You may have seen this slender, brown-eyed brunette selling T-shirts at The Black Dog store in Oak Bluffs last summer, or working as a housekeeper at Vineyard Harbor Motel on Beach Road in Vineyard Haven. Her name is Evgenia Piroeva – Eva, for short – and she came from Belene, a small town in Bulgaria near the Danube River.

It surprised her to find her customers treating her like anyone else. No one corrected her English, but that may be because she spoke it so well after more than six years of study in high school at the University of Economics at Varna, where language study is part of her major in tourism.

Eva was one of the many foreign students between the ages of eighteen and thirty who flock to the Vineyard in the summer. Your checkout clerk at the supermarket, or the person from whom you rent a car, may come from Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Ireland, or Poland, just as easily as Bulgaria. At a time when American borders have grown harder to cross, special J-1 visas and the Internet make it easier for students to come, find jobs, and live for four months under programs for summer work and travel, sanctioned by the US State Department.

“At every university in Europe it’s famous,” she said of the student programs. It’s costly to travel, though. The visa alone costs $700, and the bill goes up to $1,500 when you include plane tickets, insurance, and living expenses. Eva borrowed the money from her parents. She learned about the Vineyard from her friend and roommate Viktoria (Vicky) Marinova. They shared half a house near the water in Oak Bluffs with two young Bulgarian men named Miro Tsonev and Ivan Vaktoria, good guys she met by chance on the bus the day she arrived.

“There are so many nice things about this Island,” she said. “One of the most important ones is that you can make a lot more money here than at home. It’s so different than Bulgaria. When we came here and saw all the houses – the architecture – all in the same style and wood: we don’t have wooden houses like this.” Bulgarian houses are built of bricks. She was also amazed to find buses running on time, and everything so “arranged.” American eating habits were a revelation, especially packaged and prepared food, which didn’t taste the same and seemed artificial to her. “We like to cook our own meals, and we like sauces,” she said. “I miss so much the white cheese – it’s like feta – and Bulgarian yogurt.”

Also unexpected was the age of the Americans she worked with. “Most of them are so young, sixteen or seventeen,” said Eva, who was twenty-five last year. “And the managers are nineteen and twenty. That’s rare in Bulgaria.”   

American friendliness surprised her and her friends too. Walking down the street, everybody smiles at you, she said. While Bulgarians are very hospitable, you can’t say “Hi” to someone you don’t know. “Sometimes the Americans seem fake and very sugary, though,” she said. “We Bulgarians like to share our troubles.”

Eva spent so many hours working two jobs last summer that she didn’t have much time for nightlife. She found it weird that smoking isn’t allowed, even in nightclubs. She and her friends preferred to gather at home. When there was a party, every Bulgarian on the Island found out about it, and everybody was invited.

There were rough patches. Eva started out depressed and homesick, having left behind her family and boyfriend. But she got used to life on the Vineyard. At first she spent most of her time with the European students she met, such as Adam Switalsky from Poland, who worked with her at The Black Dog. They shared traditions, customs, and the same sense of humor. “When we are trying to express ourselves in English, we change the language around,” she said ­– garbling the syntax on purpose, just for fun. “And the European students always understand. But now we have more fun with Americans, too.”

Especially sobering was an auto accident last summer. A Bulgarian student who fell asleep driving home from work hit a tree with his car. Suffering multiple leg fractures, he was airlifted to a hospital in Providence. Many of his Bulgarian friends went to visit him.

“Some Americans think if you’re here, you’re going to stay forever,” Eva’s roommate Miro said. “Americans are so patriotic. American flags are everywhere. But they don’t know where Bulgaria is.”

What did Eva miss when she headed back home to Bulgaria last fall? The other European students she met and whom she became good friends with – even her house, a house that was too small and not very convenient.   

“I took a lot of pictures,” she said. They were what she carried home with her – along with memories of kind Islanders and the joggers who smiled at her as they passed her on her morning walks to the bus stop. Eva found things so congenial here that she came back for more in the summer of 2005.