It's been two years since I joined the Peace Corps and began serving as a Community and Organizational Development volunteer in Stara Zagora. I've just completed all my COS paperwork during a three day marathon in Sofia and have just one more half-day scheduled at the office on September 15th to tidy up my finances, hand in my identification cards and shake hands with friends I may not see again. Peace Corps took this most recent opportunity to poke, probe and prod me during my final exit medical exam. I received a dental check-up complete with tooth cleaning and an eye exam complete with a new pair of spectacles. I participated in an 'exit' interview with the Assistant Country Director and rode the bus back to Stara Zagora.

My time in country is now measured in days and my plans are centered on getting around to seeing all the people to whom I want to say 'good-bye'. This coming weekend I'll go to Saedinenie on Saturday and stay for the night. I'm bringing Veneta a Bulgarian-English dictionary so we can write letters back and forth. Plans are in the works for the girls from the film club to get together for a night of roasting marshmallows and making s'mores and I'll leave one of the two remaining video cameras with them. My sitemates in Stara Zagora and I will see each other off and on until I leave and have a final beer at Drums the night before I slink out of town. Brian and Kate and Sara will come to Sofia on my last night in the country and we'll have dinner together. Then, the next day, I'll catch a flight back to the States and my "excellent PC adventure" will officially have come to an end.

I'll return to a place where appliances and elevators tend to be unremarkable things that function as they are meant to and rarely develop personalities of their own. I'll drive or fly everywhere I want to go rather than catching an express bus or the 'fast' train. I'll eat fruits and vegetables that look physically perfect and taste like paper and buy eggs in cartons in the supermarket instead of from my 'egg guy' in the pazar. On the other hand, I won't have to put up an umbrella when I use the toilet and I won't have to choose which room to heat during the winter. I'll be home in time for the baseball playoffs and the football season.

I've sent in a couple of applications to the Peace Corps for jobs here and there. While I'm waiting to hear back from them, I'm preparing for the Foreign Service Oral Assessment. I'm scheduled to take it on October 16th in Chicago and I have a long way to go to get ready. I also plan to wander a little and meander a bit here and there, visiting old friends and fellow returned volunteers. Mooching off friends and sleeping on couches could become a new way of life for me. The Peace Corps' third goal is to introduce people back in America to the culture and ways of your host country. This is accomplished by giving talks in schools and other organizations and by just sitting around telling your stories to friends and family. I'll try to bring some domashna rakiya home with me to help the story-telling along.

So, that's it. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in the Peace Corps and my time in Bulgaria. I hope I've accomplished something useful for the people with whom I work, but I know that I've received a great deal from them. I'll leave here on September 16th and it won't be very long before the countdown begins until I can return to Bulgaria for a proper Na Ghosti.

So long, Bulgaria. Ciao za cega.

Snake Eagle

Sometimes it really doesn't pay to be a 'creature of habit'. When I first arrived in Stara Zagora, I needed to find all the usual things, a dry cleaner, the grocery store, a pizza place, a barbershop and so on. With a little help from my colleagues I soon located all the shops and services that allow you to carry on in a new city. The "freeziyorkata" or hair stylist I've been going to for two years has her shop on a side street about five blocks from my apartment building. She is a dour woman of indeterminate age, but probably older than rocks, who cavalierly runs an electric clipper around my head just above the ears, chops away at the top with a pair of scissors, whacks my neck two or three times with an old towel and says, "zapovyaditay", there it is. When she's done my hair is shorter and, because I will never be a viable candidate for modelling in GQ anyway, I pay her and leave without requesting that she even out the rough spots or tidy up my sideburns. Although my level of satisfaction is low I keep going there because she knows me and the whole experience is familiar and therefore comfortable.

For the first time in two years, I went to get my hair cut and the shop was closed. She's old, she's grouchy and she doesn't cut hair very well, but she's always there. I just stood at the door and stared into the darkened shop. I knocked in case she was in the back and had hung the "Closed" sign in the window just to discourage less determined customers. Eventually, however, I had to accept the fact that she was indeed closed for the day and I wouldn't be getting my hair cut. As I walked the five blocks back to my apartment I passed two or three other hair salons. Through each doorway I could see people getting their hair cut and I wished that my freeziyorkata had chosen that day to work. A block away from my building I passed by a modern well-lit clean shop and noticed that the two women in it were sitting watching tv. Because I am the wildly impulsive adventurer that I am, I walked in and asked for a haircut.

A very attractive young woman sat me down and actually asked me how I'd like it cut. She then took me to a sink, washed my hair, gave me a fifteen minute scalp massage and a haircut that was exactly like we'd discussed. She was pleasant and talked to me the whole time, once even laughing at a joke she was telling. Including her tip, it came to exactly one lev more than the other place. My time here is running out but I'm scheduling at least two more haircuts before I go!

As many of you are aware, I'm not 'handy'. That is to say, I cannot repair things that break around the house. I cannot fix electrical stuff, plumbing stuff or appliances. Most of my friends and every Bulgarian over the age of five can repair almost anything that breaks, but I cannot. I firmly believe that this is why God created landlords. It's Hristo's apartment and it's his responsibility to ensure that it remains in working condition. I pay rent, he is obliged to provide me with a rentable premises. Lately, I haven't felt like running down to ask Hristo to repair every little thing that's broken so many little things are no longer in tip top shape. For example, the toilet in the small bathroom has two or three leaks from the tank and the ceiling. I once tried to repair the floating arm thing in the tank myself, but ended up snapping it off and creating a waterfall that required shutting off all water to our half of the eighth floor. Now I'm not allowed to attempt further repairs to this particular toilet. The tank is located up by the ceiling about ten feet above the toilet. When you're sitting on the john, it feels like it's raining. My solution has been to hang a small umbrella by the toilet which guests are welcome to use.

The plastic faucets on all three sinks are also slowly disintegrating. Through a program of swapping, I have managed to keep the hot and cold faucets on the kitchen sink and in my main bathroom functioning. I only have five weeks remaining and my goal was to make it to the end without having to ask Hristo to come up and fix anything for me before I depart. Then the cold water faucet in my bathroom began to spin around like a top without actually turning the water on or off. I discovered that if I put a bit of pressure on it, it would engage enough to give me cold water and I could continue to brush my teeth or keep from being scalded by the hot water. I can live with such hardships because I'm a PCV. Unfortunately, over time the amount of pressure required to activate the cold water faucet increased slowly but insidiously until I was bracing against the wall opposite the sink with my feet to get a bit of cold water. It began to appear as though I'd have to call Hristo one last time. Before doing so, however, I decided to take a shot at fixing the thing myself in spite of my track record of thoroughly destroying anything I've ever tried to repair.

I broke out my Leatherman tool which had heretofore only been used to clip the ends from my cigars and began to bang on the front of the faucet with the heavy pliers. Using a pair of pliers like a hammer seemed like a good idea at the time. While I was whacking away at the recalcitrant cold water tap, I would try to spin it periodically to see if it had decided to be fixed yet. I noticed during one such trial period that a piece of chrome on the very front seemed to be coming loose. I managed to stick the Leatherman beer-can-opener tool under the edge of this loose bit and pried it away from the faucet. There, to my surprise, I found a brass screw hanging onto its screwhole by a single thread. I carefully extended the screwdriver tool and drove that wanderer right back into place. Then I reinserted the frontpiece and turned the cold water on. Then I turned the cold water off. I did this several times and felt very pleased with myself. I admit it's not on the same level of repair as taking a spacewalk and replacing solar panels on the Hubble Telescope, but I feel I might be able to manage even that very soon.

This week I took my counterpart Darina's daughter Nadia out to visit Matt at the Raptor Rehabilitation Center. Nadia is sixteen, loves birds and wants to be a veterinarian. Matt is one of my sitemates here in Stara Zagora and he's done a terrific job for the past two years working at the Green Balkan center dedicated to Bulgaria's birds of prey. The Center heals and releases injured birds, protects endangered birds and their nests and establishes breeding programs for rare birds. They have a brand new facility and Matt has been instrumental in developing their volunteer programs. They depend on a network of volunteers to help them and work closely with the local school systems and with conservation groups from across Europe to solicit assistance. While I sit at a desk writing grant applications, Matt monitors the nests of Imperial Eagles and feeds kestrels that are mending in cages at the Center. I think it's important to understand that there are a wide range of experiences available in the Peace Corps and a wide range of opportunities to bring your own skills to bear. Nadia was really delighted to be allowed to enter one of the cages with Matt to handle a Honey Buzzard. I took pictures and stood ready to club the savage beast to death with my camera if it turned on its handlers. Honey Buzzard might taste good if roasted slowly over a mesquite fire although if it's endangered Matt probably wouldn't let us eat it. He's conscientious that way. By the way, this particular bird is one that Matt has 'gentled' for use in his visits to the local schools.

I'll be leaving Bulgaria a little sooner than I had planned. My original COS date was scheduled for October 10th, but I'm going to head home on September 16th instead. We are allowed to schedule our actual departures within a thirty day window around our 'official' COS date and I need to be back in Chicago for a Foreign Service Oral Assessment on October 16th. The Oral Assessment is the second step in the process of getting a job with the State Department and it promises to be a very 'interesting' (in the long, stressful and draining sense of the word) day. Part of the required preparation for the day is to fill in government form number SF-86 which will allow the State Department to begin conducting a security clearance for me if I pass the Oral Assessment. This form is almost thirty pages long and asks for information on you from the day of your birth to the present. Candidates are given their results at the end of the Oral Assessment and, if they are successful, they submit their SF-86 forms and begin the third and final step in becoming Foreign Service Officers. After the written exam and oral assessment, there remains only receiving the medical, security and suitability clearances to be placed on the list of eligible hires. The State Department then draws from this list as their needs dictate and you can remain on it for a maximum of eighteen months, after which, if you haven't been offered a job, you are deleted (from the list) and have the option to begin the whole process over from step one.

So now I'm spending my time getting ready to leave Bulgaria and undertaking a quest to be gainfully employed at some unspecified point in the future. As always, I'm searching for challenging work in interesting places surrounded by beautiful women. I'm willing to negotiate on the 'challenging' work part. But wherever I end up, please stop by if you're in the neighborhood and if you need to use the toilet, please put the umbrella back on the hook when you've finished.

This is the Saedinenie Study Group, the only study group from the B-16's to make it all the way without losing a single member. Lindsay, Kate, Brian, Sara and I are all still here!! I'm the 'short-timer' with only five weeks to go before I get a wake-up call and a flight home. Let the countdown begin.

The PC has three overriding goals:

1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their needs for trained men and women. 2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served. 3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of all Americans.

As volunteers, we are expected to serve these goals. In my opinion, the goals are direct, concise, realistic and achievable. Of the three, however, the first presents volunteers with the most direct challenges during their service. Helping our host nations meet their needs for trained men and women requires us to transfer skills. Some of us aren't entirely certain that we have any skills to transfer; some of us labor along under a false sense of confidence, happily passing along non-existant skills; and some of us have skills but lack the ability to pass them on. Fortunately, none of us works in a vacuum and we spend much of our time helping each other out.

A volunteer working in a small mountain town in the Rhodopes contacted me not too long ago to ask if I'd be able to come down and talk to the people in his agency. He works for an NGO in Borino, a town with a Turkish population, and felt they needed some help in establishing a direction for the agency and in applying for grants. My agency, REDA, has a wealth of experience in identifying community needs, locating appropriate funding, making intelligent applications and then implementing the development projects. I am also a member of the PC SPA committee and, as such, spend a great deal of time evaluating PCV funding requests. I assumed that Nick, the volunteer in Borino, had heard of me and my work because...well, because I have a very inflated idea of my own importance.

I said that I'd be happy to come down and help in any way I could and asked if he wanted me to prepare a presentation or would we be participating in a round-table discussion? He said that I shouldn't worry about a presentation and that he knew exactly what he wanted his agency to hear and that he would give them the message. Okay. What, exactly, did he want me to do? He said, "Well, you're older and if you wear a tie, it'll look like you have some authority and they might take this more seriously." Yes, indeed. You don't get to be my age without becoming older and that is a set of skills that I will happily transfer.

So I went to Borino prepared to wear a tie and look 'authoritative' and arrived at Nick's after a seven hour bus trip ready to nail down the details for the meeting the following day. Nick had some friends visiting him and had cooked a great Mexican dinner for everyone. Another volunteer had baked some superb chocolate chip cookies and by the time we ate and cleaned up it was too late to begin discussing business. We woke early and Nick's other guests left, so he and I took a hike up through the mountains behind his house and he began to tell me about his agency. As is often the case, I was a bit confused and a little unclear on what was expected of me but I thought that I could still be helpful once the panel discussion started. I can usually follow whatever is going on in a meeting and begin to participate once I sense the track. After the hike, I put on my shirt and tie and we went down to his NGO to kick off the meeting.

We walked into a room set up like a university lecture hall. We stood at the podium and Nick looked at the group that had assembled for the meeting, told them I was going to start the seminar and walked off to the side leaving me standing center stage. It's difficult to look authoritative when your mouth is hanging open and sounds are coming out of it that only a monkey might ever understand. Actually, after the initial panic attack passed, it wasn't too bad. Nick had prepared a complete set of notes covering the points he wanted to raise and slid them across the podium to me. He had also arranged for a translator who turned out to be quite a character in his own right. Mahkmoud is the best English speaker in Borino and he is a very enthusiastic translator. So enthusiastic, in fact, that he often stops translating and just engages in long discussions with the group on subjects in which he has suspiciously little relevant first hand information. I was asked, for example, to talk about "in-kind contributions". I started to give the group a basic definition of "in-kind contributions" as they are seen by PC and EU funding organizations. Mahkmoud held up his hand after I'd said one or two sentences to indicate that he would translate that much. He then spoke for ten minutes without stopping, answered three or four questions and engaged in a brief but heated argument with a woman from the Chitalishte. It will be fascinating to see what the town of Borino offers up as in-kind contributions in the future.

The meeting lasted three hours and a lot of good information flowed back and forth and I felt that it had been a very useful exercise. Nick seemed pleased too, so the trip looked as though it was worthwhile and maybe on some small level, some skills transfer had taken place. Bilgun, one of the men who runs Nick's NGO, asked us to join a couple of them later that evening in the local cafe for a rakiya. We went off, had dinner, changed into less 'authoritative' clothing and got to the cafe around 8:00pm. Bilgun ordered everyone a big salad, because you don't drink rakiya in Bulgaria without eating salad, and we began to talk. My ability to speak Bulgarian improves in direct correlation to the amount of rakiya I've consummed and I was speaking quite fluently by the end of the evening.

It was during this impromptu meeting that the most significant skills transfers took place. After we'd beaten 'applying for community development grants' to death, we began to explore a topic of real value to all of us. What do you do if you come across a bear while you're hiking in the woods? Mahkmoud got up from the table, squatted down on his haunches and stated that you had to convince the bear that you were smaller, weaker and not a threat. Then he fell over. Bilgun disagreed and argued strongly that you must run away. Nick believed that he'd heard that you couldn't outrun a bear because they, apparently, are very fast. Yes, Bilgun agreed, but if you run downhill they can't catch you because they don't have thumbs and when they begin to run downhill, they tumble. It was agreed by one and all that this made a lot of sense and Nick suggested that you'd have to run downhill at an angle or the bear might tumble down on top of you. I said that I had thumbs but that I might tumble anyway if I tried to run downhill. My own belief was that all I had to do was outrun the slowest member of the group which led to an accusation that I might not be a team player. So it was agreed that if we saw a bear we would run downhill at an angle but I mentioned, quietly, to Mahkmoud that I thought it would be worth his while to try the squatting thing while we all ran away.

This wasn't the only skills transfer of value that took place over rakiya that evening. I learned the longest word in the Bulgarian language. I'll spell it out phonetically but in Cyrillic it has 39 letters: neprotivokonstitutsionctvuvatelstvuvaite. Six of us chanted that puppy out in cadence for several minutes before I asked what it meant. If I understood Bilgun correctly, it means "do not stand up against the constitution". There you have it.

So I'm back in Stara Zagora now, wiser by far than when I left. I have to begin working on my COS paperwork and getting ready to go home. I've tried to transfer what little skill I have during my time here, I've tried to leave Bulgarians with a positive impression of myself and Americans in general and I've tried to impart the very positive feelings I hold towards this country and its people in this journal. I also hope to mooch my way around the country when I get back, visiting friends and family and telling my stories in person. After a rakiya or two, we can plot strategies for racing camels or design the first working elevator to the moon. As a friend of mine once said, "The world is a brighter place when viewed through rakiya goggles."

This is our official COS photo. Our group of 59 has whittled away to the few and the proud.

