I watched the Bulgarian-US men's volleyball game last night.  The game was announced, of course, in Bulgarian.  I understood the scores as the were announced and not much else. And one of the major things that stood out to me during the two and a half hour match was the fact that there was not a single commercial or advertisement during the entire game. Rather than switching over to a commercial as I am sure that we did in the US (that is if the game was even broadcast in the US), the cameras zoomed into the huddles.  This resulted in some awkward camera angles--sometimes over players shoulders, sometimes up people's legs and occasionally  over the shoulders of coaches to see their clipboards.

As I am sure most of you know, I am not a huge sports fan. I usually go to Nationals baseball games and cheer for baseball or Hoya's basketball games and cheer for basketball.  My natural inclination was to cheer for volleyball but given how serious the Bulgarian fans were to do so seemed disingenuous.  As a result, I sat there surrounded by cheering Bulgarians and clapped when the US played well.

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Another thing that stood out about this game was that for the most part this week, everyone communicates to each other in English.  Sure there are times that people slip into their native languages, but everyone returns to English.  However during the game, the Bulgarians spoke Bulgarian.  They yelled at the tv in Bulgarian and they cheered in Bulgarian.  And they swore in Bulgarian.  It was great fun.  I am not so sure it was as much fun for the Bulgarians but it was great fun for me.

As you probably already know, America won.  It was an exciting game.  Bulgaria won the first set and then the Americans won the next three (if that's even the right language to use to describe the volleyball match--I don't know because I couldn't understand the announcers).  It was pretty close throughout the sets with lots of back and forth which made it that much more exciting (if you want, you can check out the stats <a title="Men's Volleyball" href="http://results.beijing2008.cn/WRM/ENG/INF/VO/C73/VOM400A09.shtml#VOM400A09" target="_blank">here</a>).

But thing that stands out to me now writing this post is how much more important winning the game was to my Bulgarian friends.  At one point, a girl wearing a dress in the colors of the Bulgarian flag told me: you have hundreds of chances to win medals but this one matters to us.

It got me thinking after the game about what she actually meant.  And the fact that I'm taking a two week class focusing on Bulgarian History and Culture seriously influenced this thinking.  Bulgaria as you may or may not know has a long history of being under foreign rule and domination--first with five centuries of rule under the Ottoman Empire and later under the wing of Russia (yes I know that I have now over simplified this but I figured that this may not be the place to repeat everything I learned in my three hour class on Bulgarian history).  The pattern this forms I think is clear: little states are at the mercy of the will of big states.

As such, this volleyball game was more important to the Bulgarians than it was to me.  What was literary at stake was a gold medal sure but what was also at stake was beating a super-power like America. But I didn't put this all together until the last set and by then it was too late to switch my alliances and to cheer for Bulgaria. When the US won, we all moved to dinner.  Everyone was deflated. The Bulgarian flag dress came off and the mood was more somber--the big guys had won again. But there had been a chance especially in the beginning that this might not be the case making the loss that much harder to stomach.

This experience exposes an issue and a set of questions that I am going to have to think about and work through during this next year.  I can't help but wonder: what does it mean to me to come from a country that has the advantage of size, power, politics and economics?  and how can I negotiate this privilege? how do I talk about this to other people and how can I reveal the nuances and contradictions inherent in being an American? Clearly, I don't have the answers to these questions yet but this is something I am beginning to think about and work on.

But don't worry, Bulgaria is not out of the competition for Men's Volleyball--the lost was just a set back.