Welcome to Bulgaria where your ‘yes’ means ‘no,’ and your ‘no’ means ‘yes’.
Here in Bulgaria, if you wanted to say yes to someone – you would shake your head from side to side and say ‘da’ (or yes). Quite frankly, in the past this sort of cultural practice humoured me, it seemed strange and looked rather confusing.
It turns out in real life – it is confusing.
We’ve been living in Bulgaria for about 3 weeks, where my team and I have spent a lot of time learning the culture and experiencing the ways of the Bulgarian folk. Yet I still struggle with the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ head bobbing conundrum.
It becomes a dilemma when the bus attendant shook her head when Nikki asked if that bus was the one we were supposed to take. 5 minutes later the realization dawned on us that her headshake was actually a ‘yes’, and we were indeed supposed to be on that particular bus. It continued to cause confusion when a waitress shook her head no when we asked for a bottle of water and were thrown off guard, when in reality she meant yes.
On another hand, other cultural practices here are becoming more and more normal to me.
I’ve had elderly ladies squeeze both of my cheeks at once as though I were a small child, had other elderly ladies kiss my cheeks multiple times, while others will stand talking to me with my hand wrapped in theirs.
I have learned that a salad consists of tomatoes and cucumbers, and that coffee dispenses from vending machines – everywhere.
In some ways we are practically locals. I say this because Bulgarians have stopped to ask us for directions in a city (only to realize we did not speak the language, and they proceeded to laugh and drive off). This has only happened once to date.
Yet I still haven’t mastered changing my ‘yes’ to a ‘no’ because I haven’t been conditioned to shaking my head ‘no’ in order to say ‘yes.’ Waking up one day nodding your head to say yes and expecting to be able to do the complete opposite by the end of the day is a very unattainable task that I have required myself to fulfill. I have also seen it, not only in regards to the cultural differences between my Canadian self and Bulgarian culture, but to other patterns I would like to change.
I started a daily bible reading plan as I launched on the race – anticipating that I would wake up daily and spend time reading through this plan. It started out okay, and then after a week I was already a day or two behind. The struggle is real friends, waking up intentionally earlier is no small feat for me, and it takes conditioning in order to master the art of early awakening. In the same way – it will likely take more than the next 11 days to condition my head to shake ‘no’ in order to say ‘yes’ to my Bulgarian friends.
Maybe by the end of the month I will be shaking my head ‘no’ to say ‘yes’ or maybe I won’t be. Change can take time – but I know the fruit will be so good if I stick to it.
When we condition ourselves to tune into God’s will – that’s the best reverse psychology we can perform on ourselves.
