Post Magazine: My Big Fat American Summer

College students Nadia Hristova and Radi Tsenova came from their native Bulgaria to Ocean City this summer for a chance to make some good money. Instead -- like thousands of young foreigners who work in East Coast beach towns -- what they got was seven-day workweeks, piddlin' wages, greasy food and a heapin' helpin' of American culture.

Tyler Currie, whose article about the Bulgarian women's summer in Ocean City appeared in Sunday's Washington Post Magazine , was  online Tuesday, Sept. 6 to field questions and comments.

Tyler Currie is a Magazine contributing writer.

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Tyler Currie: Hello Magazine readers. The questions are already rolling in, so let's boogie...

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Vienna, Va.: Can you provide more detail about the J-1 temporary VISA these young visitors use? And was there a dramatic increase in Eastern European and Russian visitors to the Eastern Shore this year? If so, what prompted this increase? Did we relax our immigration quotas?

Tyler Currie: Nadia and Radi came through a State Department program called Summer Work/Travel. Here's the State Department's description of that program: http://exchanges.state.gov/education/jexchanges/private/swt.htm. You'll see that there are a number of eligibility requirements. For example, you have to be a student at a bone fide college or university-whatever that means-and you can't be a vocational student.

J-1 Visas are granted to other categories of temporary visitors: au pairs, camp counselors, physicians, air plane pilot trainees.

I don't know if there was an increase in Eastern Shore foreign workers this summer. The State Department doesn't track these numbers regionally, only the total number of students who take advantage of the Summer Work/Travel program nationwide. And the final count is only tallied once U.S. Embassies from across the globe report how many such visas were handed out, which hasn't been done yet. But there isn't a quota on the number of students who can come on J-1.

There's something called an H2B visa, which is also a temporary, non-immigrant entry permit. There is a quota for H2Bs, around 66 thousand last year, I think, and it gets filled lickedy-split.

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Morgantown, W. Va.: I'm a journalist and I was just wondering how you arranged to follow these young women around. It sounded like you were there to meet them on their arrival in O.C. How did you set this up, getting permission from them and Conestabile?

Tyler Currie: In April I starting calling various Ocean City enterprises-hotels, restaurants, the Chamber of Commerce-to describe the concept of this story and to solicit help in finding subjects, i.e. Eastern European student workers. The key was to hook up with these workers at the moment of their arrival, when the shock of entering a strange land would be most intense.

At first, no one was much help; most OC businesses know almost nothing about their foreign employees until the moment they report for duty, and they certainly don't know flight schedules. Next, I called a bunch of the companies that the State Department designates to sponsor incoming foreign workers under the J-1 Summer Work/Travel program. (You can find a list of these organizations at: http://exchanges.state.gov/education/jexchanges/about/catalog/swt.pdf) Some of these folks have been caught up with allegations of malfeasance in recent years and have faced sanctions from the State Department. For whatever reason, no one that I called on this list wanted to help. Go figure.

Finally, I got in touch with Nick Campagnoli. He turned out to be the key. He knew right when four Bulgarians would be arriving at Dulles Airport, and he put me in contact with the van driver who would be picking them up.

Soon after I met the Bulgarians at Dulles, I explained who I was and what I wanted to do. I showed them a copy of the Washington Post Magazine. Are we going to be famous? one of them asked. Kind-of-not-really, I answered. Let's do it, they collectively decided, more blasC(an enthusiastic.

I'm not sure what to say about the Conestabile part of your question. (She's the super-charged volunteer whom I refer to as the Patron Saint of Foreign Students in Ocean City.) I interviewed her a couple of times and spent a couple of hours with her, watching her work. No tricky journalism there. How did I know to speak with her? The mayor suggested it.

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Lusby, Md.: How do residents of Ocean City and the surrounding eastern shore feel about foreigners coming in and "taking" jobs away from them?

Tyler Currie: That's a really good question. I wish I had a good answer. We have a tradition of nativism in the United States, so I wouldn't be surprised to meet someone who was instinctively sour on the idea of so many jobs going to non-Americans. But I don't think there's a huge pool of Americans waiting to fill these low-paying jobs, which vanish at the end of the summer. Every OC employer I spoke with said pretty much the same thing: We can't find Americans to do these jobs and even if we could, we like the work ethic of the Eastern Europeans better.

