post #3

I grew up in a communist and later on in post communist country. As is well known the main idea of the communism is the idea of equality. This means that everybody is equal in every level.
So I do not remember my mother staying home I taking care of me and my brother, but I do remember her coming back from work and starting with the housework. I remember her nervous and tired and still moving around the house (cooking, washing clothes, cleaning and millions of other things) and my father also very tired and nervous, watching TV. Why her because that was a woman’s job. It is very easy to write something down and as a low and to force people to follow, but u cannot change that easily traditions and mentality being there forever. Like in so many other countries, in mine also, traditions said woman stays home and take care of the house, man is working and taking care of them. But that is just a tradition. Now everything is different. The life is difficult and only one person working in a family is not enough. So women don’t have a choice. They need to go and work just like men- any job. There is no separation between man and woman job. It is not about that any more .We can see women driving those huge trucks, passing the country, passing hundreds of miles alone and we can see men being a nurses. Some jobs are just not suitable for women, but this doesn’t mean that women are not doing it. Women and men are exchanging their jobs, they are getting more open-mind and looking for better opportunities. People are force to get any type of job, because of the competition and growing unemployment. Is the GENDER still exists? I don’t know, but everything is a xouse for me. We are making money and loosing something very important- the connection with our kids and our partners, the coziness of our homes. I believe in gender discrimination. I think that is for good and so much hope one day again every woman to have a choice to stay home or to go to work and make career just because she wants to, not because she must to.

post #2

To have STATUS! O, my God it sounds so fancy. Almost like to have Diesel, or Armani jeans. Just imagine how easy it could be if we can go and buy it from somewhere. Cool a? Well, unfortunately this is impossible. You can’t save money and ordered online. You have to work for it, really, really hard. What gives u status? For me this is how the people respect you, how they believe in you, how they love you because you worked for all that. I do not know how exactly all this happen. I am still learning. I think that this comes with the time, with all the experience, with what we are giving away every day, with what people will remember us one day.
Three days ago, a very good friend of mine, Bulgarian from our small Bulgarian community and my best man also, turn 50 years old. A normal person, with a good job, a person who makes mistakes and has his weak sides. But also a person who you can count on and who is helping everybody. On his party there were all his really close friends and family. I was watching how all people were standing up and talking about how they met him back in a time, what he did for them and how much they respect and love him (most of them with tears in their eyes). And right there at this moment I understand for sure what the status is and what gives you the status. This is the love and the respect of your family and friends. It is not the money, the fancy clothes or the huge house and expensive car. It is not even your prestige’s job or where you spend your vacation. What that is all means if we are living this world with exactly the same we are coming with. The more important is what stays after us, how they will remember us.
To have a status is a privilege of the strongest, wised and good people.

post #1

For almost 10 years ,i am working as a manager and bartender at same place - The Bulgarian Bar. This is my first and last work place ever. I start as a waitress right after i immigrate here/ in America in 1999/.I was alone, scared and with only 60$ in my pocket. This place turns to my home, my school and my working place in one. Then after two years of serving i got so tired that i decide, that this is enough and get married to the owner/ We still making jokes about that with my husband/. Automatically i had been promoted to a wife, bartender, manager and mother of two:). So this place is "my" place. I like what i am doing. It is very difficult and responsible job. We have been talking about physical and emotional labor, well this is exactly that. Every night is a challenge. And every night is different. There is nothing more difficult of that to work with people, who are there to have fun, no meter how and in what price. And u MUST to help this to happen. This place is also called: The house of Gypsy music. Every night there is a live music. The style of music played there- international gypsy punk, klezmer and etc..It is a interesting, unusual place. People feel like home there. The party is wild and crazy. Just like the Gypsies- free, passionate and sensitive. The rhythm of this music is making u to dream to be somebody else even for the night. I love the people who I am working with. We are not that many, but we are friends. Most of the time we need to work really fast, but a joke or a shot in between is making everything mach more easy and reducing the stress. What i want to change is the way how nervous and rude i am sometimes, and how more and more difficult for me is to handled the physical and emotional stress. It is been a long time in this business and for me going home it does not mean end of the work day. It is just.... to be continuing.