At school this week, I was contacted by a Bulgarian tv station NOVA tv for an interview. Every so often this happens to me. This time one of the afternoon tv talk shows wanted to interview me about the bombings at the Boston marathon.

The day I was contacted (Tuesday) I was teaching all morning and my contact information on this blog is pretty limited so the producer of the program contacted ACS's PR office. By lunch time, the program had become desperate to talk to me about whether or not I'd do the interview.

At this point, I knew about the bombings. I'd gone to be the night before having just read about them and I'd woken up to slightly more information about them on the major news outlets in the States. This said, I didn't know what I'd be able to add to a conversation or discussion about the bombings.

Still I took the call and the conversation went something like this:
<ul>
	<li>Me: Hello?</li>
	<li>Producer: Hello. You are Carolyn?</li>
	<li>Me: Yes.</li>
	<li>Producer, now in Bulgarian: we want to interview you.</li>
	<li>Me, in Bulgarian: Okay.</li>
	<li>Producer, in Bulgarian: We want to interview you about the bombings in Boston.</li>
	<li>Me, in Bulgarian: My Bulgarian isn't good. I don't know enough words.</li>
	<li>Producer, in Bulgarian: <em>Oh</em>. Are you sure?</li>
	<li>Me, in Bulgarian: Yes.</li>
	<li>Producer, in Bulgarian: Okay. Thanks.</li>
</ul>
I hung up inordinately proud of myself. I hate speaking Bulgarian on the phone. I often get confused (and/or nervous) and then I don't understand what's going on. I was super proud--I had a conversation in Bulgarian, on the phone.

Sure I'd turned down the interview but I'd done it in Bulgarian.

Then for about 30 seconds I felt bad that my Bulgarian isn't good enough to discuss current events like this. Thirty seconds later, I was struck by the thought: maybe I'd be able to if there were a chapter on terrorism in any of my Bulgarian text books. Then I realized: luckily there's not. Of all of the things I've learned in my Bulgarian texts books there's on terrorism. It's not a part of daily life nor the larger culture and as such, not a topic that I am able to discuss in Bulgarian. I simply don't have the requisite vocabulary.

I wish that we didn't need a vocabulary or a lexicon for these things in any language.

I've been surprised and saddened by events this week. I haven't really known what to make of the bombings or the subsequent pursuit of the two accused. I've found myself strangely drawn to these events and the way they've been covered. So much so I've spent time in the last week reading the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Huffington Post as well as social watching CNN (something I<em> never</em> do).

Living in Bulgaria, I felt strangely removed from the events yet unable to look away.

The whole thing got me thinking about what it means to be a modern immigrant in the United States and how complicated it is to navigate these issues of integration, assimilation, alienation and marginalization. I also started reading (finally) <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Shopping-Better-Country-Josip-Novakovich/dp/1936873060" target="_blank">Josip Novakovich's book Shopping for a Better Country</a> and I added <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7816208-let-our-fame-be-great" target="_blank">Let our fame be great: journeys among the defiant people of the Caucasus</a> by journalist   Oliver Bullough to my to-read list.

I don't feel like I have anything smart, unique or frankly even very interesting to say about these events. Ultimately the events of the past week reminded me that life is tenuous and precious and my heart breaks that we, as people, ever feel the need to resort to these kinds of violence.