Me on Botev Vruk

The two major mountain ranges in Bulgaria are the Rhodopes which run along the southern border with Greece and the Balkans which run down the center of the country and separate the Danube Plain from the Thracian Plain. The mountains are inextricably woven through Bulgarian culture, history, myth and lore and they form a very tangible presence in modern Bulgaria's national soul. Rebellions were bred in the mountains and rebels sheltered there. Monasteries survived centuries of oppression tucked away in mountain valleys. Folk music and dancing are identified first and foremost by the mountain region they represent. Therefore, when it comes time to relax, chill out, or just recharge their emotional batteries, most Bulgarians head for the mountains.

An extensive network of hiking trails exists throughout the mountains with a wide range of hizhas or inns built along them to accommodate hikers. A hizha can be anything from a rough lean-to open on three sides to a small hotel with private bathrooms and cable tv. The hiking trails range from buccolic walks in the woods to strenuous climbs up to various peaks. Hardy souls use them all year long and, while I'm not generally thought of as a hardy soul, I use them every so often myself.

As a rule I stick to paths that fall into the 'walks in the woods' category and avoid any contact with anything that might be considered a trail or involve the dreaded "C" word (climbing). However, mountains being what they are some climbing is inevitable if you want to see the majestic beauty of the country or a waterfall or two. I'd been hearing about Hizha Rai for a couple of years and thought that it might be nice to hike up to it. 'Rai' is the Bulgarian word for paradise and this particular hizha is located in the Stara Planina (Stara Planina literally means Old Mountains, but the world knows them as the Balkans) and involves a very long hike with what us hikers refer to as a "significant elevation change". The hizha sits at the base of a high narrow waterfall and the hike to it passes through some of the most beautiful mountain scenery you can find anywhere. In order to get to the trailhead to Hizha Rai, you have to go to the lovely little town of Kalofer which sits in the Valley of the Roses at the foot of the Stara Planina. I serve on a PC committee with a woman who lives in Kalofer and during one of our meetings, I mentioned that I wanted to make the hike up to Hizha Rai before I left Bulgaria. Two weeks later she contacted me to say that she was going to do the hike for the third time and I was welcome to join the group. In poker when someone calls your bluff, you lose your money; in mountain climbing significantly more is at stake.

I met up with Sarah and her group in Kalofer and we began the long march out of town to the trailhead. As the PC, in its infinite wisdom, has failed to provide me with a helicopter, four-wheel drive vehicle or sherpa and I am prohibited, by PC regulation, from riding a donkey, I had no alternative but to shoulder my heavy pack and trudge along with the group. We marched out of town on a pleasant enough road that ran beside a pleasant enough river for most of its length. My pack was a bit heavy because I was carrying two cameras, extra clothing, water, a jacket and an umbrella. I also had a guidebook describing Hizha Rai, apparently on the offchance that I didn't quite understand what I was seeing when I got there!? Well, it seemed like a good idea when I put it in the pack. It took us an hour to reach the trailhead but the weather was fine and I was feeling pretty good about the whole adventure.

From the trailhead, Sarah and her Bulgarian friend, Koko, pointed out the waterfall we'd be hiking to and I stopped feeling pretty good about the damn adventure. Nonetheless, off we went and within five or six hours we'd arrived at Hizha Rai. There were five of us in our group and Hizha Rai happened to have a room for five, so I climbed onto the top bunk of one bed and swore that I wouldn't come down until the PC arranged to heli-vac me off the mountain. Andy, a twenty-something volunteer, shook me out of the bunk and said that we were all hiking to the base of the waterfall before dinner. Oh yeah!! Well, you can take your waterfall and shov....So, the waterfall was actually quite beautiful and I'm glad that I joined the party hiking up to it. One woman elected to stay behind and as a result she doesn't limp as badly as I do, but I got to stand beneath the waterfall, so there.

Sarah kept saying that we were hiking to Hizha Rai and Botev Vruk which I assumed was just the formal name for Hizha Rai. Hristo Botev is one of Bulgaria's national heroes who, like so many of Bulgaria's national heroes, led a foolhardy failed attempt to overthrow the Turkish Yoke and died a heroic and early death. Many streets are named after him. So, it turns out, is the highest peak in the Stara Planina. All along, the group had been planning to hike to Botev Vruk or Peak and the overnight at the Hizha was just to rest us up for the real climb the following day. I said that I would decide in the morning whether I was able to assault the mountain any further or whether I'd wait for them back at the hizha sampling the cold beer. The hizha was filled with nearly a hundred high school kids on an outing and the noise level would have drowned out jackhammers breaking concrete. In spite of that, I got several minutes sleep and woke feeling like I'd been beaten on the feet with sticks.

The same (intelligent) woman who'd declined the hike to the waterfall opted to remain behind again but I said I'd tag along. The hike to Botev Vruk was uphill all the way and it took almost three hours to reach a point where we could see the peak we were struggling towards. About two-thirds of the way up I began to seriously consider just lying down and dying rather than moving another foot. Sarah said to just keep putting one foot in front of the other and if I'd had the strength, I'd have hit her with a rock. She and Andy were climbing ahead of me and they had to keep stopping until I caught up. At one point I suggested bravely that they should just go on without me and they both said, "okay" and took off. This is why PCVs aren't issued rocket propelled grenades. I can remember sitting at home watching National Geographic specials on tv while smoking a cigar or eating a bowl of icecream and thinking, "how tough can that really be? Surely it's a matter of willing yourself to just keep going and to ignore the discomfort." When the camera would focus on one exhausted climber or another who had gotten to within a few meters of the top and just couldn't go any further I would think, "just suck it up and keep going you loser!" I have now learned that I cannot climb Mr. Everest. However, I finally made it to the Botev Vruk scant minutes behind Sarah and Andy and we sat on the stoop of a building and ate our sandwiches in silence. There was a second building on the peak and other hikers kept coming out of it carrying plastic cups of tea. We walked over and discovered that tea was being sold on the third floor. Why they didn't sell tea on the first floor is beyond my comprehension, but we wanted tea and honey quite badly at that point, so we climbed to the third floor. You could smell the tea brewing in a big pot on the stove as we entered the room. "Three teas with honey, please" I said as I entered the room. The woman looked right through me and said, "Are you Sarah?" Sarah 'fessed up and we were told that we couldn't have tea there, that we had to back to the building we'd started in because, "they're waiting for you there." No one could tell us who 'they' were, but we definitely weren't getting any tea in this building. So we went back down the three flights of stairs, over to the other building and entered the only door we could find.

Suddenly we were Na Ghosti. We were part of a gathering of Bulgarian men about my age who were eating shopska salad and drinking homemade rakiya and wine. Never let anyone convince you that rakiya and wine don't mix well with mountain climbing, they actually improve one's ability to sing Bulgarian folk songs which has always been an integral part of climbing as everyone knows. So we felt obliged to stay and drink to everyone's health and tell stories and have a great Na Ghosti before falling back down the mountain. Going down was definitely easier and we actually only stopped at Hizha Rai for a bowl of soup and to pick up the slacker before continuing on down to Kalofer. We got back to Sarah's place well after dark which meant that except for the hour and a half Na Ghosti on Botev Vruk and the forty-five minute soup break at Hizha Rai, we'd hiked for just over fourteen hours. But I stood on the top of the monument on Botev Vruk and I have the picture to prove it.

On the trail to Botev Vruk we had to hike through this herd of free roaming horses. They were savage as you can see.

Last week I participated in my group's COS conference. Close of Service is the terminology for leaving the PC and it appears to be as complicated and time-consuming as entering was. There are appointments to be made with medical, dental and vision doctors, forms to fill in and reports to fill out. Decisions on when to fly home and where to fly to have to be cast in stone. PC property such as fire extinguishers, smoke detectors, water purifiers, tamiflu and first aid kits have to be returned to Sofia. Host families have to be visited one last time and kissed good-bye. Stuff has to be sorted into piles to ship, pack, give away and burn. Final exit interviews with Program Managers and Country Director have to be scheduled and all the checklists have to be checked. Suddenly, quitting early (ETing) begins to have a bright side to it. I'll decide in the next day or so which day I'll actually leave Bulgaria and which city I'll fly into. I'll book my flight and begin counting down the days.

I still have twenty-two vacation days on the books, but I won't get to use most of them because I have a lot of things coming up in the next three months. I'm going to Borino, in the Rhodope Mountains, to help another volunteer out by showing his organization how to write a grant application. I'll be in Sofia the end of July to work in another Day Camp. My agency is getting busier with paying clients and I have a ton of work to do here. August and September are also beginning to fill up, so the time will fly by. I'm anxious to see my family and friends in the States again, but I don't really want this experience to be over. Slowly I'm completing my personal checklist and now the next mountain I climb will be my second.

I'll leave you with the words of my friend Jessica. I called her when I finally reached the summit to say that I wasn't sure I could survive the climb back down and that I was worried that I'd bitten off more than I could chew and might just be left to die there by the others and she said, "You think you have problems, my washing machine is acting up and I have a full load in!" That's what PC is all about, selfless devotion to the problems of others and obsessive fascination with Bulgarian appliances.

This much I know is true: YDs have more fun than the rest of us. There are three groups of volunteers, defined by the type of work they do, CODs or Community Organizational Development volunteers, TEFLs or Teachers of English as a Foreign Language and YDs or Youth Development volunteers. I was lucky enough to be invited to help out at Kate's YD Summer Camp in Plovdiv last week. This was a weeklong day camp held at a school in the Roma Mahala where Kate works. The kids were all fourth and fifth graders from the neighborhood and came armed with enough energy and high spirits to power an aircraft carrier for a day. Unless you happened to be Kate, it really wasn't much like work at all. The ten or so volunteers who came to help out got to run around and play just as much as the ten year old kids. Kate had already done all the planning and the rest of us just did what we were told. In case you're interested, there seem to be about one hundred variations to the game of Tag and we played them all.

Years ago, while legging out a triple in a highly competitive game of co-ed softball, I had the unfortunate experience of tearing my hamstring. With my completely unsympathetic teammates screaming at me to "crawl faster!", I dragged myself along the ground to third base and was immediately pulled from the game for a pinch runner. A torn hamstring hurts like the devil. It feels exactly like someone has snuck up behind you and cut through that large heavy muscle with a pair of dull scissors. At first the muscle just flops around under your skin like a snake in a bag but then the pain message reaches your brain and you really don't care much at all for people who want you to "crawl faster". Anyway, ever since that day I have taken great care to a) preferably not run at all or b) if running was to be absolutely required, to warm up my legs for at least a week before said running was to occur.

Have you ever tried to play any of the myriad variations of Tag without actually running? The kids screamed and yelled and charged around the schoolyard like inmates escaped from the asylum. The volunteers screamed and yelled and ran for their lives. We played Partner Tag, Blob Tag, and a game called Sharks & Minnows that sounds a lot cooler in Bulgarian - Akula!! It became quickly apparent that the true purpose of each and every one of those games was to cause Larry a serious injury. As one swift little bast.. child came up and tagged me from behind, I knew it was only a matter of time before I would be found lying in a pool of my own tears with a group of completely unsympathetic ten year olds hovering over me yelling "crawl faster!". Then I had a vision of the PC medically separating me with less than six months to go because I tore a hamstring playing Blob Tag!

I faked a limp and left the field of battle to take up a position behind the camera. Hiding behind the "they also serve who sit and do nothing" theory of participation, I filmed and photographed away for two days. The kids had a ball. The volunteers had a ball. Kate was exhausted from all the work she put into the camp as well as having two or three volunteers staying at her apartment the whole week and I finished the camp with both hamstrings intact. We're all winners in this game.

By the way, each of the two big bullies shown in the picture on the left tagged me really hard and then laughed at me. Actually, these were two of the younger kids and the older kids tried to be very careful not to hurt them. In Bulgaria, the girls seem to pair off at birth and you almost never see a girl without her mate. During a particularly competitive round of Steal The Bacon a girl and her best friend found themselves on opposite teams. Worse yet, they were the same number which meant that when their number was called they would have to go against each other. Their number was called and both of them charged out for the Bacon. One girl swooped it up and began running back to her line but her friend was hot on her heels and leveled her with a whacking strong tag. The tagged girl went down like a shot duck and stayed down. Her friend began to cry and both girls had to leave the field of play, arm in arm, to compose themselves. No one ever said Steal The Bacon was a game for softies. Eventually the two girls returned, but they declined further combat and restricted themselves to an afternoon of crafts.

The strain of the week proved to be too much for Kate and, in what can only be described as a moment of insanity, she actually gave the kids ammunition for a game of Egg Toss and then provided them with water balloons for a game of Soak the Volunteers! We filled several buckets with multi-colored water balloons and brought them down to the playground for the last outdoor activity of the camp. I carried one bucket out and tried to hold it up high enough so none of the kids could begin grabbing the balloons. Within seconds I resembled a tree decorated with colorful Roma children as ornaments. Ten seconds after I hit the playground, all my balloons were in the hands of the enemy and I was limping for cover. It took half a dozen volunteers the better part of an hour to fill the balloons, it took the kids twenty-eight seconds (by the clock) to fire them all at friends and foe alike.

In addition to the outdoor mayhem, there were indoor activities every day. The kids made necklaces, painted their faces, made masks, played bingo and had a discoteque on the last afternoon. The thing that impressed me the most was that none of the kids acted bored or decided that they were too cool to take part in any of the activities. Boys who acted like little thugs when they were playing the Tag games outside, became fully engrossed in decorating their masks when it was time for crafts.

I think that they all just enjoyed having people pay attention to them and that they appreciated the effort that Kate put into making their weeklong camp special. They live in a neighborhood where many of the things that happen are pretty negative so this camp gave them a week of safe, supervised activities where they could scream and yell and run around like crazy and no one would punish them for it. Apart from the very fine level of behavior shown by the kids, something else was equally apparent. The kids were very open in showing their affection for the Volunteers who worked at the camp. Volunteers were constantly being hugged by two or three small people whenever the opportunity presented itself. Lincoln, Jennifer, Jessica, Matt, Dave and Apryl generally had a couple of small admirers clinging to them whenever we were between games. The hugging was spontaneous and affectionate with each Volunteer having his or her own little fan club.The camp actually followed close on the heels of a few weeks of insanity of another stripe as I had visits from my sons and then my parents run end to end. Andy and Ian finally made it to Bulgaria after almost two years of promising to come. My foks made their second trip here in two years and would surely come again if I were staying. Both sons and parents made the pilgrimage to Saedinenie to visit my host family and both left laden with bottles of domashna (homemade) wine and rakiya.

The boys and I rented a car and Andy drove us down through the Rhodopi Mountains to Chepelare, Trigrad and Yagodina. We hiked and climbed around and over the Miraculous Bridges and wandered around the mountain in the rain. Later we found a small hotel and the boys stayed up and drank beer with the owner in his bar while I got some sleep. While still in Chepelare, we went through the Cave Museum which is proudly billed as the finest of its kind in Europe. In small print it is noted that it is the 'only' cave museum in Europe. It's a couple of rooms on the ground floor of a hotel that have been painted black and decorated with pictures of stalactites and stalagmites. Oh, and it has the skull of a cave bear in a glass case. We did manage to visit some 'actual' caves and rode through some truly spectacular gorges. During our stay in Trigrad, the hotel owner broke open a bottle of rakiya and the boys felt obligated to drink to his health, then to their own health and finally to the general health of the world at large not excluding ficticious characters and possible visiting aliens. As Ian later explained, "It was really weak stuff, Dad. With Stoil's homemade rakiya you can't even breathe after you drink, with this stuff we could still talk!!" They have become true fans of Veneta and Stoil after spending one very pleasant afternoon and evening visiting with them.

I told Veneta that we'd get there after lunch and stay for dinner and overnight. I knew that we'd be having lunch with Brian in Plovdiv on the way to Saedinenie and didn't want Veneta to make food we wouldn't eat. However, I warned the boys to eat lightly because Veneta would probably fix something anyway. She was standing on the curb watching for us as we pulled up and began handing us plates of food on our way into the house! Ten hours later we were all in food-induced comas and begging for mercy. It's good to go home!

My folks arrived during the boys' last three days and we all spent some time together in Sofia. We rented the hotel owner's car and Andy drove us down to Rila Monastery. Surprisingly, lightening didn't strike Andy or Ian down in that holy place. I guess the Saints weren't paying attention that day. On Friday morning the boys left for home and on Saturday The Visit: Chapter Two began with a bus ride with my folks to Stara Zagora.

Don is still recovering from his illness of a year ago and Mom is recovering from a broken pelvis so this visit was conducted at a more leisurely pace than their previous trip to Bulgaria. We still managed to see Sofia, the Rila Monastery, Varna, Saedinenie (required) and Assenovgrad. By the time they left for the States, they both seemed to be a lot stronger and were getting around much more easily. While neither of them are big rakiya fans, they do love Stoil's red wine and he gave them a ten liter bottle of it to take back home. Sadly, there was no way for them to transport such a large amount of vino on the plane and I am going to have to find a way to dispose of it myself. I'll have a few friends over and ask for suggestions.