Steve Hendrix, who writes for the Post's Travel section, did a story a couple of years ago about foreign workers in OC. He touches on your question. Steve wrote: "Inevitably, not everyone in Ocean City is thrilled with the sudden presence of thousands of heavily accented Europeans -- former Communists, even! -- in what is at its core a small town. No international students work in the Beachwear Outlet, where the marquee declares "American Owned and Operated" and a T-shirt prominently displayed behind the counter reads: "Welcome to America: Now [expletive] Speak English.""

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Hancock, Md.: It seems sad that businesses have to go to Bulgaria to get summer workers when there are so many unemployeed tenagers and young adults much closer to home. And they alreaedy speak English and the money would return to their home communities. Any comment?

Tyler Currie: You do see some young Americans filling seasonal jobs in OC. The receptionist at the hotel where I stayed was an undergraduate at Michigan State University. American high school kids are also around-at the ice cream stand where Nadia and Radi briefly worked, young Americans were in the majority. Most of the bartenders I met were American, and a lot of the waitresses are too--and these tend to be the better paying seasonal jobs.

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Springfield, Va.: When we vacationed at Marco Island Florida earlier this summer. The hotel had quite a few Bulgarians on staff. The thing that struck me about them was how serious they were. You didn't see them smile or kid around much. There were workers of other nationalities on staff that were much more outgoing and friendly.

Tyler Currie: Hmmm Did you see Greg Miller's picture of the Bulgarian woman dancing on the table? Maybe all the sourpusses were corralled in Florida.

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Burke, Va.: Greetings:

What's with the really weird pictures that illustrate the article? Were all of the subjects told to act as if they had indigestion? Even the young woman dancing on the table looks morose!

Regards, Kevin Ellison

Tyler Currie: Kev: I wasn't around for the couple of days that Greg Miller was taking those shots. But you can check out his work at, gregmiller.com. Maybe you'll detect a certain aesthetic. But I assure you-and the person who vacations in Florida-that the Bulgarians I met were not constantly morose. Although Nadia certainly wasn't smiling when she learned that she was going to be a hotel maid.

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Lynchburg, Va.: Did you grow up in Kent, Ohio?

Tyler Currie: No. And that's a strange question.

Do you like movies about gladiators?

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New York City, NY: I read the story with GREAT interest. It's a marvellous piece of magazine writing!

I myself originally come from Bulgaria, plus I am also a journalist....

How did you meet the Bulgarians? Tell us a bit about your personal comuunications with them? Tell us about the interview process...

Are you in touch with them now? How are they doing?

Tyler Currie: Zdrave! (I hope I spelled 'hello' correctly, in Bulgarian.)

Interviews with Nadia and Radi tended to be informal, meaning I simply spent a lot of time hanging out with them, sometimes asking questions, sometimes just listening or observing. Not being able to speak Bulgarian was a disadvantage, in that I couldn't understand what Nadia and Radi were saying to each other or to their Bulgarian friends. On the other hand, I had fun learning a handful of Bulgarian phrases and greetings. I also enjoyed the lessons on Bulgarian history that one of the women's housemates delivered over cans of Beast Light.

Generally both women were curious about Americans and our culture. In some ways I was their interpreter, answering questions for them when I could. Some of their questions were pretty mundane. "Where do you buy phone cards?" "What does 'so-so' mean?" Other questions weren't so easy to answer: Why do Americans put toddlers in strollers even when the toddlers know how to walk? Anyway, I could learn a lot just by listening to the questions they had.

I haven't talked to Nadia and Radi in a few weeks, but last I heard they were doing fine. Radi said that she had been washing yachts at a marina near their house, making fistfuls of cash. So that's good.

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Fairfax, Va.: Regarding the smiling, many cultures around the world don't smile as much as Americans. That is one frequent criticism of Americans, we smile too much, especially when we don't mean it.

Tyler Currie: Golly gee wiz, that's no fun :)

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Anonymous: It was hard to tell what kind of a picture you were painting with your O.C. story. Did you feel as though the Bulgarian girls were unfairly taken advantage of and by whom?

