To make copies at school, I've got to get the permission of one of the vice principles.  This week was the first time I needed to make copies and I have 210 students so it's not a small project.  Once you have the form then  you take to the librarian who apparently maintains the books and mans the copy machine.  We had a little back and forth about the copies in "Bulgarian-English" because I wanted the the two pages I was giving her copied on the front and the back.   We got this worked out with the help of some high schoolers who were using one of the two or three computers in the library (which is actually only two large-ish rooms).

I wondered with this many copies if I should offer to come back later or tell her that I didn't actually need the copies until Wednesday morning.  Then after thinking about how I would ask her this I decided to stick around--that and I figured it was better for me to have the copies today and carry them home with me than to show up to school to teach my 8am class next week and wonder where the copies were.

It turned out to be a rather lengthy project. Our copier looks so old I can't believe that it actually works.  A Xerox machine it is not.  The poor librarian had to make copies of the first page and then gather these up, put them in the paper tray of the copy machine to run through the machine a second time in order to make double sided copies for me.  Man.  That would get old fast.

Needless to say, this and a paper jam gave me a lot of time to browse through the library.  (That poor woman.) At Georgetown this project would have taken no more than 5 minutes but in this case it was at least 25 minutes.

So while I was killing time in the library, I decided to look at the books.  They have a good selection of English language classics.  The thing that stood out to me was that there wouldn't be one or two copies of Vanity Fair but 15.  This is clearly so that a class could read the book together.  <!--more-->

Another notable feature was that most of the books had publication dates before 1970.  Really not a big deal for the classics--it's not like they are changing.  Or that's what I thought until I picked up on of the 8 or so copies of Jane Eyre.  The one I picked up was published in 1948 and edited by two New York City teachers.  But this wasn't the Jane Eyre I knew.  My Jane Eyre starts with the line: There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.  This line sets the stage for at least the first third of the book and it was MISSING. </span></span>

It was missing and I was really angry.  How could they do this?! I couldn't stop thinking: Stupid Americans, stupid Americans--I tell you--Ahh. I realize that Jane Eyre is a long book but you can't just cut out her youth or so I thought.  The edition I was holding in my hands started at Thronfield Rochester's gothic mansion. </span></span>

I put the book back on the shelf pretty quickly and picked up a complete edition.  An edition that I think was actually published by the Foreign Languages Publishing House in Moscow. I read the whole first chapter and everything seemed in order with this edition.  Funny that the Russians can get it right and the Americans are publishing (and apparently teaching) dumbed down versions of the classics.  Still, I hate that book, the American edition, is on the library bookshelf without a warning or any disclaimer that it's abridged.  I should have probably tried to steal the book (to later burn) but I didn't.  It's still on the bookshelf where I left it and I am still mad thinking about it. </span></span>

I would like to know more about how the library at the school started and the publishing and distribution English language books in Bulgarian during communist rule.  From my brief and informal look at the books, most seem to have been published either in the UK or in Moscow--even the American books.  So because I can't really ask the librarian about these things, I did the next best thing. </span></span>

I went to the teachers room and found a teacher to help me check out a book.  The check out system is pretty informal. I filled out a card with my name (in Cyrillic), my address and my phone number and signed it.  Then the Librarian wrote the name and call number of my book down on the card and had me initial next to it.  It's due on December 15th and based on the other due dates the book has been checked out four other times--once in 2004, in 1975, in 1965 and it was checked out for the first time in 1964.  Wow. </span></span>

So now I've got about a month to read Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt.  It's an edition from the Foreign Languages Publishing House in Moscow and has what appears to be a very interesting introduction which I'll write about more in the future.
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