So now for me it's back to the grind. I really have to do some work at the agency, if only to justify the use of my desk. I also have to begin preparing myself psychologically to re-enter a world where people don't sit over a cup of coffee for a couple of hours at the cafe or visit their friends for ten or twelve hours at a crack, a world where people move as efficiently as possible when going from A to B and rarely find the time to stop on the sidewalk to discuss matters of small importance. Of course, I have a plan. I've come to prefer the more leisurely pace and therefore, when I feel pressured to hurry or hustle along, I'll pull up with a brave limp and explain that I can't move any faster because, "when I was working with some kids at a summer camp, I was severly injured when a game of Egg Toss spiraled badly out of control. Let's stop here for a coffee and I'll tell you all about it."

I tend to be fairly punctual. I show up on time and appreciate it when others do the same. Yesterday, however, I was late for work. In fact, I was over an hour late for work. But I have an excuse.

I was walking to work in a great mood. The weather was gorgeous and I was actually whistling as I went along. It was one of those beautiful Spring days when the sun was out and the morning air was crisp and clean. I was wearing a light jacket and jeans and, as I walked, I was thinking about my sons' upcoming visit. Then something hit my head.

It wasn't a thought because a thought wouldn't have been so viscuous and gooey. A thought would have been less tangible than the very tangible thing that hit my head and oozed down into my hair. No, the thing that hit my head was more on the order of very tangible birdshit. I can't swear that it was from a bird, judging from the size of the mess, it might have been from a small winged hippopotamus.

When I felt the 'thing' hit my hair, my reaction was to put my hand up to feel around to identify the 'thing'. I suspect you might have reacted similarly and now I understand how a wolverine can be induced to chew off its own paw. All I'll say on the subject is that when I saw the mess on my hand and realized what was spread like a beanie across my head, I stopped whistling and the day lost a lot of its luster. I ran back home, jumped into the shower and began to shampoo the real poo out of my hair. For almost an hour, I had to fight off the urge to shave my head. Then I very calmly got dressed and went to work.

My colleagues were in a great mood when I arrived at the office because we have finally acquired our first paying client! This was a banner occasion and called for an out-of-office celebration. We are contacted by many foreign companies seeking information or assistance regarding moving to Bulgaria in general and Stara Zagora in particular. We do the research and send back our replies, we set up contacts, agendas, hotel reservations and meetings. We escort visitors around and translate for them during their meetings. We negotiate on their behalf. We do all this without any compensation from anyone. REDA lives off of its ability to acquire EU funding for specific projects and when we don't acquire projects during a cycle, we don't receive any income. We are not supported by the government on any level, local, regional or national. Our objective is to become self-sustainable and wean ourselves from our dependence on grant money. As a first step towards achieving this independence, we have developed list of services that we are uniquely qualified to offer and a modest fee schedule to go along with them. Now, when we're contacted by foreign companies seeking information, we send back a complimentary first general reply and then offer to represent them locally and send along our standard fee schedule. My colleagues were, initially, concerned when most of the companies receiving the fee schedule didn't contact us again. I kept trying to explain that these companies were only interested in having us do an enormous amount of work for them if they didn't have to pay for it. The world is filled with 'customers' like that and you only stay in business if you avoid them. We offer a genuine value to companies through our network of contacts and our top to bottom knowledge of the region. We have the ability to provide in-depth research on any issue of interest to a foreign investor more accurately and in far less time than they can do for themselves. I have been convincing my colleagues that we should only expend our efforts on behalf of companies who recognize our worth. A British firm has decided to build a Health Spa in our Region and to surround it with a development of new single family houses. They have paid us for all the work we've done on their behalf to date and asked us to represent them throughout the entire project. It's hard to describe how excited we are about this. I even began to whistle again.I began this entry over two weeks ago and then my sons arrived and then my parents arrived and then my sons left and now I'm showing my folks around. And then the dog ate my homework. One final observation. When Andy and Ian were here we noticed that we walk differently than most Bulgarians. We tend to walk quickly to wherever we're going. We talk along the way, but we don't waste time or steps. The purpose of walking out to TechnoMarket, for example, is to get to TechnoMarket. Bulgarians stroll. They amble, wander and mosey. Young women walk arm in arm and speak to each other in whispers. Old men also walk along arm in arm and re-live old battles won or lost. Periodically, all Bulgarian walkers stop and have conversations that require the participants to be stationary. We hammer along from A to B with the objective of arriving as soon as possible. For Bulgarians, the getting there is half the fun. I've noticed this as I've rushed past most of the population of Stara Zagora on my very important missions to get to one place or another. There are roses in full bloom on every vine in the city and I haven't bothered to appreciate a one of them. So, I have made a promise to myself to slow it down and to be more Bulgarian in my getting from A to B. I intend to literally stop and smell a few roses along the way.The only apparent drawback to this is that is makes me a much easier target...say, are those large birds flying this way?!

The color of communism wasn't red, it was gray. Everything from the landscape to the mood of the people became a uniform washed-out shade of gray. Career paths were decided by central planning committees and assigned with rigid observance to political priorities. People who probably would have made excellent chefs or bus drivers or astronomers were given work as architects and told to be creative with the huge surplus of concrete that, apparently, existed throughout Eastern Europe. So they created the "Blok", a solid gray rectangle of an apartment building that is unsurpassed in ugliness. Bloks have all the splendor but none of the warmth of caves. They can be anywhere from seven or eight stories tall to well over twenty and contain from six to twenty apartments on each floor depending on the length of the building. Each apartment will usually have a balcony or a terrace and that is the only feature that gives the building the appearance of a habitat for people rather than a concrete bunker for storing large pieces of machinery.

Concrete is remarkably durable and will be crumbling down and decaying throughout Eastern Europe for centuries to come. Most of the major buildings in Stara Zagora are made of concrete and were designed by men and women with excellent political backgrounds and a presumed talent in some field other than architecture. They are truly ugly, cheerless and totally lacking in inspiration or art. But they are functional. And the homes inside these buildings are just like homes anywhere else. People here have the same appliances, electronics, fixtures, plumbing, rugs and tiles that people acquire wherever they live. People own the interiors of their apartments but haven't quite formed the co-ops necessary to keep the exteriors and public areas (elevators, hallways, entryways, etc.) in a livable condition. Perhaps they don't yet understand the relationship between the value of their own apartment and the appearance of the common areas of the building.

I pay three leva a month towards the cleaning of the common areas of my building. We recently had our entryway repainted and locks installed on the exterior doors. Grass was planted on a small island in the parking lot that had previously been used as an ad hoc trash bin. Every so often, a collection is taken up to pay for one or another improvement and signs are always posted on the elevator doors tattling on the apartment owners who refused to chip in. Discussions are held in hallways and on the benchs by the fountain outside and little by little the building is improved and a stubborn few skulk along for the free ride. I am usually exempted from contributing because I am a 'renter', not an owner. However, my next door neighbor is in charge of collecting for our floor and I can usually convince her to let me put in my share. Before you become all teary-eyed over my generosity, a share is never more than five leva or about three bucks.Stara Zagora is changing. New buildings are being built all over town. Roads, sidewalks, parks and plazas are being improved and upgraded. Gray concrete pillboxes and bunkers are being replaced by buildings with curves and colors. Older pre-communist architecture is being rediscovered and renovated and the town is starting to assume an identity of its own. Or maybe it's just Spring. From my balcony I look down on a building that was an eyesore and was torn down to make way for new construction. My street, Metropolit Metodii Kucev, is a beautiful divided two lane road with a tree-lined path containing half a dozen ornate fountains running down the center. It begins up at Ayazmoto Park and runs past my building down into the center of town. Property values on Metodii Kucev are understandably high. Buying property is sometimes difficult because of the title disputes arising from ownership claims from the times before, during and after communism. However, on this particular building title was proven and the developer tore it down and began to prepare the site for his new building. Just as a property developer in the States, he cleaned off the old rubble and dug an excavation for a new foundation.Unfortunately, that's when he ran into the Roman ruins. So now, all work has been temporarily halted while the site is excavated with whisk brooms and dental picks. These aren't as efficient as backhoes and steamshovels, but they do less damage to priceless antiquities. You've probably figured out by now that the whole reason I'm writing this piece about architecture and building sites is that I just learned how to put pictures on my journal! My little digital camera had stopped working and I assumed that the battery was worn out. I hiked all over town looking for a replacement, couldn't find one and asked my sons to buy me one and bring it with them when they visit. Then, the old battery took a full charge and has been working perfectly ever since. Go figure! I have no idea how or why any of this stuff works and that's why it's taken me two years to figure out how to put pictures on this page. REDA, my agency, is thinking of requesting another volunteer. This is a great place to work and my colleagues will see to it that the new person is kept busy. We are transitioning from a purely grant supported operation to a self-sustained consulting agency and there will be plenty of work for another volunteer for the next couple of years. REDA has to find its niche because much of what we do is covered by the Chamber of Commerce and some of what we do is now done by the brand new Tourist Office that opened next door to the Gallery. In my opinion, our niche is pursuing and attracting foreign investment and then assisting those investors in making contacts and working through the labyrinth of laws and regulations necessary to begin doing business in Stara Zagora. Information and contacts, in this day and age, are very saleable commodities and REDA has both in abundance. However, change is difficult and even though we have taught courses in Change Management, we are having a bit of difficulty in facing the future ourselves. It's Friday and we're shutting down for the weekend. We're closing before six o'clock because Darina's daughter Nadia just turned seventeen and is having a party at their apartment that requires Darina and her husband to vacate the premises. Petya and I spent most of the day telling her horror stories of our own children's unsupervised parties (because that's what teammates are for) and Darina left looking as happy as a soldier on a suicide mission. Next week should be relatively slow here and then my sons arrive. They'll come in on Saturday and stay for two weeks with my folks arriving during the boys' last three days. Then my folks will stay until the first week or so of June and then I'll have a couple of weeks before my COS conference in July. Time's flying!!The cafes are open and I'm going to go find a chair and a cup of coffee and watch the sights stroll by. Have a great weekend, everyone.

The Peace Corps asks for a commitment from volunteers to serve in a host country for twenty-seven months, three months as Trainees and then two full years as Volunteers. This timeframe is made abundantly clear to each applicant at every step of the joining process. It can take up to a year to complete all the required steps and receive an invitation to join a group being sent to one country or another to begin training. There are lengthy online forms to complete, thick packets of paper forms to fill in, personal interviews to take, medical, dental and vision exams to pass, background checks to undergo, fingerprints, references and resume..all thoroughly checked. Then, from the day you receive your invitation to join, your timetable is very clearly laid out before you. Prior to your arrival in your country, your COS date is set. My group, the B-16s, arrived in Bulgaria on August 9, 2004 and on the calendars we were given on our first day, listing all the significant waypoints of our time here, was our Completion Of Service date, October 10, 2006.

Many volunteers do not stay until their COS date. People leave for a variety of individual and personal reasons. Some people find that they miss home, family and friends more than they ever could have anticipated and they leave. Some people discover that they don't like living in a 'foreign' country as much as they thought they would, especially when the electricity goes out, the water stops and the neighbors don't understand them. Sometimes their jobs don't make a lot of sense or aren't particularly rewarding and people begin to envy their friends at home who are starting 'real' careers or have gone on to grad school. Trainees and volunteers alike become disillusioned, fed up or just plain unhappy and they leave. There are also family emergencies and personal situations at home that force people to leave early. The reasons for leaving, and the decisions to do so, are always personal and people begin leaving at a more or less steady pace almost from day one. Volunteers who leave prior to their COS date are said to ET, or Early Terminate. This decision is voluntary and PC doesn't put pressure on people to stay if they want to go home. Then there are some who want to stay but aren't able to do so. There are people who become either too ill or injured to continue to serve and are medically separated from the PC. The PC term for this situation is MedSep, a tidy bureaucratic label for an unfortunate group. Finally, there are the few volunteers who just don't get it. A very small number of volunteers have to be Administratively Separated, generally for behavior issues related to running afoul of either PC policy, common sense or good judgment. If we weren't volunteers this would be called 'being fired' but we'll just call it ASing.

So, if you don't ET, MS or AS, you COS and get your DOS. Your DOS is your official Description of Service and proclaims to one and all that you served your full two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer with honor. For some people, that's enough to keep them here.

Most volunteers start out with a little trepidation and a lot of enthusiasm and most fully expect to COS. Fifty-nine B-16s got on the plane to fly to Bulgaria on August 8, 2004. There were supposed to be sixty of us but one woman was unable to join us. If I had been asked, at that time, to bet on how many would COS I would have bet that we'd lose no more than six people. This is why I don't gamble!

The B-16s are now officially on the endangered list. At last count there were more California Condors than B-16s! We are down to thirty-one hardy souls but the grapevine is humming and that number will certainly shrink (we could be talking Spotted Owl territory here). All of the people from my training group in Saedinenie are still here and both Lindsay and Sara have extended to stay a third year. Brian & Kate will stay for an additional month or so to help train the new arrivals and I will COS on October 10th and become the first of the Saedinenie's to leave.

There is no easy way to categorize the people who have left early or to categorize those who have stayed for that matter. Age, gender, race and creed are equally represented in both groups, as are intelligence, humor, and character. Most of those who have left have probably done the right thing for themselves; while those of us who are staying have found ways to make this a meaningful experience in our lives. It is, however, apparent that the Peace Corps is not for everyone. If you're considering joining, it might be worthwhile to try to talk to a couple of people who left early just to get their perspective. Personally, I think this has been a terrific experience and I fully intend to take advantage of every minute of it.

Among the advantages offered is private language tutoring, however, PC policy dictates that my language lessons must end on July 10th. I suppose that after two years of lessons, they feel that there's no point in throwing good money after bad and that I won't learn enough in my last three months to make the expenditure worth while. I can only hope that my tutor, Darina Murteva, can maintain her perfect record of 'never saying a single thing the same way twice' until July. While this isn't necessarily helpful when you're trying to learn a language, it is a very impressive feat when extended to twenty-four consecutive months. It's a bit like Joe Dimaggio's fifty-six game hitting streak, no tutor to come will ever approach Darina's capacity as a Bulgarian thesaurus. I've become very comfortable with our routine. Twice a week she comes to my apartment and, while I drink my coffee, she talks to me in very formal and proper (some might say ancient and archaic) Bulgarian. Periodically I'll try to get a word in, but usually it's easier on both of us if she does all the talking. I nod and make "umm, uh-huh and oh" noises until the hour is up. I truly believe that her Bulgarian is improving as a result of our sessions and I feel really good about that. Yesterday she was talking about something or other and switched to English halfway through. For a minute I thought I had finally begun to understand Bulgarian because I knew what she was saying!

The grapevine or rumor mill among volunteers is well oiled and running with its usual efficient lack of accuracy. It's interesting to note that the rumors have evolved over time from "who is sleeping with whom" to "who is leaving this week" to "PC is going to put a whole new set of rules in place to make us unhappy". Rumors have high entertainment value especially when they take on an air of bombast and outrage. Currently, people are dithering over an announcement of probable policy changes within PC Bulgaria. So far, no specific changes have been made but rumors of draconian new rules have created pockets of mumbled rebellion. In my opinion, PC policy in Bulgaria is designed to keep us safe, assist us in our work and our communities and support us during our stay here. My guess is that the new policies will be designed to improve on that level of support. If not, I suppose I'll take to the barricades and shout down the Man (shout the Man down?).

My apartment reminds me of a big leafy tree. When I arrived in October 2004, it was in the full blush of its Summer with healthy green leaves and strong solid roots. Time, however, has been unkind to my apartment and it has now entered the Fall of its existence. Like leaves turning brown and falling, bits and pieces of my apartment have begun to disintegrate little by little. I have one shower, two toilets and three sinks, none of which can be turned completely off at this time. It's like living in a rainforest. Above my entryway door is a panel of "bushoni" or fuses. These burn out with methodical precision and need to be replaced about once a month. My landlord Hristo simply takes them apart, braids some new wire into them and screws them back into the panel. Lately, they've been popping with even greater frequency and Hristo has now given me a little chart showing me which appliances cannot be operated simultaneously. The water heater can't be used when anything else is on. The radiator can't be used if the tv or stove are being used. The washing machine can only be run when all the lights are turned off and the refrigerator is unplugged. The stove has three hotplate burners and an oven, but only two of any combination can be on at a given time. Ahhh, now I get it, no wonder I've been blowing all those fuses. I have this nasty American habit of keeping my fridge plugged in when the lights are on.

So, if I'm the last B-16 left in Bulgaria, I'll turn out the lights when I leave...or just plug in the refrigerator and turn on the tv.

The Foreign Service Written Exam was held at the American Embassy in Sofia on Saturday. I was registered to take the exam so I went up to the city on Friday to take care of some admin stuff at the PC office. 'Admin stuff' is sort of a code phrase for 'play with my fantasy baseball team' on the PC internet. I ran into a PCV I knew and we had lunch together. He was in Sofia to take the exam too so it was the natural topic of conversation during lunch. Although he had registered, he wasn't entirely certain that he wanted to take the test this year. We discussed the numbers and the odds for actually making it into the FS. Approximately 30,000 people register for the test and somewhere around 125 end up being offered jobs. Daunting odds by any definition. We split up after lunch but agreed to meet later for dinner. When I got in touch with him at about 7:00pm, he said that he was on his way home and had decided to wait until next year to take the test. Okay...only 29,999 people left in the competition. The odds are getting better all the time.

