'm very different (especially when I am wearing those orange traction grips on my feet to keep from falling in the snow), but when I go to their parties and do the Horo with them for five hours, it makes them see me as being like them. Going over and visiting some of the people I meet for Na Gosti helps a lot too. These can last a long time, but once the initial stage of "Do they have this in America" passes, it's not so bad. Plus they usually give me some things to take home with me. Maybe I should Na Gosti more often.

Of course there are the bad parts too. Like the lady who always drags me out on the dance floor at every party or the guy that wants a dance competiton with me and does all these extra hip movements to show it. But more or less, even for a shy guy like me, the attention is pretty nice.