I was a very interesting piece but it was fragmented and difficult to get a clear idea of problems and solutions for the next group of foreign students.It sounded as though Conestabile their only grace?

Tyler Currie: The foreign workers who flock to OC are taken advantage of in the sense that employers use them to fill a void in the labor market. They are cheap seasonal labor, which we simply don't have in home-grown abundance. OC vacationers benefit too: presumably your hotel room would be even more expensive if the girl who scrubbed your toilet was earning 12 dollars instead of 7 dollars an hour.

As cheap labor, the students are exposed to the vicissitudes that come along with low-income life in America. They get the dregs of housing, for example, and they cram themselves into living quarters in ways that no fire marshal could possibly bless. Their diets seem kind of unhealthy. They live with the insecurity of existing pay check to pay check. What would Radi have done if she hadn't found the missing pouch of money? That would have been devastating.

But whatever you think of the system itself, does it automatically amount to abuse? In most cases, no. Largely employers in OC seem to play by the rules. Nadia and Radi both have decent bosses. Sadly, there are exceptions. Stories of outright abuse aren't hard to find. Nick Campagnoli told me about a restaurant owner this summer who docked his Eastern European cook $600 for eating shrimp that belonged to the restaurant. Six hundred bucks, that's an incredible amount of shrimp. I can't believe that someone could pilfer that amount before being caught.

Conestabile is definitely Captain Benevolence in Ocean City-but she's hardly alone. There are a lot of church folks in OC, counterweights to the scum buckets, who do America proud.

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Airpla, NE: You now owe me a new keyboard, since your response caused my to snort Diet Coke all over mine.

Tyler Currie: Serves you right for procrastinating on the job. Get back to work, Bub.

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Easton, Md.: Great article!

Did Nadia ever learn not to carry all h er cash in h e backpack? Yikes!

Also, do these businesses make any effort to hire, say, American inner city teenagers, who could also really use the money?

Finally, is it true that waitstaff can make $400-$500 per day at (presumably a top) Ocean City restaurant? If so, I might be tempted to go down there myself next summer!

Tyler Currie: Yeah, she started stowing it away. Life lessons.

I don't know of any inner city-Ocean City connection. But remember these workers aren't exactly making bank-between rent, food, transportation, and incidental expenses, a lot of the money they make gets plowed right back into Ocean City. I'd tell my young neighbors here in the District of Columbia to stay close to home if the goal is to save money.

Yes, $400-500. Wanna buy a bridge?

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Washington, DC: I imagine that the thing that shocked these young women the most is that the United States is far from the fun, "party" place that most movies portray. Rather, it's a place where entertainment is restricted (e.g. very strict nightclub/bar laws), many things are illegal, and certainly there is much less freedom for young adults than in Europe. I'm speaking from experience because I'm originally from Russia. Did you sense this feeling when talking to them? Were they glad to go back?

Tyler Currie: These students work a lot. For example, Bobby and Krasi, the two young men who are briefly mentioned in opening of the story, worked 16 hour days. 8 hours as landscapers, 8 hours as short order cooks. There's no way they could live the party life. But Nadia and Radi-who didn't have two steady jobs-definitely had time for fun, notwithstanding the drinking age.

Still, I got the sense that they were homesick sometimes. They missed their families, friends, Bulgarian food, and, more generally, the familiarity of Bulgarian culture. It's stressful being a foreigner, constantly having to interpret an alien culture, struggling to express yourself. I lived in France for a while, and I could speak the language fine but not well enough to convey my sense of humor. I couldn't make people laugh in French-at least not the way I could in English. I remember cracking a joke with the baggage handler at JFK, right after returning from France-that felt so good, like releasing a belch that had been stuck in me for months.

I talked about this idea with Nadia, whose English is damn near perfect, and she seemed to feel the same way. No matter how good her language became, in America she could never fully be herself.

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Sterling, Va: are the two bulgarians featured in your article still in the U.S. and is it possible to get in touch with them?

Tyler Currie: Yes.

Yes. Send an email to me at the Magazine: 20071 AT washpost dot com. I can forward messages.