Bright and early Saturday morning I got up, showered, had breakfast and caught a cab to the Embassy. I clearly remember the days when you could wander into any US Embassy in the world by waving your passport and saying you were looking for information, directions, a cheap place to stay or help. There were usually a couple of very smart looking Marines in full dress uniforms at the door who would direct you to one office or another. The Marines may still be there, but now they're in full battle dress with kevlar body armor and automatic weapons. You don't see much of them because they're tucked away in highly impenetrable defensive positions. It's just a reflection of the realities of the time that the US Embassy is now Fort America and is as welcoming as a maximum security prison.

I had a letter from the FS directing me to report no later than 8:00am to the Embassy and when I arrived at about 7:30am I found a few other PCVs milling around in front of the entry/security point. They explained that we wouldn't be allowed in until 8:00am. It was cold and even though it wasn't raining, it was damp. A nice gesture would have been for the Ambassador to send out coffee and doughnuts to us, but because it was Saturday he was probably home in bed. Hey, he could have left someone a note. "A bunch of cold Peace Corps Volunteers will be milling aimlessly around in front of the entry/security point. Send out some coffee and doughnuts to them, will you? Oh, and I have a feeling that at least one of them prefers Boston Creams." See, that's what successful diplomacy is all about.

Promptly at 8:00am they began to process us through security five at a time. Large men in black uniforms guided us through bulletproof rooms, metal detectors and heavy fortress-like doors. We were told to surrender our cell phones and any other electronic devices. Our names were checked and double-checked against a list and we were, finally, escorted into the Embassy itself. It took about half an hour for us to clear security, and they were expecting us. I don't think you'd stand much of a chance if you just wanted to drop by and see the place. Your tax dollars at work in a highly secure environment.

The room to be used for the exam was set up and ready for us. Each of us was assigned a table and each table faced a set of windows with a magnificent view of Mt. Vitosha. Vitosha is still covered with snow and, with a bright blue sky behind it, was a very pleasant distraction. From the empty tables, I'd guess that almost half the people who registered decided to sleep in that morning. The two proctors said, "no talking", read the rules, distributed the first test booklets and we were off to the races.

Six hours later we were through. Well, it wasn't a straight six hours, there was a fifteen minute break. On the front of each test booklet, there was a Non-disclosure Agreement that had to be signed. This basically states that if I reveal any of the questions I will be prosecuted, denied employment in the FS, called several naughty names and made to wait outside without doughnuts or coffee for some indeterminate amount of time. I can, however, tell you that I spent several months brushing up on various topics such as history, economics, management theory, geography, the US political system, the US legal system and the US Constitution complete with all 27 amendments. I bought a study guide that gave me a course of action and I took it. I don't think that what I did could ever be confused with actually studying, but I did spend time reviewing these areas in a helter-skelter fashion. I can say with complete confidence that out of a total of 400 odd questions (some were very odd) I feel really good about my answers on four or five. By 'really good' I, of course, mean that there is a 50% chance that I guessed correctly on them. The other 395 questions are a crapshoot. I spent a great deal of time both looking over the US Constitution and taking some online geography quizzes. The single geography question on the exam referred to an area of the globe that was inadvertently omitted from the set of quizzes. I did, however, nail the Constitution question. There was also an essay which had to be written by hand. I was assured that handwriting doesn't add to or detract from your score. My handwriting started out at illegible and ended up being a series of squiggly lines that represent really insightful words and sentences.

The test results will not be available until the end of July. I think I've done fairly well, but whether that's well enough to move on to the next step won't be known until then. All in all it was a very interesting experience and I rode the bus home to Stara Zagora feeling very confident that I was the only one on board who could pick the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution out of a lineup. For the short period of time that I actually remember all this stuff, I intend to impress friends and acquaintances alike at every gathering and when I forget the facts...I'll just make stuff up.

Many of the volunteers in Bulgaria keep online journals (journals, blogs, xangas, call them what you will) and I make it a practice to read about half a dozen of these on a regular basis. I read two because they're written by friends, one because it's written by an ex-PCV who is certifiably insane, one for the pictures and two others because they are so well written. I like good writing and I particularly enjoy stumbling across good writing in unexpected places. I've never seen any statistics on the subject, but I'd guess that the percentage of online journals that are witty, interesting and well written is a one digit number, a low one digit number. Many journals are simply used by their authors as whine racks and contain little more than an annoying recitation of whatever is making that person unhappy at that moment. Be assured, there is always something making these people unhappy. Life is a conspiracy against them. Given the opportunity, these folks would suck the pleasure out of a Spring day. Their message is dreary, their syntax is awful and their spelling is atrocious. They do, however, make finding the good ones all the more rewarding.

Now, in one of the good ones, I've been tagged. Tagging, it turns out, is the practice of defining a category, then making a personal list of specifics on your own journal and, finally, challenging, commanding, directing or asking a specific person or group of people to create their own lists on their journals. As in, "Tag, you're it!". I had to look it up.

So, Lucia thought about guilty pleasures and came up with seven that she was willing to share online. Now she's tagged me, and some of her friends, to list seven of our own guilty pleasures. Most of you who read this journal know me very well and, therefore, can appreciate my problem. While having an abundance of pleasures, I very rarely have guilt. But, as I've been tagged, I'll give it a shot.

The Peace Corps. I suppose that quitting work and going off to satisfy a dream I've had since I was in college should qualify as a guilty pleasure. I know I've enjoyed this so much it probably should be illegal, fattening or contagious.

Cigars. Since my Uncle Bill threw away my White Owls and gave me a box of Upmanns way back when, I've always loved a good cigar. I smoked them before they were the rage, during and since. I still limit myself to one or two a week, not from a sense of guilt but rather because I seem to enjoy them more when they're rationed.

The OverPaidPrimaDonnas. This is my fantasy baseball team and I spend many many many productive hours managing them. In our league the 'Donnas are known for the quality of their (my) complaining and the fact that they usually come in second. Until I get a real life, this will have to do.

The Sheraton Balkan. Okay, I admit it, I prefer the Sheraton in Sofia to the Hostel Mostel. So shoot me.

The two-hour Bulgarian cup of coffee. Sitting with friends at one of the outdoor cafes in Stara Zagora on a Spring or Summer day and making a cup of coffee last a couple of hours while we watch the parade go by and solve a universal problem or two is another thing I should probably feel guilty about, but I don't.

Weekend nap. I like to lie on my couch, with both my balcony doors propped open, and sleep during the day on a Summer Saturday or Sunday. It is essential that I have a book cracked open on my chest and music playing in the other room. Even though the breeze through the room is the dreaded tuchenie, I sleep like a baby. I guess if the weather outside is especially terrific I could feel a little guilty. I'll think about it next time and let you know.

Evening ice cream. The street vendors are back! Like snowdrops or crocuses the ice cream vendors are beginning to appear on Tsar Simeon after a long Winter. One by one they will open until there are eight or ten of them up and down the street. Raffy's, Gelati, and Mr. Sweet's all peddling ice cream cones by the gram. I make it a habit to walk to the center each evening after dinner and buy a cone or two. So much ice cream, so little time. If I buy a cone at Raffy's and then walk all the way down the street to the bottom, I can pick up another cone at Mr. Sweet's for the long haul back up the street. Hey, it's for the exercise. Walking is good for you.

Well, there you have it. I could go on but now it's your turn. Sara, Alex, Matt and Jessie...Tag.

By the way, I'll be at the PC office on Friday and the Sheraton on Friday night, I'll have a cigar with dinner at Ruini and head back to SZ on Saturday. There I'll set the lineup for the 'Donnas before having coffee with Alex, Matt & Jessie for a couple of hours. I'm hoping for a sunny day for my nap on Sunday so I'll be well rested for the long walk for ice cream after dinner. Life is good.

Last weekend I went to Hissar to join a group of volunteers who were planning on taking a hike. Hissar is about an hour north of Plovdiv by bus which, like Stara Zagora, puts it in the foothills of the Sredna Gora. The outing was planned and coordinated by the VSN or Volunteer Support Network, a group of volunteers who serve as peer counselors and shoulders-to-lean-on. The VSN thought it would be nice to set up a weekend for anyone who wanted to visit Hissar, go for a swim in the hot baths, see the Roman ruins and take a short walk through the surrounding countryside. It sounded good to me and my friend Kate was doing the coordinating so I decided to tag along.

We had very comfortable rooms in a sanitarium that had special rates for railroad employees. After determining that none of us had ever actually been employed by a railroad at any time, they charged us full whack. That came to almost 13 leva per person, or about nine dollars. We dumped our things in our rooms and gathered out front to wait for our guide for the walk around town. Georgi showed up right on time and was dressed in full camouflage with military hiking boots. This was a man who took his walks about town seriously.

Promptly at 11:00am we started off at a brisk clip. We barreled past ruins and hot springs without so much as a brief, "That's a Roman ruin" or "These are some of our famous hot springs", from our tour guide. We walked to the very edge of town and then took a brief rest while our guide ran off to his apartment for something he'd forgotten. Ten minutes later he returned and we were off again. This time we struck out across the fields behind Hissar towards the foothills. We marched for an hour across fields and through orchards and, as the foothills grew closer they began to seem more like footmountains. We stopped just short of the serious uphill part of the hills and the guide showed us where he intended to take us so the faint of heart could bail out then and there. I can usually faint with the best of them but I would have been the only one so I trudged on with the pack. Just before we began the climb, a friend of Georgi's joined us. He too was in full camo with military boots and he was packing heat. For reasons I never quite figured out he had a very large pistol holstered on his hip. I suppose if any of us broke a leg or something it would have been more merciful to shoot us rather than leave us to the wild squirrels and lizards.

The path began its climb into the Sredna Gora and we climbed right along with it. I was huffing and puffing like a steam engine, an old steam engine, but I was keeping up with everyone and it kept looking like we were almost there. 'There' being a nice spot the guide was taking us to for lunch. As a group we soon fell into a groove; we'd hike for ten minutes and then rest for ten minutes. It made the hike longer but seriously curtailed the coronaries. Up and up we went and I knew that I was in trouble when Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay came down the path shaking their heads and telling us to go back because it was too difficult. I had a fleeting feeling that the VSN was trying to kill me because I'm old.

Finally, without the use of ropes, pitons or an escalator we made it up to the highest point on the planned hike and stopped for lunch. It was a very pretty spot with a natural spring of cold water and a view of the entire valley. We ate and relaxed and gathered our strength for the tumble back down the hill. Some people were theorizing that going down is harder than going up, don't let them kid you, going up is all effort and muscle pain, going down is losing your balance and rolling a lot. We got back to the sanitarium at about 5:00pm, showered and headed off to dinner. After a very nice dinner in a local restaurant, we found another place that served real carrot cake and had dessert there. I was asleep like a baby by 10:00 and woke the next morning feeling great. Until I tried to move my legs and discovered that each leg weighed about twelve tons. Maybe I shouldn't have had that extra piece of carrot cake. In a month or so, when my legs begin to recover their strength, I might try this hiking thing again.

March 30

It's that time of the year again. Baseball season begins this weekend and my fantasy team, The OverPaidPrimaDonnas, is poised to defend its role as the perennial bridesmaid in our league. Our draft was held yesterday and this year's team has some promise which is a serious handicap considering that our major strength has always been the quality of my whining. Nonetheless, in spite of a bizarre set of draft rules that once again conspired to prevent me from acquiring even one frontline pitching ace, second place is well within our expectations. We're No. 2, we're no. 2!!

March 31

Several months ago I had dinner with a group of friends in Pazardjik and ended up sitting across from Lori at the table. Lori told us all that she was leaving the PC because she'd joined the Foreign Service and had to terminate her PC service to begin training. It all sounded pretty interesting to me so I asked her how she went about joining the Foreign Service. It seems that there is a rigorously competitive process for obtaining one of these State Department jobs. Lacking a presidential appointment (ie. Condaleeza Rice) you first must pass a Foreign Service Written Exam (FSWE), then a Foreign Service Oral Assessment (FSOA) and finally, be high enough up on the list of qualifiers to be called for the one and only group training class each year. Here's a rough approximation of how the numbers work out; 30,000 people sign up for the free FSWE, about 5,000 of these don't even show up on test day; of the 25,000 who actually take the exam, approximately 10% achieve high enough scores to be offered a shot at the FSOA; some of these 2,500 then reconsider and drop out but about 2,000 will go through the day-long ordeal of the FSOA; less than 10% will be put on the list for potential entry into the Foreign Service. Then you just wait to see if there are openings in your cone (State Department talk for Field). You can stay on the list for 18 months at which time, if you haven't been offered a job, you can begin the whole procedure again or go find a day job. Lori was too modest to go into all these numbers, I dug them out of online State Department statistics.

The FSWE is a five part exam. Prior to taking it you have to declare which of the five FS cones you want to specialize in, the choices are Political, Public Diplomacy, Economics, Consular and Management. The SD site has a wealth of information on each and an online interactive test to help you decide. Part one of the exam is the job knowledge section. Multiple choice questions testing your knowledge in a wide range of subjects such as economics, history, geography, math, cultural events, political science, US legal system, management theory, etc. Upon finishing this section, you proceed immediately to a multiple choice section specifically designed for your cone. There is a 50 minute essay and then a multiple choice test on English and another that assesses your general life skills. A minimum score will be determined by the SD and only exams scoring above that number on the multiple choice sections will have their essays graded. Two out of three of the exams that qualify to have their essays graded are then rejected because of essay deficiencies.

Daunting to say the least. However, as it seems that my dream of being appointed a Senator will never come to fruition, I've signed up for the FSWE being held this Saturday in Sofia. I must be clear here, I don't want to campaign, run or engage in any political process to become a Senator, I just think it would be nice to have the job and I'd accept it if someone decided to give it to me. I probably stand a better chance of that happening than I do of passing the FSWE, but I'm going to give the test a shot anyway. After all, I have to find something to do when I grow up.

By the way, Lori, as a reward for her outstanding achievement, has been sent to Sudan for her first assignment which, of course, leaves the French Riviera wide open for the next group!

A Bulgarian newspaper reported today that there is a high level of concern in Germany, host nation to the soccer World Cup, over the probability of a mass influx of 'sex industry' workers drawn by the huge crowds of, predominantly, young male fans. Fans of soccer, that is. Anyway, this sudden increase in Germany's already prodigious population of hookers, sportin' ladies and working girls will come primarily from 'Eastern European' countries and Number One on the hit list is (drumroll, please)...Bulgaria. WoooHooo! We're No. 1! We're No. 1!

I have spent most of my time here helping to develop mechanisms to assist Bulgarian businesses in recognizing, understanding and implementing European Union requirements, regulations and standards to prepare them for eventual accession into the club. Not once have I had the opportunity to consult with 'sex industry' workers or, sadly, to conduct any research into the requirements, regulations and standards set for these entrepreneurs in Germany or any other EU country. Then again, I'm not a big fan of soccer either.

The opera is back in town! After missing most of the season because the company was touring America, of all places, the Stara Zagora opera is back in business right here in Stara Zagora. Three weeks ago there was a false start to the new season when the lead soprano (a real soprano, not a New Jersey mobster) came down with an ailment, real or imaginary. The whole shebang was postponed until tomorrow night. As of today she's in fine fettle, so there are hopes that the curtain will rise on Puccini's "Madame Butterfly" and the show will go on. We have a large modern opera house in town that was partially destroyed in a fire a dozen years or so ago. It is still under repair and, from time to time, there are brief flusters of activity and the sound of hammers and saws can be heard in the building. Then a long period will go by without any progress at all. In the meantime, the operas are held in the local theater, which is fine with me. It is a small but very pretty building just a five minute walk from my apartment. There isn't a bad seat in the place and the acoustics are just fine. The stage isn't very large and requires some creative set design, but that's just part of the fun.

I was invited to the prom today! One of the seniors from the film club stopped by to ask me if I'd go to their prom on May 24th. I won't need to rent a tux or buy a corsage, however, as I'm being asked to stand by the wall and film the dance. I haven't seen any of the Film Club kids in a couple of months as they seem to all have developed new interests or become too busy with school. I had to explain to her that my 'good' camera was stolen and that I'd have to use the old, smaller cameras. She gave me a "now what should I do" sort of look and told me she'd think it over and let me know. Oh well, at least I won't have to polish my dancing shoes.

