My Big Fat American Summer

That's the landlady and her dog, Campagnoli says. While the dog paws and sniffs at the Bulgarians, the landlady complains to Campagnoli that her Nepalese tenants get wasted and tear their apartment to pieces. She rants and hobbles at the same time, motioning the group toward a row of cottage-style apartments. The Bulgarian students step inside one of the dwellings. The air is dank and fetid, a mixture of mold and natural gas. The ceiling is low, and there's only one bedroom; the men and women would have to share a sleeping space. The landlady wants $59 per person per week.

"Any interest?" Campagnoli asks. The Bulgarians confer. The verdict is swift. "Actually, no," says Nadia.

The morning wears on, and the Bulgarian students reject several more apartments. One is bright and breezy with an ocean view, but it, too, has a single sleeping space. The women find another apartment acceptable, until the landlord, a barrel-chested Greek, explains that they will need to vacate the property for eight days in June, when graduating high school students descend on Ocean City for the annual debauchery called Senior Week. American kids, the Greek says, pay top dollar.

Campagnoli checks the time. He needs to get back to his shop -- more Russians are arriving by the hour. He suggests that the Bulgarians go check in with their employers. He found jobs for them before they left home, and all four have employment contracts. Bobby and Krasi, who speak almost no English, are going to work as landscapers for the city; Nadia has a position at the Stowaway Grand Hotel; and Radi is supposed to be a cashier at a 7-Eleven. Campagnoli tells the students to see him later that day. In the meantime, he'll try to dig up some more housing.

Afterward, Nadia and Radi walked a few blocks to 7-Eleven. Radi says she introduced herself to the woman behind the counter. I'm going to be working here, too, Radi announced. Perhaps she could speak with the manager to settle on a schedule.

Radi says the woman gave her a chilly response: The manager is not here. And all positions have been filled. Radi explained that she had an employment contract; in Bulgaria, she'd been told to expect to start working soon after arriving.

You can check back in two weeks, Radi remembers the 7-Eleven woman telling her. But Radi only had a few hundred dollars, and she still needed to put down cash for a security deposit. Plus weekly rent. Plus food. If she started work in two weeks, she'd get paid in three weeks, maybe four. She couldn't hold out that long. The woman behind the counter, Radi says, suggested that she start looking for another job. Radi stumbled out of the convenience store and muttered a word in Bulgarian that described how she was feeling. Otchaiana. The rough translation: despair.

Nadia would go to Ocean City only if Radi went, and Radi would go only if Nadia went. They are best friends and classmates at the University of National and World Economy in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, where they study industrial economics. Nadia is tall, urbane and smokes like a choo-choo train. Radi, who has eyes like green lanterns, is generally chipper and can't stand cigarettes.

"Wish me good wuck," Radi says not long after the 7-Eleven debacle.

"She means good luck," Nadia says with cool, dry authority. Her English is nearly perfect because she's studied the language since elementary school, though she credits her skill to the ubiquity of American pop culture.

Radi has studied mainly German and only recently started learning English. She still confuses "he" and "she," and danke accidentally slips out when she means "thank you." But Radi, too, is familiar with American culture. "We know about the American parties with the big beer thing in your mouth," says Radi, referring to a beer bong. Later she chants along with a Limp Bizkit song that's thumping from a shop on the boardwalk.

When Bulgaria sent a battalion of troops to Iraq as part of the "coalition of the willing," Nadia and Radi did not take to the streets to protest. They don't rail against George W. Bush, as many European students do. Their only critique of American power is recalling the inconvenience that a visit by Bill Clinton brought to Sofia in 1999 when the Secret Service closed off entire city blocks.