zalata e gotova

today a nice 16 year old young man joined me on the steps of the chitalishte as i waited in vain for my piano students to arrive.  we chatted a little, we sat in awkward silence as he drank out of a glass coke bottle, he left to "play basketball" and returned 8 minutes later, not explaining why.  finally i said "can you teach me bulgarian?" and he replied, "no, but i can teach you turkish".

he then taught me a phrase i have since forgotten, which meant "we're going".

after i repeated it three times he finally said (in bg) "haide- let's go then."

me: where?

him: to the gym. it's open.

me: who did you ask?

him: the aunties (the ladies who clean the school)

me: are you sure?

him: (turkish phrase meaning let's go)

so we stroll over to school, after he offers me his bike to ride, and i walk into the teachers room and ask for the keys and all the ladies look at me and say, "NE, directora kazva NE".  my mind flashes back 5 days, 5 separate days in which i've heard that phrase.  what happened is, they did in fact ask if they could play in the gym, but the answer was not yes.

recently (actually all summer) our school gym has been renovated by the ministry of natural disasters (not lying) and as of monday it was officially "finished".  aforementioned child knocked on my window monday night in the middle of a rain storm to ask if we could play in it, and the next day we went only to be told "it's not ready, it needs to be cleaned."  in my naievete, the boys asked me every single day since then, each time saying, "it's ready now".  somewhere between the translation and my willingness to trust i never quite clarified if it was in fact ready, and on all of these days it was not.  it was not until today that i realized how silly it was of me to let them drag me back and forth to this gym which they are dying to get into, and how much of a nice distraction it has been.  if they ask tomorrow, i'll probably go again.