Apparently, we're having an intercom and buzzer system installed in my apartment building. Neither of the two lobby doors lock, so this will be a radical change. There is a telephone mounted just inside my apartment door which doesn't do anything at the moment. I guess they'll hook it up and I'll buzz in visitors, guests, delivery people, thieves and miscellaneous others. In a building that can't agree to chip in to pay to get the elevators fixed properly, this is a very interesting development. The lobby was just painted and part of the stairwell has also been cleaned up. By the time I move out the place could become downright respectable. I have been very comfortable in my apartment these past two years and I'll miss it in a masochistic sort of way. The appliances still conspire to do me in and the radiator is on its last legs, but I suppose it will all last until I leave. The view from the two balconies is great and my neighbors are all very nice to "the English guy". Matt was coming up in the elevator recently and was asked by a building resident if he was going 'na ghosti' to the English guy's apartment. That, I guess, would be me. Since our primary mission as PCVs is to foster a better understanding of Americans amongst our host country nationals, I'm pleased to say that I've tarnished the reputation of Englishmen and left our own unscathed.

At work I seem to have accidentally stepped through the looking glass. We've been working on an application for a grant from the EU agency Phare. A requirement of Phare applications is that they must be submitted in English and my role on past applications has been to polish the final draft. Generally, the application is written by Petya and Darina, always at the eleventh hour, with a great deal of heated discussion and enthusiastic waving of this or that set of guidelines or regulations. Then, five or ten minutes before it has to be sent off, I'm asked to re-do the English. This time was different. I was asked to actually write up the application to begin with and then we'd all sit around and edit my efforts together and send it off. This, after all, was the most important application we would file this year and to prove it, we were starting to work on it a month in advance! So I spent a couple of weeks working my way through the application and then sat down with my colleagues to discuss it and make any necessary changes. Imagine my surprise when I learned that I hadn't written a single acceptable word, not one. In my innocence I had mistakenly read the instructions for completing the application and followed them, unaware that my colleagues simply use those instructions as a sort of code for creating their own interpretation of the 'secret' meanings of the various terms. I actually took part in a very bizarre conversation explaining why the terms "target group" didn't actually apply to the group being targeted by the project but to a group that hadn't even been mentioned up to this point. However, when it came time to define the benefits to be received by the target group I was to describe the benefits to my original group of targets. So, it seems, I've been relegated back to polishing their English on the final draft. There's a lesson here somewhere.

March 17

Last night my neighbor came and rang my bell. She and her husband are about my age and, during the week, their granddaughter Hristina lives with them and attends the primary school next door. Hristina is in the fourth grade and is taking an English class, her grandparents don't speak any English and my Bulgarian is limited to saying hello to them in the elevator or hall. At her grandmother's (baba's) prompting, Hristina drew herself up to her full 3'10", pulled a ruled sheet of paper from her pocket, looked me in the eye and then began to read aloud, "On Saturday morning the door in the downstairs will be locked for always. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? I have for you one key. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? Here is your key, it will make the door to unlock. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?" I told her, in Bulgarian, that I did understand and that she spoke English very well, which made her baba very very happy. Then I asked how my infrequent visitors would be let in and was told that they would have to call me and I would have to go down and let them in. So much for the high-tech intercom system that I thought we were getting in lieu of elevator repair. Oh, and the elevators still won't be repaired.

One final more serious note to my sophomoric attempt at humor in the opening paragraph; many, if not most, of the Eastern European sex industry workers who will be in Germany will not be there voluntarily or from any spirit of free enterprise. They will be victims of human trafficking who will be there through force, coercion and/or deception. Bulgaria is, unfortunately, a primary source of young women forced into prostitution in other countries. The PC is very active in raising the awareness levels of the prevalence of these trafficking activities (known as TIP or trafficking in people) among high risk groups of young people across the country. Young women are lured by the promise of employment or educational opportunities to leave the country with 'sponsors' who then take their passports, documents and money and virtually sell them into truly horrific situations. Hopefully, as we shine more and more light on this practice, these cockroaches will be forced back into the sewers and their prospective victims will be safer. Our role as PCVs is to shine those lights.

Lastly, I went to "Madame Butterfly" on Tuesday night and it was terrific, even if it was a bit surreal to watch an Italian opera set in 19th century Japan about an American sea captain and a Japanese courtesan sung by Bulgarians. To aid the audience in understanding the plot, subtitles were flashed on a screen above the set in very blurred Bulgarian script. Well, thank goodness for that or I wouldn't have had a clue what was going on. As it's an Italian opera, the heroine dies in the end (it's the German operas where the fat lady sings) and she did so with panache and a level of histrionics suitable to a prima donna. Next time you're in Stara Zagora, catch the opera.

Kukeri is a celebration of Spring that is unique to Bulgaria. It traces its origins back to Thracian times and is meant to drive away the ghosts that come out in the Winter and to ensure a successful agricultural season. Traditionally, the celebration or festival takes place in the early Spring in mountain villages throughout the country. The participants are men from the village who dress in traditional Kukeri costumes and slowly parade up and down the town to the accompaniment of horns, bells and drums. For the most part Kukeri costumes consist of sheepskin pants, belts hung with cowbells and ornate masks or headpieces that can resemble anything from animals to mythical monsters. Each costume is custom made and uniquely individual. Kukeri is also an excellent time for the folk dancing troop of the village to perform and if any neighboring towns care to send their dancers, they're always welcome. So the men perform this ancient ritual and the ghosts of Winter are chased away and the crops are assured. There are three big Kukeri festivals held here, one in Pernik just outside of Sofia, another in Shiroka Luka way down south in the Rhodope Mountains and the third in Koprevshtitsa in the Sredna Gora.

I had a dentist appointment and was actually in Sofia the weekend the Pernik festival was being held. I was aware of it and knew of several PCVs who were going, but I missed it anyway. It wasn't for a lack of interest. One of the things I want to see the most here is a Kukeri festival. I just sort of ran out of steam that weekend and never made it to Pernik. So that left Shiroka Luka and Koprevshtitsa. Unfortunately, Koprevshtitsa came and went without raising a blip on my radar and I missed that one too. Shiroka Luka is the good one anyway. If you're only going to see one Kukeri festival, by all means make it the one in Shiroka Luka. It couldn't have been more perfect because the festival was being held on the national three day weekend in March.

Actually, it would have been a bit more perfect if I hadn't had the flu for two weeks. Matt and Jessie were planning to go from Stara Zagora and asked me to tag along with them. I just didn't feel like taking the four different buses that the trip to Shiroka Luka required and decided to stay home. I was finally beginning to feel better and I thought a quiet weekend at home would get me back on my feet. Then on Friday I got a call from Sara, who was visiting Brian and Kate, letting me know that they were all going to Kukeri on Sunday morning. All I had to do was catch a bus to Plovdiv and then a friend of Kate's would drive us there in her car. We'd be back in Plovdiv in time for me to catch an early bus back to SZ. It was perfect. So Saturday morning I slept late and made myself an excellent breakfast of bacon and eggs. Then I wandered down to the bus station to catch the bus to Plovdiv. I had a bit of difficulty crossing the main street here in town because there was a huge parade of men wearing sheepskin pants and cowbells. There were troops of folk dancers in wonderful costumes and traditional Bulgarian folk music echoed throughout the town. I had a bus to catch and didn't get to see much more than that. I cut in front of a large man in sheepskin pants wearing an enormous deer's head with antlers at least ten feet tall. The whole thing looked suspiciously like a Kukeri Festival, but that couldn't be because no one had mentioned that we had a really big celebration right here whenever I said that I really wanted to see one! Ten minutes later I was at the bus station and on my way to Plovdiv. I was sorry to miss the Kukeri parade in SZ but my consolation was that I was going to one of the three most famous festivals in the country.

On Sunday it turned out that we were not going to Shiroka Luka after all. Shiroka Luka is some 200 kilometers from Plovdiv and we were going to a festival that was much closer, in Pervanets. In a way this was even better because the festival in Shiroka Luka would be packed with tourists and half the Peace Corp and this smaller festival would be easier to manage and a lot closer to home. After one false start (we stopped in a town very similar to Pervanets but not actually Pervanets) we found the town, parked and took up positions on the sidewalk. We could hear the parade farther along up the street and could see the beginnings of it coming towards us. We got our cameras out and began to shoot.

Down the street they came but instead of the traditional Kukeri parade, this was a group of villagers dressed in Halloween costumes carrying enormous wooden replicas of Turkish swords. Many of them did have on the belts with cowbells and there were drums and horns, but for the most part there were small boys dressed as small girls who ran around whapping you on the back with inflated sheeps' stomachs. Everyone got whapped to some degree or another with large men, cute girls and friends seemingly taking the brunt of the whapping. This may have been to drive out evil spirits, to cleanse all and sundry of assorted sins or merely because the small boys really enjoyed having an opportunity to go around hitting strangers with inflated sheeps' stomachs. In traditional Kukeri only the men take part. The folk dance groups have women participants but Kukeri is a 'guy' thing. Pervanets, however, is much more politically correct than tradition demands and women were well represented in the rolling insanity. I exclude the group of four young men dressed a nuns, who whapped away with a somewhat religious fervor, from the ranks of women. There were real women taking part in the parade, most of whom were dressed in some form of harem attire and were shaking it to beat the band. The 'band' was one guy with a clarinet and two guys with drums. All in all the word that comes most readily to mind is 'bizarre'.

After brushing off each others coats, we bid farewell to Pervanets and the inflated inner organs of domesticated livestock. We drove a way up into the mountains and stopped at a terrific bakery out in the middle of nowhere to buy some of the best bread I've had here. That says a lot because the bread here is uniformly excellent. Then we drove back into Plovdiv and I caught the bus to Stara Zagora. I suppose in the back of my mind I was hoping that the Kukeri festival would still be going on in town when I arrived. It wasn't.

I'm hard at work now preparing a grant proposal that will help turn my agency into a ROSIO, that's a Regional One Stop Investment Office. The idea is to create one central location for collecting databases of information to assist potential foreign investors in making the decision to move here. This is basically what we do now, but on a less formal basis and we'd like to have the ability to improve our data collection capacity and to better represent the entire region. It's an important grant for us and we're putting a lot of work into it. A measure of the seriousness with which we are taking this application is the fact that it isn't due until the end of March and we've begun working on it now. Typically, we would go to panic stations a couple of days out and frantically hammer away at our keyboards until the last minute. Frantic hammering is the watchword of the day now and we'll be at it until the package is in the mail.

I have quite a number of vacation days stored up and I'm not allowed to use them after July 10th because the PC has a rule that no vacation may be taken within the last three months of service. I'm not sure why this rule exists, but it does. So, I'll begin taking my vacation time in April and won't be at work much between then and July. Then, I'll literally be on the homestretch. I COS on October 10th and will probably head for home a day or so later. Between now and then, I have to decide more or less where 'home' is. Maine, New York, Chicago, or maybe someplace sunny. I still have time to figure it all out. Right now I have to hammer away frantically or risk getting whapped with the sheep's stomach that Petya is inflating at her desk.

I'm quite certain that my nephew Philip is returned to the woods every summer to run free with his own kind, large bears. Last summer, however, he was forced by his parents to miss that seminal experience because they needed him to carry a jar of mayonnaise to Bulgaria. By 'jar' I, of course, mean 'drum'. Philip lugged a drum o'mayo across the Atlantic and into Bulgaria so his Uncle Larry could eat his tunafish sandwiches made with his preferred Hellman's mayo. I should be eternally grateful, his parents didn't seem to object too strenuously to his presence on the trip and the bears in the woods got more food for themselves. Unfortunately, my level of gratitude has been diminishing along with the mayo and, I'm distraught to announce, both have reached the very last drop of their existence. It may be time now to consider shipping young Philip back to Bulgaria on a mission of mercy.

When I was home visiting family and friends at Christmas I bought myself a gift. As I've become more and more interested in filmmaking, I realized that I wanted a better video camera. I have two small Canon digital camcorders but I've always planned on donating them to the Film Club when I leave Stara Zagora. So, eventually, I was going to buy a new camera anyway and if I bought it when I was home for Christmas, I could use it during my last few months in Bulgaria. It took a considerable amount of jumping through various hoops to get the camera ordered and delivered during the ten days I was home. Just to add to the hassle factor, they sent the wrong size lens filters which had to be exchanged. The company I dealt with online was Beach Camera and I would recommend them if you're looking for any type of photographic or video equipment. Anyway, before I left the States, I had the new camera with all the proper accessories. I used it a bit here in SZ and the difference in quality was noticeable.

As I've mentioned, I'm in the process of filming a documentary on the Decade of Roma Inclusion. In February 2005 Bulgaria, along with seven other eastern European nations, signed an agreement to create and implement action plans to integrate their Roma (Gypsy) populations into the mainstream societies. I've begun interviewing people across a broad spectrum of Bulgaria's population to try to determine their level of awareness about the action plan and their feelings towards it. Last Friday I went to Plovdiv because my friend Kate had arranged for me to interview a group of Roma heroin addicts. Kate works in an outreach program that provides counseling and clean needles to these people. We met in the 'clinic' and found several men who were willing to talk to us. Some of them preferred to be interviewed with their backs to the camera, some were too far gone to really understand our questions and some were willing and able to offer some very interesting opinions and insights. They felt that things will never improve for them because of their addiction but that things might improve for Roma children if they can find jobs when they leave school. One of our questions asks, "Do you think things will be better for you in five years, in ten years?" Not one of them could imagine himself being alive in five years.

From the film's point of view, the interviews were very successful. Kate had also arranged for us to interview a group of prostitutes later that evening. We would have to buy packs of cigarettes for them because while they talked to us they would be 'on the clock' so to speak. It was still early so we decided to have dinner in a local restaurant while we waited.

Between volunteers, friends and counterparts, there were five of us at the table in Restaurant Diana. We had a table back in a corner against a wall and settled in to have a light meal, a beer and some conversation. There wasn't room on the table or chair for my camera bag so I put it on the floor by my foot. The new camera and bag were fairly large and there was a wall behind me but I was still uncomfortable about leaving it on the floor so I kept glancing down to check on it. At one point I looked down and it was gone. Someone had managed to pull it away from my foot without any of the five of us noticing! We called the police and the inspector didn't seem to believe it either. Fortunately, Kate and her Bulgarian friend Dobi were there to convince the inspector that someone had somehow taken the bag right from under the big dumb guy's feet and that instead of yelling at me, he might want to look for the thief. The thief, of course, wasn't hanging around in front of the restaurant playing with his new camera, this isn't the way of thieves. He was long gone. Dobi went with me to the Police Station to file a report and our meeting with the prostitutes was cancelled. The camera had the piece of film we'd shot with the addicts in it, so that was gone too.

Brian suggested that I contact the credit card company to see if they had any sort of coverage for this situation so on Monday I did. As you might imagine I was referred from pillar to post and back again before I finally got to talk to the buyer's security unit. They have opened a claim file and are sending me a volume of paperwork to complete. I also have to send the police report, a notarized letter explaining the situation and all receipts and statements. After they receive all of this, they'll decide if I have any coverage. At least they didn't say "no" right off the bat. So, for now, the film project is on hold and I haven't decided whether or not to replace the camera right now.

On Saturday I went to visit Veneta & Stoil in Saedinenie and had a really wonderful afternoon. Veneta met me at the door with food and kept feeding me for the four hours I was there. Stoil and I drank domashna rakiya and domashno vino and watched the Winter Olympics. I reminded him that we got to know each other while watching the Summer Olympics in 2004 and that called for another round of rakiyas. They heat their house with a wood burning stove (pechka) which does an adequate job downstairs but leaves the upstairs as cold as a polar wind. They were very understanding when I explained that I'd be returning to Plovdiv to sleep on Brian & Kate's couch. When it was time to go, they loaded me up with food, rakiya and wine for the trip home. You never know when a party might break out on the bus and heaven forbid I should be without a couple of litres of rakiya!

I'll be spending the balance of this week in Sofia working with the SPA Committee on reviewing the latest round of project funding requests. Brian is also on the committee and we've made a practice of having dinner together at a local restaurant that serves a very nice steak smothered in a dijon mustard sauce. We smoke cigars, drink rakiya and solve many of the world's more difficult issues. All in all, it's an evening I'm looking forward to.

Everything has gone really well for me here and I've been enjoying my PC experience immensely, thoroughly and without reservation, at least right up until now. Now, as you may suspect, I'm a bit depressed. I didn't realize just how important mayonnaise is to me. So, Philip, wherever you are, tell the bears you can't see them again this Summer because I'm out of mayo!!

When we celebrated the completion of the renovation of the Knitting Room in the Home for the Handicapped last November, among those present for the party was a youngish woman living, temporarily, in the Home. In addition to unspecified handicaps that kept her confined to her wheelchair, she also had a drinking problem and was in the Home in an effort to regain some control of her life. During this brief period she befriended the women of HandKnitCrafts.com and often found time to join them as they worked. She didn't knit but sat with them and talked and gossiped and listened as they talked and gossiped and as they complained about life in general. Then the youngish (30's) woman left the Home, thought about her experiences there and wrote a letter to a penpal in England. The penpal was a vicar in a small town parish and Evgenia (the youngish woman) took great pains in her letter to him to: 1) reconfirm her overpowering love for Christianity in general and God in particular, 2) confess the personal burden she bears as a result of being overwhelmingly beautiful, 3) admit to backsliding ever so slightly on the whole alcohol thing and, 4) accuse me of the 'brutal exploitation' of the handicapped women of Stara Zagora.