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Takoma Park, Md.: Fascinating article. I must say I was pleased NOT to read any mention of any sexual harassment or even mildly suggestive comments or behavior by American bosses, landlords, and so on vis-a-vis these young women in a vulnerable situation. Was this really not a factor in their summer at all? If so, good for us.

Tyler Currie: I wouldn't be so sanguine. I got creeped out plenty watching a few older men licking their chops Nadia and Radi reported that they didn't have any problems in this regard, but I'd bet my left lung that not every student was so lucky.

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Washington, DC: You mentioned the first-generation American woman who provides assistance to foreign employees and the co-owner of the Ocean City International Student Services. Aside from the generous protection of people like these do foreign students have any other safety net if wages are withheld or contracts not honored? Did you observe that this is a problem for these students?

Tyler Currie: Yes, these are real problems. Radi's contract at 7-11 was not honored. This happens frequently, I was told. OC Mayor Jim Mathias told me about a Polish woman who came to him last year because her landlord refused to return her security deposit. A local OC journalist confirmed this and also confirmed that Mathias helped the young lady get her money back. But is there a formal system for resolving these sort of problems? Well, there are the courts. But remember that these students are on the clock; they leave the country at the end of the summer season. So lengthy legal proceedings are not realistic. I've heard that OC is trying to put together a task force to deal with dirty-bird landlords and employers, but this is only talk at the moment.

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Fairfax, Va.: Let me clarify my comment about the smiling, it just seems that Americans say a lot of "friendly" things that are seen as "fake" by foreigners. For example, when you say "How are you?" in some other cultures, it means you really want to hear the answer, it is not just a greeting. Or when we say "Come see us again soon", in some other cultures, this might really mean you have extended a formal invitation, it's not just another way of saying goodbye. I for one am a smiling American, who means it!

Tyler Currie: I agree with you. This goes back to an issue we were struggling with earlier, the cross-interpretation of culture.

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Falls Church, Va.: When the summer is over, considering all their travel and lodging expenses, do these students actually make more money than they would in their home countries? How much does excessive partying/alcohol consumption cut into students' savings?

Tyler Currie: It'll probably be slightly better than a wash for these two. Although their maniac roomates who work close to 100 hours a week will probably have full pockets.

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Springfield, Va.: My friend was in Bulgaria for the Peace Corps and many of the friends she made there I have met. Why do they all hate American food so much? I understand the aversion to donuts and greasy burgers, but they would rather fry up a piece of cheese. Your article touches on this and I was wondering if you had any further insight.

Tyler Currie: For what it's worth, I also hate the food they were exposed to in Ocean City. We've got plenty of good food here. They just were exposed to it.

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Washington, DC: Do you know if these young women would want to come to the United States again as part of this program? Are they going to leave with an overall positive impression? This is a program of our public diplomacy after all.

Tyler Currie: In theory this program is all about public diplomacy. If you read the language in the law that enables the Work/Travel program, you'll see that it's quite loftly and Wilsonian. (Here's part of it: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode22/usc_sec_22_00002451----000-.html)

But I don't buy it. This is all about labor economics.

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Concord, Mass.: Did Nadia and radi return to Bulgaria? Would you say they were overall satisfied with their summer?

I was! So much so that I didn't return home. I'm one of the 1980's Irish imports who moved to Boston, illegally I'm afraid, but things weren't so tightly controlled then. Plus it helped that I spoke English and people seem to like English or Irish accents. I married my Irish-American husband in 1983, We have 3 children nd couldn't be hapier. I realize that not eeveryone would agree, but I think I personify the American dream. I wish all my fellow summer workers the same!

Tyler Currie: Thanks for the comment.

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Fairfax, Va.: I think many readers are going to be surprised that the two girls didn't want to stay here, live here, marry American men, and basically love all things American. As Americans, we have been inundated with propaganda that we are #1 and that people from post-communist countries dream of "escaping" to the West. Just a comment.

Tyler Currie: And thanks for your comment, too.

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Tyler Currie: Thanks to everyone who joined today's conversation. Thanks especially to Nadia and Radi, who let us peer into their lives for a season.

Keep reading. Keep writing. Keep buying stuff from our advertisers, like leather couches.

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