How do I know this?, you ask. The Vicar, bless his well-intentioned soul, turned out to be married to the sister of the wife of the British Ambassador to Bulgaria. Small world, no? Through chain-of-command the letter wound up on His Excellency's wife's desk; who, by the way, is the Chairperson of Traditzia - the shop in Sofia where almost all of our knitted products are sold. One of the women in the shop faxed us a copy of the letter and we were, initially, somewhat at a loss for words. Then I began to find some words but, fortunately for you, I seem to have lost them again. Evgenia described the person doing the brutal exploitation as being 'the artist man' and my colleagues and I all agreed that, as I'm the only man involved in the project, she must have been referring to me. I've been accused of many things in my life, including the brutal exploitation of handicapped women, but I've never been called an artist! The nerve!

Our primary concern was to learn how Evgenia had developed this opinion. Was it a reflection of feelings held by the women with whom we'd been working for over a year? We arranged a meeting with the ladies and met them at the Home in the Knitting Room. After the usual banter and small talk, we began to ask them how they felt about the work we were doing for them. They assured us that they appreciated all we were doing but that A) we should sell more of their shawls so they can have more money and B) they don't want to work very hard anymore. This was not new, 'more money - less work' has been their theme song from day one. We, again, explained that start-up businesses don't quite work that way and had a fine old animated and boisterous conversation. With the four of us and the eight of them and their wheelchairs in a 15x20 room animated conversations are something to behold. This is pretty typical of our meetings and during the shouting and arm waving someone or another will be sure to begin passing out cookies or chocolates for their birthday or name day. Then we wrap it up and everyone says it's been fun and we leave.

So Petya mentioned the letter and the 'brutal exploitation' and the room went silent. Now that is different. The room is many things but one of those things is not quiet. The women knew about the letter, having been told of it by Evgenia. There was a bit of sheepish to-ing and fro-ing of wheelchairs and then they said that Evgenia had listened to them while they worked and misunderstood their general complaining about work, money and life and had written the letter without telling them. Then they stated emphatically that they want to do very little work and have someone give them a great deal of money. So, they have arrived at the place in capitalism where we all aspire to be; my work here is done!

The final bit of sweeping up was for Petya to make a daylong trip up to Traditzia to assure the Ambassador's wife that we were not brutally exploiting the women (and that I'm not really much of an artist) and that we were continuing to put a great deal of uncompensated time into helping them. It should be noted that, while I am a Peace Corp Volunteer, my colleagues are not compensated in any way for the many hours they spend each week trying to help the women form a sustainable business. The Ambassador's wife understood and during their meeting made the universal sign of putting your thumb to your lips and tilting your head back to indicate that she knew Evgenia. So all is well and our escutcheon is unbesmirched.

We are currently drafting a proposal to an EU funding organization for a grant to enable us to develop our Agency into a one-stop shopping center for foreign investors seeking to relocate all or part of their businesses to Stara Zagora. We want to build a set of web tools that will offer a vast amount of information to prospective investors, market our ability to hand walk them through the governmental processes involved in relocation and offer a menu of specific fee-based services. The most remarkable thing about this proposal is that it isn't due until the end of March and we're actually working on it now! This project seems tailor made for us and we seem determined to put some time into writing this proposal.

I traveled to a nearby village with some of the girls from the Film Club to begin filming Stancho's movie. The group has found a very good actress to play the part of the girl and Stancho's baba to play the part of the baba. The story revolves around the reasons the two don't like each other and calls for them to be fairly rude and mean to each other. Desi, the girl, has some acting experience and can be rude and mean on command, but Stancho's baba keeps looking at the camera and breaking into an ear to ear grin. She is one of the happiest people in Bulgaria and Stancho has to keep yelling at her to, "be a witch!" They've gotten off to a very good start and only need to keep at it to end up with a pretty good film. Nikoleta's movie is also moving along. She's doing the film with the animated ghosts and the cast of thousands and the magically appearing hotel. So far, she's still working with her cast on tightening up the script and hasn't begun filming. Mila & Eva are in the middle of shooting their really short film about a boy who decides not to run away from home and are waiting for the weather to improve before filming the last scene. I've shot about an hour's worth of film for the Roma project and have been trying to make contact with various people who are involved with that community. Jennifer, the PCV working with me on the project, and I want to have some film taken from the back of one of the many horse-drawn carts that are on every street. Our plan is to stand behind the driver and shoot over his shoulder which, admittedly, will fill the screen with the southern end of a north-bound horse, but will be a nice clip for the movie anyway. Unfortunately, the PC has just issued a directive prohibiting riding on horse or donkey carts. Oh well, they don't prohibit high school girls from riding on the carts so I'll have to ask Stancho to risk her life and limb for the sake of my movie. Now that's brutal exploitation!

Well, it's time for me, the artist man, to grab some crayons and begin to doodle on napkins. Hey, those things could be worth some real money some day! More money - Less Work!!

I got off the plane in Sofia on December 27th after having spent ten days visiting family and friends in New York City. Sofia is much like NY, only smaller. Oh, and colder. Ah, and a little more worn down. But, the public transportation does actually work in Sofia. The transit workers were on strike in NYC which seemed to be their way of saying "Merry Christmas" to the cabbies in the city. Not a single meter was turned on during the entire strike and the cabbies needed to hire cabs to carry home their take. The cab ride from the Sofia airport to the Centralna Bus Station runs about 7.50 leva if you don't get ripped off. It also helps, in Sofia and anywhere else, to know where you're going and which roads are acceptable. No, I do not want to just jog by the Rila Monastery on the way to the bus station!

It was snowing in cold wind-driven flurries when I arrived and I queued up in a short line for a cab . I threw my baggage in and asked the cabbie to take me to the bus station. Then I did the inexcusable in cab riding etiquette in any city in the world, I nodded off. I'd been traveling for over 20 hours at that point and the cab was warm and the radio was playing classical music and I'd just eaten a big meal on the plane and....I nodded off! When the cabbie woke me up at the bus station, it took me a moment to remember where and who I was. Oh yeah, I'm the guy who couldn't manage to fall asleep in a British Airways fully horizontal sleeper seat across the Atlantic but immediately dozed off in the back seat of a Bulgarian taxi with only one out of four serviceable shocks and an odor emanating from under my seat that could easily peel paint. Now I remember. More annoyed at myself than the driver I snapped, "Kolko?" to find out how much of his retirement I was about to fund. He said, "Sedem e pet decet". 7.50 leva, right on the button. And a very Merry Christmas to you, Tiny Dimitar! I gave him ten and wished him all the best for the Holidays. I've heard horror stories from friends and colleagues of cab rip-offs in Sofia, but, touch wood, I've always been lucky.

Back at home several hours later I was in the process of unpacking and unwinding when my phone rang. My sitemates were ringing to let me know that it was Matt's birthday. As I've mentioned previously, one is obligated to treat on one's birthday and this was my chance for a free dinner, so I hopped down to the Unigato Restaurant for pizza ala Matt. It was a fine way to get back into the swing of things here. I was really enjoying the evening when, apparently, I dozed off again. During some lapse in my attention my sitemates all agreed to have a New Year's Eve party at my place.

My original, if boring, plan for New Year's Eve was to make myself dinner, have a glass of Stoil's homemade red wine, then have a glass of his homemade rakiya with a good cigar while standing on my balcony watching the fireworks. I had no intention of going out to any New Year's Eve parties. However, the party came to me and it was a great night. Alex brought dinner and Jennifer, Jessie brought champagne and cards for two card games she wanted to play and Matt brought his famous 'blackies'. Those are brownies that he scorches while baking them until they are almost impossible to dent with human teeth. Proving that PCVs will eat anything as long as it's free, we even finished off the crumbs which resembled chocolate flavored gravel much more than food. Alex cooked a delicious chicken curry dinner in my kitchen, we all drank Stoil's wine and rakiya, we played two card games whose rules seemed to change each time I drew anything that might win and, finally, at midnight we went onto the balcony to watch the fireworks.

During the eighteen months I've lived here, the Municipality has set off fireworks displays from the roof of their building to celebrate various public holidays. My balcony affords an unsurpassed view of these displays and I was certain that the New Year's Eve show would be truly memorable. Well, it was a memorable show all right. The Municipality's fireworks were okay. They only lasted about ten minutes and lacked a grand finale. They came and went, however, lost in the firestorm of the Mother of All Private Fireworks displays! I'm not sure whether the national sport of Bulgaria is soccer or rakiya making but next in line is outdoing your neighbor in the home explosives department. From balconies, terraces, yards, street corners and parking lots across Stara Zagora they began. Following an initial salvo of small Chinese firecrackers on a string, the volume and frequency of explosions increased and grew until the night skies over SZ reminded me of the tv pictures of the night bombing of Baghdad. New Year's Eve in Stara Zagora was indeed like Baghdad in the Balkans. The period of heaviest intensity lasted almost an hour and the gunpowder and cordite were so thick in the air that you could still taste them the next day. Interspersed amongst the explosions were the sounds of ambulances racing here and there to put someone out who had accidentally set fire to himself or to recover one minor body part or another that had accidentally been separated from its owner. I would seriously suggest amending the Bill of Rights to allow the possession of weapons grade fireworks by anyone with enough rakiya in them to light the damn things! By the way, the two card games were Asshole and Bullshit and if you know what the rules are, please tell me because my sitemates have the scruples and principles of cab drivers when it comes to cheating at cards.

Now we're well into the new year and for the B16s (I am a B16) we're on the homestretch. We have until October to complete our two years and three months in Bulgaria and then we'll become RPCVs. I was talking with some other volunteers about project ideas that might take me up to my COS date and was asked by the volunteer in Kazanluk if I'd be interested in doing a documentary film. We are beginning to explore the idea of creating a documentary about the Decade of Roma Inclusion in Bulgaria. Eight European countries have begun to implement an action plan to very deliberately ensure the integration of their Roma minorities into their mainstream societies. Because this will deal with discrimination, segregation and prejudices, we have to determine whether we can frame it in a positive light. I think it will work if we focus on the good intentions of the national plan and the very positive benefits to all involved if it succeeds. So this might be my sayonara project.

SZ is in the lee of the Sredna Goras and is, therefore, spared the very worst of the Winter weather in Bulgaria. I guess I've gotten spoiled because it's gotten cold this month and I find myself complaining. I complain to my colleagues, to my sitemates, to waitresses and checkout girls at the market, to cab drivers and unfortunate strangers who happen to be stopped at the same traffic light as me and now, I complain to you. It's cold outside. It's also cold inside. My little radiator is like the small engine that could, only it can't! It heats one room in my apartment but 'heats' is a relative term used only in comparison with the other completely unheated rooms. In the morning I often find ice on the floor of my bathroom, but it melts under the hot water of my shower. I get dressed in the morning in unheated rooms by putting on clothing that is stiff with cold. Try leaving your clothing in your freezer overnight someday to get a feel for the meaning of the word "refreshing" in the morning. But the cold doesn't last for long here in SZ and I want to take advantage of every possible opportunity to whine.

Now I've got to bundle up and take my camera out to film, uh, people and, uh, things about, uh, you know, like Roma and stuff. Michael Moore, step aside.

Puhtoovaneh is travel in Bulgarian. I did some of that recently when I went back to New York for ten days to spend Christmas with my family. Because my flight didn't leave Sofia Airport until 2:30 in the afternoon, I planned to take a bus to Sofia that morning rather than go up the night before and stay at a hotel in town. I was chatting with my colleagues, Petya and Darina, about my plans and mentioned that I was planning on catching the 9:00am bus which would get me to the airport stop at about 12:00 noon. I could take a cab from there and be at the check-in counter by 12:30pm. They both began to explain the flaws in my reasoning to me, which consisted mainly of "you have to leave earlier in case 'something' happens". I've ridden the buses here for the past eighteen months and 'nothing' has ever happened but I bowed to their persistent and well-intentioned advice and decided to catch the 8:00am bus. The extra hour at the airport wouldn't really bother me and I planned to relax there with my book and a cup of coffee.

So I awoke early on Saturday morning, showered, picked up my bags and headed for the aftogara (bus station). I got there just in time to catch the 7:30am bus to Sofia, took my seat, accepted a cup of coffee from the attendant (stewardess?) and settled back to enjoy the movie (Lords of War). I mentally thanked my colleagues for their advice because the extra hour and a half relieved me of all time related stress in the beginning of my long journey to New York. Between Stara Zagora and Sofia the express bus makes only one stop, in Chirpan. After stopping in Chirpan it's a straight shot to the city and most of that distance is covered on a very modern divided highway. Just as we accelerated our way onto that highway, however, the dreaded 'something' did happen, there was a loud bang from underneath the bus as some part of the suspension chose that moment to die. The driver slowed the bus down to a crawl and for the next few miles we were tossed around in our seats like popcorn while the undercarriage crashed and shuddered its way over every bump in the road. We finally reached a filling station and pulled off the highway and the attendant announced that there would be a short pochivka (rest stop). Soon three men in blue work smocks began to poke and pry under the bus and eventually one of them came onto the bus to crawl down into the underneath through some removable panels in the floor. There was a great deal of banging and rattling going on as the 9:00am bus from Stara Zagora drove past us towards Sofia. From where I sat, the 9:00am seemed to be mechanically intact.

The three men in blue had our bus back on the road within an hour and we made very good time from the filling station to the tunnel. Sofia sits in a bowl surrounded by mountains and the highway from the east climbs partially up the elevation then cuts through the last bit with a short tunnel. We exited the tunnel into a heavy snowstorm and a pea soup fog. The road was slick with snow and visibility was non-existent so we were back to a slow crawl. An hour later we were at the stop closest to the airport and I quickly grabbed a cab and set off. The driver was a grizzled old fellow with one tooth and a ready grin to show it off. He was obviously proud of his single remaining tooth because he had framed it in gold. We chatted a little on the way to the airport and I mentioned that it was a shame that it was snowing because I was supposed to fly out later that afternoon. "Oh, the planes won't be bothered by the snow", I was assured by the cab driver. That was a relief. "No, it's this fog that will cause all the accidents." In Bulgaria you must always wait for the other shoe to drop.

I made it to the airport with time to spare, flew to London, changed terminals and caught the flight to JFK. My bag stayed on in London for a couple of extra days but it, eventually, made it to New York too. To celebrate my homecoming, the transit workers in NYC walked out on strike the day after I arrived. That didn't matter in the least because all I wanted to do was visit with my family and friends. My sons brought our baseball gloves with them from Illinois and we spent three days when the weather was absolutely beautiful playing catch in Central Park. I had a double bacon cheeseburger at Big Nick's and hot dogs at Papaya King. We went to see King Kong and I discovered that there is a price difference between New York and Stara Zagora ($10.75 vs. $2.00). Most of all, I just visited. It was Na Ghosti (long visit) time in New York.

My ten days seemed to go by in a heartbeat and the next thing I knew I was standing at the airline counter checking in for my flights back to Bulgaria. I had specifically requested an aisle seat and was surprised when the agent told me that they'd had to change my seat because the flight was so full. I began to whine that I'd had that seat reserved since August and I have long legs and I need to get some rest on this flight and.....when she interrupted me to explain that they were upgrading me to business class. Oh. Well, thank you very much. I had a very relaxing flight to London, changed terminals, caught the flight to Sofia, a cab to the bus station, the bus to SZ and was back home in an effortless 23 hours. I guess my bag had seen enough of London because it made the entire trip with me this time.

My trip back to the States was wonderful but it also felt good to get back here to Bulgaria. For now, this is home and it was good to get back home. It's the nature of this Peace Corps business that when you're well and truly settled into your life in your host country, it's time to leave. My COS (completion of service) date is October 10, 2006 and the time between now and then will pass very quickly. I've decided that in January I'll start figuring out what it is I want to do after my time here is up. I've got ten months to come up with a plan.

Well, New Year is right around the corner and I plan to spend mine with a glass of Stoil's domashna rakiya, a hand rolled cigar and my iTunes. I'll be on my balcony watching the SZ fireworks and, if you're in the neighborhood, you're welcome to join me.

On Saturday I'll take the early bus to Sofia and get off at the first stop on the outskirts of the city. There I'll grab a cab and take it to the airport. In the early afternoon I'll fly to London where I'll transfer to a flight to New York. All in all the trip will take about 20 hours but getting to see my family and friends at the end of it will make it all worth while. Besides, I didn't have any other plans for Saturday.

Things have been reasonably quiet here for the past month. There is only one group working on a film at this time. Nikoleta is determined to make her movie which will include animated ghosts and a spontaneously appearing hotel. During the first round of film projects I advised all the kids to keep their movies simple, to keep the stories short, to keep the casts small, to keep the dialogue to a bare minimum and to work in a group of four or five students. Nikoleta wrote a script about a spaceboy who performs a couple of 'special effects' miracles and then beams back up to his own planet, complete with flashing lights and sound effects. She had a cast made up of half the tenth grade and filmed in three different locations. One of her lead characters dialogue sheets were eight pages long. She never formed a group to help her and she was also the only one who actually finished her movie.

This time around I've said that anything goes except animation, we just can't do animation. Nikoleta is pushing the frontier ever farther by combining animation with live action and a cast that includes six individual speaking parts and three ghosts. I'm helping her develop a more coherent story than she started with and I'll help her with the cameras and editing when the time comes. She's on her own for the rest of it. We had a cast meeting this week to read through all the speaking parts (three girls and three boys) in order to begin to work on the dialogue. The meeting began with Nikoleta and her production team (she has succumbed to my nagging) and the three actresses but no boys. Finally, one brave kid showed up and was immediately assigned a part. After waiting about fifteen minutes, he was sent out to recruit or shanghai two other boys. He returned to the room about ten minutes later with a couple of his friends and received a standing ovation from the girls. The kids only had time to read about three of the twenty pages of the script before the bell rang calling them to class. Nikoleta is very very very persistent and we're going to run through the script again on Friday.

Handknitcrafts.com started out well but has since fizzled somewhat. We received a few orders and the website gets a lot of hits, but we haven't done much in the way of business lately. That is mildly disappointing but not disastrous because we still need to do a lot of work on setting up our procedures for processing orders. I am supposed to be interviewed by a couple of reporters from the States in the next few days and if I can get a plug into some papers back home it should help. The women aren't using the room to knit in unless I go out to see them, then they all come rolling down to the room and we sit and chat for a while and they knit. As soon as I leave, however, they all return to their own rooms to knit. It turns out that they are just used to knitting by themselves in their rooms and, more importantly, they sit and watch their soap operas while they work. Now I'm working with them to try to convince them to use the room to knit at times when the soaps aren't running. Putting a TV into the knitting room isn't the solution we're looking for, because a) we don't have the funds b) it would require installing cable and the monthly subscription fee and c) the staff would soon take it over.

It's become colder lately in SZ. We really can't complain though because it's milder here than anywhere else in Bulgaria. We're protected from the bitter weather that comes down from the north by two mountain ranges. It certainly isn't as cold as either Chicago or New York have been this past week! On the other hand, I'm out in it a lot more here. I don't have a car and my apartment doesn't have heat. I use a single electric heater to heat up one room and the bill for doing that can run as high as 300 leva a month. It's just the way things are here and spring is only three months away!

Further to my adventures with appliances, my refrigerator fell down last week. Actually, it didn't make it completely to the floor because a kitchen wall got in the way. Apparently, two little foot type things on one side felt that after 40 years of holding up the refrigerator (a Minsk 16) they'd had enough. I'm not sure how they fell off, but I came home to find the fridge slumped over against a wall like a man feeling the effects of too much rakiya. My best guess is that the feet simply vibrated off after years of supporting a cooling unit that turns on and off with the quiet smoothness of a cement mixer. I was surprised to see that even on its side, the fridge did its job and the inside was still cool. At its best, the inside is still warmer than the rest of the kitchen during the winter. So I propped it back up and jammed the feet back in. It never missed a beat!

The Christmas lights are up in town and it looks really wonderful. The double rows of trees are strung with small white lights and the Obshtina is festooned with all sorts of decorations done in lights. There is a big Christmas tree in the main plaza and a row of temporary shops set up on Tsar Simeon Blvd. to sell all sorts of Christmas junk. SZ is a pretty town anyway, but the Municipality does a really nice job of lighting the place up for the Holidays. I'll be back here for New Years Eve and I'll have a ringside seat from my balcony for the fireworks display. Then I'll have to round up another project or two for the next few months. I'm considering something devoted to appliance repair.

Happy Holidays to all of you, and I'll see you next year!

Thanksgiving is traditionally held on the last Thursday of November except in Bulgaria where we hold it whenever some of us can gather in one spot at the same time on a given weekend close enough to that actual day. This year Thanksgiving was this past weekend. My apartment is the largest amongst those of all my friends so, by default, I am the host. I wouldn't have it any other way. This year there were to be twelve of us and people were traveling from every corner of Bulgaria to attend. Different people came with different expectations and different visions of the perfect Thanksgiving dinner as remembered from their own homes and families. However, one expectation held in common by them all was that there would be a turkey cooked to a soft golden brown and dinner would begin when the turkey was ready. Everyone planned to bring a dish or a bottle of wine or a dessert, everyone planned to come with a hardy appetite and everyone, without exception (even the vegetarians) expected to see a turkey on the table. I was responsible for the turkey.

Please understand, there are turkeys in Bulgaria, lots of them. Turkeys gang up in packs in every village and make it their business to strut about and to gobble around in the wee small hours of the mornings waking up honest citizens from their well-deserved rest. 'Pyweeka' is Bulgarian for turkey and you can find them everywhere. Except in stores at Thanksgiving. I went out to Billa (a big store), I went out to Metro (the other big store), I searched high and low and found not a single solitary pyweeka, frozen or otherwise. Here it's more of a Christmas sort of meal so there may be turkeys available in the stores around that time, which will be small consolation to a group of turkey-deprived American Thanksgiving feasters.

Last year my colleague Rumiana helped me get a turkey. It was a turkey raised in Brazil by a French company who then sold it to a German food distributor who in turn shipped it to Bulgaria. This United Nations of turkeys looked suspiciously like a duck but it served its purpose. However, with twelve of us planning to dig in, the UN bird would never do. We needed a real pyweeka with some meat on its bones.

Once again, Rumiana came to my rescue. She and her husband own a house in a small village nearby and she offered to get me a pyweeka from her neighbor who had a flock of them. I said that I would gladly buy any turkey available that weighed between five and eight kilos. Rumiana said that she thought the birds were in that range now but that they would probably weigh less after I killed them and removed the parts that you don't eat. Oh. Well, the neighbor would actually kill the bird so that it wouldn't make a mess in Rumiana's car but I'd get the feathered remains to do with as I pleased. Oh.

Plan B involved me going back to Metro and Billa and looking for two or three of the biggest frozen chickens I could find. I was in the process of convincing myself that I could tie three chickens together and no one would know the difference when Rumiana said she'd located a place that had honest-to-God frozen turkeys...just like at home! She ordered one for me over the phone, hung up and told me I'd have to pick it up the next day at Neego. Wonderful! Excellent! Superb! We have a turkey I can understand and deal with, a frozen turkey with all the inedible bits already removed.

What's Neego? Unfortunately, I waited until the next day to ask this question and Darina (another colleague) said, "it's the Beef & Pork Institute". In a weird Bulgarian sort of way it makes perfect sense that you can only get a turkey at Thanksgiving from the Beef & Pork Institute. Okay, but can I walk there? No. Oh, can I catch a bus? No. Well where is it? Now, you can go anywhere in Stara Zagora by cab for one lev and you can get to any of the outlying parts of the city for one lev fifty stotinki but you can't get to Neego for less than nine leva. We rode so far and so long that I do believe we crossed two international borders on the way. Neego may actually be somewhere in the Middle East. Toni (the colleague who always gets stuck "helping Larry do simple things he's incapable of doing by himself") came with me and when we finally got there she suggested that we ask the cab to wait or risk having to walk back.

There was a line with approximately twenty people on it waiting for turkeys. There was a closed door and one by one people would be invited in to get their turkeys. I was the only one there with a cab waiting with its meter ticking. At the rate the line was moving it was going to be a very long and costly wait. I badgered Toni into going up to the head of the line and I knocked on the closed door. This caused audible grumbling up and down the line. I walked into the turkey distribution room as soon as they opened the door and said very loudly in English, "Hello, I ordered a turkey and I just want to pick it up. Do you have my turkey?" A few people in the line spoke up sharply and I turned and said loudly and in nearly perfect English, "Yes, I'm here for a turkey. I'll only be a minute and then you can all do whatever it is you are doing." Toni was hiding behind a pile of frozen turkeys.

The woman in the distribution room understood that the quickest way to get rid of me would be to give me my turkey, so she did. As I was walking out and everyone on the line was giving me the death stare, I said, "Thank you for understanding, it means so much to a Canadian like me." But I had acquired what was possibly the world's most costly five kilo turkey and I was happy. Toni ran to the cab with her coat pulled over her head just like those people being pulled into and out of police stations on the news.

My friends arrived and we all really got into the spirit of the Holiday. We had pumpkin cooked with butter and brown sugar, a green bean casserole with crunchy onion rings on top, garlic mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, a shopska salad, gravy, stuffing and a turkey large enough to feed twelve with leftovers. For dessert we had an apple crisp, banana bread with chocolate chips, chocolate chip cookies, ice cream and fudge brownies. We took time during the meal to go around the table to give each person an opportunity to say what he or she was thankful for and everyone remembered family and friends. Wine and rakiya flowed throughout the evening and Brian and I repaired to the terrace to smoke cigars while everyone sat around groaning and rubbing their stomachs. It was a great evening.

On Sunday, after everyone left I puttered around tidying up and then pulled some turkey out of the fridge to make a sandwich. It was quiet and peaceful and I put my sandwich on the table and went to switch on my iTunes. Just then a hose that supplies water to the toilet tank in my bathroom corroded completely through, separated from the tank and began to shoot water around the bathroom as if it were a fire hose. I ran to shut off the water and the faucet handle broke off in my hand. Everything I tried to stuff into the hose shot across the bathroom like a shell from a howitzer. I was forced to run, soaking wet, eight floors down to get Hristo my landlord. He came up, found the main water shutoff valve (under the sink in the guest bathroom), stuck a ten stotinki coin and a piece of inner tube into the butt end of the hose and said he'd be back tonight with a new hose. I mopped up the mess, changed into dry clothes and ate my sandwich. Nothing spoils the taste of a turkey sandwich the day after Thanksgiving. Nothing.

I have quite a bit to do during the next two weeks. I'm trying to complete a video for Habitat for Humanity by December 1st, I have a powerpoint presentation due by November 30th for my colleagues here at REDA, there is a committee meeting I have to prepare for and attend also on December 1st and I have to find ways to get the knitting business kick started. Our web address is: www.handknitcrafts.com so please take a look at it and tell others about it if you like it.

Then I'll be going to New York for Christmas to see my family. So, in case I don't get another chance to write before the end of the year, Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Holidays to you all. And remember, it makes all Canadians look bad when one of us crashes the line for frozen turkeys.

There is a party held by tradition in Veliko Turnovo each Halloween. Many PCVs attend this party and use the occasion to blow off steam, drink, dance, drink some more, form piles of bodies on the floor and elsewhere, drink a bit more, grope and fondle, slap and tickle, drink just for the hell of it, sing offkey, and finally, drink to amuse themselves while playing drinking games. We're in Bulgaria for only two Halloweens and I missed the Blue House Party in Veliko both times. However, Greg the PCV in Nikolaevo, a nearby town, invited the three PCVs from Stara Zagora and another three or four volunteers from the Valley of the Roses (our basic region) to join him for dinner and a bonfire on Saturday night. We all met up at Greg's place and spent the afternoon walking around his small town. He took us down through the mahala section or Roma quarter and introduced us to many of the people with whom he works. I didn't realize that we'd be going through this part of town so when the rest of the group went off for coffee, I ran back to Greg's to get my cameras and then went back into the mahala. Mahala is just a nice sounding word for ghetto. There is a marked economic difference between the Bulgarian part of a town and its mahala. I've been warned by colleagues and coworkers to never venture into that part of a town because a) they'll steal everything you have on you, or b) they'll kill you and then steal everything you have on you. It was a bright beautiful day and I didn't feel any sense of impending danger so I went back to see if I could take a few pictures.

From the first quick glance, the section looked like any impoverished shantytown in any underdeveloped part of the world or Illinois. Walking through the streets, however, I began to notice two things. First, the neighborhood was clean without trash or litter lying about. Houses were small and poor but for the most part, freshly painted and tidy. Laundry hung on lines and gardens were well tended. Second, like the Pied Piper, I attracted an ever growing entourage of children. One little guy in a Tom & Jerry (cartoon characters not ice cream vendors) sweatshirt appointed himself my guide and insisted that I see all the important sights in the neighborhood. That sounded good to me so I let him lead me to all the important sights, which consisted of his Baba. I then had to abandon any hope of getting interesting pictures of mahala life in favor of taking photos of as many people as I could in the shortest possible time. This was a lot of fun and it gave me an opportunity to talk with some very friendly people. After I'd take a picture or two on my digital camera, the kids would rush up and pull it out of my hands so they could see the picture. They'd pass it around and everyone had a comment, then they'd run back to find a new spot to pose and demand more pictures. They called me Chicho or Uncle (at least I choose to believe that's what they were calling me) and like a good uncle, I promised them that Greg would give them copies of the pictures. Way to go, Greg!

I've posted some of the pictures and I have a bit of video that I'll put online later. Although it doesn't show in the few shots I have online, every second house in the mahala had a satellite dish on the roof and a horse and wagon in the front yard. By the way, although I was tugged on, pulled at and handled quite shockingly in some cases, not a stotinki was missing when I headed back to the cafe to meet the others. In fact, the toughest negotiation I had was to convince Mihailov (?), my pint sized guide with four gold earrings, to accept fifty stotinki for his fee instead of the twenty he'd suggested.

I recognize that we have volunteers who work regularly in the Roma sections of towns but this was my first experience there. The differences between Bulgarian and American cultures are subtle and ones of degree for the most part, the differences between American and Roma cultures are huge and worth learning.

I made it back to Greg's just in time to help buy the groceries and rakiya for dinner. We all pitched in and made a Uruguayan dish that Greg had learned to cook when he lived there. Lentils, tomatoes, sausages, rice and anything that was lying around went into the pot which was then cooked in the oven, casserole style. After wishing each other a Chestit Halloween!, we dug in and ate every scrap of the dish. Then we got into the important business of the night, carving the tikvichi. Again, a group effort seemed the most efficient use of manpower so one person drew, another cut an eye, someone else hacked out a nose, etc. When the pumpkin was carved we carried it and a large bag of supplies up the mountain to the ruins of an old Roman fort. Greg had gone up the day before and hidden a store of firewood there so we lit a bonfire and toasted marshmallows. Rakiya, in case you've been wondering, is what the arson squad would refer to as an "accelerant". It also goes quite nicely with s'mores! Thank you.

The next morning, after a breakfast of cheese omelets, we all headed back to our respective sites. Apparently, the time had changed that night and I stood out in the freezing wind for an hour and a half waiting for a bus I was convinced was an hour late. I had actually been told about the time change, but chose to question the accuracy of the information. Yep, they were right.

On Monday I had to go to Sofia to have a biopsy on my left hand. I have a skin 'event' on my hand. It isn't fungus or a rash or parasitic, it's an event. The dermatologist says its a granuloma something or other and no one knows how you get it or how you get rid of it. It doesn't itch or burn and it isn't contagious but it just slowly moves around on the back of my hand. Sometimes it goes away of its own accord. But they took a chunk of it out to send to the lab in the States because that's PC procedure. The doctor put a single stitch in to close up the cut and the stitch will have to come out in a week. My choice is to go back to Sofia to have a stitch pulled or to pull it myself. The PC doctor has agreed to let me try to pull my own stitch out but insists that I be on the phone with her while I'm doing it. How tough can it be? Cut the stitch above (or is it below?) the knot, grab the knot with the tweezers and pull until a) the stitch comes out or b) I faint dead away. So take that all you PCVs living in Africa bragging about how tough you have it. I will be performing a surgical procedure on myself next week. Gimme a mirror, I'm sure I can remove that tumor from my brain with my Swiss army knife and this sewing kit.

Okay, I was hit by a car today. Well, 'hit' is a dramatic word that, in this case, stands for 'nudged'. It was my own fault really, I wasn't paying any attention as I was walking to work and the car had clearly established right of way on my part of the sidewalk. She was trying to pass a line of cars that had foolishly stopped for a red light and, as is fairly common practice here, pulled briefly onto the sidewalk to do so. As a pedestrian I was obviously more agile and should have leapt out of her way. She was forced to brake and lost her place as the light changed and the other cars (her competitors in the daily Bulgarian "How fast can your car go?" drive to work) pulled away from the light in a miasma of burning rubber. She accepted my apology pretty ungraciously, clumped her way over the curb back onto the road and roared off in hot pursuit. I'm considering mounting a horn and flashers on my jacket.

Our group, the B-16's, is the 16th group of volunteers to serve in Bulgaria. We come in two flavors, the COD's (Community Organizational Developers) and YD's (Youth Developers). Any of the even numbered groups (B-14's, B-18's, etc) are COD/YD groups and the odd numbered groups are all TEFL's (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). The TEFL's are also divided into two groups based on whether they will be assigned to teach in primary or secondary schools.

There are some advantages and disadvantages inherent in belonging to either group. The Teachers arrive in Bulgaria in April, complete training around the end of June and are at their sites a month or so before school begins. They spend the very pleasant Bulgarian summer integrating into their communities and adjusting to life in a new country. The Business volunteers (COD/YD) arrive in August, compete training around the end of October and arrive at their sites just as the local population is preparing to hibernate through the gruesome Bulgarian winter.

The Teachers have a very structured program and a clear understanding of their job description and responsibilities. The Business people often are left to their own devices to create a niche for themselves because the organizations that request us, often do not have a clear understanding of our skills or their own requirements. "Creating your job" is often the most frustrating part of being a Business Volunteer.

The Teachers tour of duty ends in June, which allows those volunteers hoping to go on to grad school ample time to finish their full two year service in the Peace Corps, return home to the States, find jobs, travel and still get set for school in September. The Business volunteers tour of duty ends in October which means, for those hoping to go on to grad school, they must either leave PC early or delay entering school for a semester or even another year. For many of my colleagues this is definitely choosing the lesser of two evils. They want to stay their full two years but they don't want to further delay entry into grad school.

Business volunteers, however, do have some advantages over Teachers. We can opt for vacation any time we like, as opposed to the 'summer only' rule for Teachers. We also have the ability to proactively search out niches for ourselves that are personally rewarding and fulfilling. If you don't like what you're doing, you have some flexibility to change it. If you find that you don't like teaching, however, you're pretty much stuck.

All in all the differences are small and the two sections mix and mingle into one large Peace Corps Bulgaria community. Teachers complain about the kids and the school administrations and Business people complain about almost everything under the sun. Just like back at home. The significant difference here is that we do a lot of this complaining in Bulgarian!

Beginning with Staging, the PC is really strong on group meetings. They gather us together in a US city to give us a bit of orientation before sending us, as a group, to our country. Upon arrival, we're kept together as a group for about a week before being split into smaller groups for three months of training. During training, however, we're often pulled back together for one or two day whole-group meetings. Then after training, we're gathered together for various trainings, conferences and seminars throughout our first year. Then it ends. Now the B-16's only have one last meeting on our schedule..the COS conference. Close Of Service. That takes place several months before we actually leave.

The meetings provide us with an opportunity to see people we haven't seen in awhile and to take a break from our jobs. The conference I just attended was called the MidService Conference and it is set up to coincide with the end of training for the incoming group. We are given some training too, but we're there primarily to pass our experiences on to the new guys. It seemed a little strange to be the people with the experience because it feels like we just got here. The new group is ready to be through with training and out in their sites and we tried to give them the same advice we were given, take it easy, sit back and observe, don't try to do too much too quickly. They won't listen any more than we did and some of them will quit when the frustration becomes overwhelming. Some of us are still quitting. My group has dwindled down to about 47 from the original 60 and one more went home last week.

By and large people leave for a variety of reasons, but very very few leave because of Bulgaria. They miss boyfriends and girlfriends, they get job offers, they have family commitments, or medical problems or they just decide that a PC life isn't for them. Of the many volunteers who have chosen to et (early termination), and I believe that figure will generally approach 30%, I haven't heard of any who left because they just didn't like Bulgaria or Bulgarians. We kid about the hardships here because the PC culture places a premium on how much you suffer. Living in unheated shacks without electricity or running water, having to take your malaria pills every day and being infested with hordes of parasites becomes a badge of honor among volunteers. Our complaints here in Bulgaria center around having our cable internet go out in our apartments or the elevator didn't work today. Sometimes I can't get avocados. In many PC countries we'd be digging pit latrines or working in impoverished native villages teaching basic sanitation. In Bulgaria we work in offices, schools and municipalities helping Bulgaria prepare for admittance to the European Union.

This is a vibrant modern country that is pressing enthusiastically ahead. There are still some hurdles to overcome but progress is being made everywhere. The biggest complaint about Bulgaria these days is the level of corruption that exists in every level of government. It is a cloud that affects the volunteers as well as their counterparts. I try to explain that Bulgaria didn't invent corruption (I think Chicago did and if it didn't then it certainly raised it to artform status) and throwing some light on the situation is the first step towards eradicating it. Today in Bulgaria, lights are shining everywhere and the corruption roaches are scurrying for cover. All in all Bulgaria may not be Paradise but it sure isn't Bangladesh either.

Until a visitor pointed it out to me recently, I didn't notice that there aren't any lightbulbs in my elevators (It turns out I'm not incredibly observant...who knew?). The only lightbulb is mounted outside on the roof of the car, but the ceiling is a two inch thick section of laminated wood which is as translucent as a coal seam. Someone's solution was to drill six holes about the diameter of quarters into the ceiling right over the panel with the floor buttons. Weak lines of light come down and if you peer very closely you can find the button for your floor. Apparently, years ago all the buttons fell off and some numbers-challenged soul put them back on. I doubt if there is one single button that corresponds correctly with the floor it serves. I live on the eighth floor and the button that sends the elevator to the eighth floor is marked 11, if you push the button marked 8 you end up on the sixth floor. Counting buttons doesn't really work either, because there are two or three that don't seem to have a floor attached to them at all. So the eighth floor button is the first button on the top row to the left. The lobby level is the second button on the bottom row also on the left. Come see me some time.

Right after I started the Film Club, I saw an article about an International Students Film Festival and told the kids about it. As I've mentioned, the Film Club takes place in the Roman Rolen School in Stara Zagora. This, it turns out, is one of the elite high schools in Bulgaria. Kids from all over the region compete to enter the school and only the brightest and most motivated are accepted. When they learned that there was a competition for student films, they immediately decided to produce an entry. Their plan is to get a film ready for the entry deadline in June 2006 and win the Festival in September 2006. As one of the girls said, "Of course we'll win! What is the point of entering if we don't win?" Never mind that to date they have made exactly zero films and have never seen any of the films that students have made, they will enter and win.

The Film Club, which began in January, melted down during the year and over the Summer became a group of a dozen girls who wrote scripts and began burning up video tape. From this group of twelve, there are three eleventh class girls and two tenth class girls who have become the core of the team that is working on next year's Festival film. They've come up with a terrific story line and are struggling to put it into a working script.

It seemed like a good idea to see if I could take a trip out to Balchik to check out the Festival and get an idea of the quality of the films being entered by students from all over the world. All of the entries were from students enrolled in film programs in universities, none were made by high school students. All of the entries were made using professional level equipment, none were shot with handheld digital camcorders. Most were the result of years of study and experience, none were a first effort. I wanted to help set the girls' expectations to a more realistic level, so I planned my trip out to Balchik. Balchik is a resort town on the Black Sea, about 20 minutes north of Varna. I planned to stay at Sara's place and commute back and forth to Balchik for a couple of days and then return to Stara Zagora armed with intelligence about the state of the competition which I'd then share with the girls.

The girls decided that they would rather see the competition themselves so we hired a minivan and driver and left Stara Zagora at 5:30am for the five hour drive to Balchik. We would go up and come back the same day but we'd be able to see about 20 films while we were there. The seven girls all piled into the two back rows of seats leaving the driver and me the three front seats to ourselves. After an hour or so of riding, I asked the driver to stop so I could get a cup of coffee. Steffi (our team's Producer) was becoming carsick, so she moved up front and sat by the window which moved me to the middle with the gearshift between my knees. She rolled the window down to get some air but the driver, a cheerless soul, kept insisting that she roll it back up or the tuhchenie (see previous post on the Dreaded Tuhchenie) would kill us all. I didn't want to be vomited on so I worked out a compromise position which allowed Steffi to lower the window enough for a stream of fresh air and she rode along like a puppy with its face in the wind.

The driver never said a word and spent the ride listening to the Bulgarian version of the Crop Reports on the radio. From time to time the reception would fade and he'd have to search the dial for another Crop Report. As he'd go by music, the girls would perk up and ask to leave it there so they could listen. He'd just ignore them and go on until he found the droning monotone voice that seemed to make him less miserable than usual. I finally asked him to put some music on for the girls and reminded him that I was paying him for the trip. He promptly turned the radio off. 'I'm paying the bill' doesn't seem to carry the weight over here that it does elsewhere. However, the girls were happy and excited and managed to attract the attention of a car full of boys traveling right behind us, so the radio was forgotten.

We got lost in Varna. This will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the quirky manner of road signage in Bulgaria. The signs lead you, with remarkable efficiency, into the most desolate and remote areas of a city and then they disappear. Being lost in the slums of Varna did nothing to improve the driver's toxic disposition but he was a professional so he began to ask directions of passersby. Unfortunately, he would only stop to ask men and only men well into their eighties and then only if they were visibly drooling on themselves or conversing with their own shadows. After an hour or so of wandering, we stumbled onto the road to Balchik and twenty minutes later we all got out of the van at the wrong site. The van immediately drove away.

On its own website, the Festival proudly announces that the venue is the "Palace Complex" in Balchik. There is indeed a Palace Complex in Balchik but if you ever go to the Festival (and I recommend it) pay no attention to this claim because the Festival is actually in the Chitalishte, a building located as far from the Palace Complex as it is possible to be and still be in Bulgaria. I was forced to call the driver and have him come back to take us to the Chitalishte, which did not improve his mood in the least. So, we finally arrived at the Festival just as the morning session ended.

That gave us time to wander around the town and to get some lunch. Then, finally, we went to the Festival and saw some films. The films were in three broad categories; fiction, documentaries and animation. We watched movies from 2:00pm until 6:30pm, met the Festival's organizers and talked with a few of the filmmakers. I quickly realized that these films were way out of our league. They were excellent and we don't have the skill or equipment to compete with them, but the girls were having a ball and were discussing every film like professional critics so who was I to rain on their parade?

Then it was time to herd 'em up and head 'em out. As we were leaving to find the van, Nikki noticed that a party was to begin at 11:30pm and go until dawn. Most of the participants would be there and it was to be hosted by a DJ known as "Porno BPM". They all assured me that their parents wouldn't mind if they stayed for the party. In fact, if their parents had only known about the party to begin with they would have likely insisted that the girls attend. I expressed a measure of skepticism. They earnestly assured me it would be okay. I pictured myself talking to their fathers the next day, "Well, Mr. Ruskov et al, Nikki said you wouldn't mind if I let her stay in Balchik overnight to go to a party hosted by the notorious Porno BPM".

"Get in the van", I said.

"But we want to stay for the party. Why do we have to leave?", they asked.

I used the most famous argument in adulthood, "Because I said so!" and we left.

The ride home was great. They quickly forgot about the party and began to discuss movies and all the other things of interest to seventeen year old girls. Then they began to sing. They sang songs in English and Bulgarian. Did you know that "My Darling Clementine" has 25 verses? Neither did I. At one point I looked back to find that all seven girls were sitting on the rearmost three seats with their arms around each other singing away like drunks in a bar, but happy drunks. This, of course, bothered Mr. Sunshine to no end so he kept putting the volume up on the radio. The girls just sang louder. His picture is in the dictionary next to the word 'curmudgeon'. I turned off the radio and he just glared at me but left it off.

As we pulled back into Stara Zagora I asked the girls how they felt about next year's Festival after seeing the films. Stancho said, "We are more certain than ever that we'll win next year's competition!" That's funny, I thought she saw the same films I saw. All the girls immediately agreed and are determined to finish their script this month so we can get going on their film. They do have a great idea for a short film...at least as good as any we saw in Balchik.

"Oh", Steffi added, "and next year we'll be eighteen, so we can definitely stay for the party."

"Uh, well, you see, Mr. Ruskov, it's like this....."

It's been a fairly busy Summer. I am still working on my two basic projects, helping the women in the Home for the Handicapped start a knitting business and working with a group of high school students who are interested in filmmaking. Somehow I've decided that I am eminently qualified to offer assistance in both areas even though my experience with hand knit clothing is limited to wearing sweaters my mom made for me and my experience in movie making is limited to adding pirated audio tracks to blurry moving images shot with my Canon digital camcorder. Still, I'm having fun and, with any luck at all, I'm not doing too much damage.

My sister Lisa, her husband Chris and their son Philip apparently bought a map, discovered Bulgaria's location, realized it was not in the middle of South America and came for a visit. Many have threatened, they showed up! I met them at the airport in Sofia and while I was waiting for their plane to arrive I struck up a conversation with the woman at the Avis car rental booth. Chris had reserved a car and I thought I'd check to make sure everything was okay. I explained to the woman that these were very important people and shouldn't be given any old car. She believed me and we went outside and together we selected the newest car in the lot. When my family arrived, the woman looked somewhat skeptical about their VIP status until my very large nephew produced the world's biggest jar of Hellman's mayonnaise from his backpack and presented it to me. That sealed the deal, anyone carrying that much mayonnaise in his carry-on luggage was either very important or very crazy and she wanted to get us going as soon as possible either way. We were on the road in half an hour and back in Stara Zagora two hours after that. By PC rules I'm not allowed to drive while I'm a volunteer, so I became the navigator on most of our trips to visit other areas of the country. Navigating was an interesting experience because many of the roads on the map didn't actually exist on the ground. Often it seemed as though a road should be in a particular place, possibly connecting to a bigger road just across a field, and I suppose the mapmakers felt that way too because they drew one in even though no one had gotten around to actually building it yet. However, many of the roads that were on the map were also on the ground so we eventually got from here to there and back again. Oh, and the mayo...the mayo that's readily available here is used indifferently on sandwiches and Lada axles. When they said there might be hardships in the PC, I didn't imagine they meant a lack of good mayonnaise!

I went out to the sea with my family and left them in Nessebur (a resort town) because I had to get back to work for a couple of days. The Bulgarian Black Sea coast during the height of the season is like any other tourist destination, crowded, noisy, bustling, fun and frustrating. It all seemed to be summed up by a sign on the door of a shop selling souvenirs that read: Sorry, We're Open! Lisa & Chris came back to Stara Zagora and together we took day trips to Veliko Turnovo, Plovdiv and Saedinenie. Once when cruising back and forth looking for a road that turned out to be a figment of the mapmakers imagination, we spotted an old MIG-15 or 16 which proved to be the highlight of Philip's trip. Finally, we headed out for the Rila Monastery and Sofia. Rila is the largest and most beautiful of the many monasteries in Bulgaria and was well worth the trip, even across a road that appeared on the ground but not on the map. If you walk out the back of the Monastery and proceed up a gently sloping road for about three kilometers, you come to a trail. If you then climb up the trail for approximately another kilometer, you come to the cave of St. John. He was the holy man for whom the Monastery is named. He lived as a hermit in this small cave for many years. The cave has a main entrance and a smaller hole exiting up the slope towards the back. Legend has it that if you are worthy you can crawl out of the cave through this small exit. Apparently, this frees you of all sin. I say with pride, we all made it out without lightening striking any of us. It was a tight squeeze for Philip, but he's a teenager! I was chagrined to learn that the crawl from the cave does not imbue any protective powers against sin, so I'll probably have to do it all over again in a while.

My family left on a Friday and I spent the weekend in Sofia, working on the Habitat for Humanity, eating in good restaurants and meeting up with friends. Then it was back to work with a push to get the HandKnitCrafts.com website up and running. It's coming along. We're waiting for some technical advice on pricing (Mom, we're waiting!) and a couple of other minor glitches to be ironed out and then we'll go live. The renovation of the room is almost finished and the ladies are spending a lot of time in it because it's nicer than anywhere else they can go. We're all pretty enthusiastic about the way things are going and everyone hopes that we can make it fly. We will be offering hand knit coats, ponchos, scarves, skirts, tops and bags. Each item will be custom made upon receipt of the order. The customer will be told which woman is making the item and will be able to read her biography on the website. Every item will ship within 14-21 days from receipt of the order. Every item is fully guaranteed. We won't equivocate, if you want to badger or bully a poor old handicapped Baba by sending back a product that she painstakingly knitted with her one good hand, very well we'll refund your money, you pathetic loser.

The filmmaking is also proceeding. We're shooting a movie now that I have a role in. I play a gangster-looking guy, but a Bulgarian gangster-looking guy. I wanted a movie with me speaking Bulgarian to take back home with me. The Film Club is made up of 15-17 year old girls, we're filming in the park and sometimes the whining becomes deafening. "It's too far! It's too hot! It's too uphill! Why don't we have cokes? There's a bug! My nail polish is scratched! Why don't we have cute guys in this movie? and so on. After two full days of shooting, the girls decided we had enough and announced that it had been a very successful experience. I need to get them together again for one more afternoon and it will be easier to put toothpaste back into the tube than to round them all up.

I have two terraces in my apartment. Each terrace has a doorway with two glass doors. I leave the doors open during the day to get a nice breeze through the place. One day a strong wind blew through and slammed shut one of the doors to the dining room terrace. I came home to find shattered glass all over the place. My landlord, Hristo, pulled the door out, re-glazed it, and stuck it back up. I learned my lesson and from then on I put a chair in front of the open doors. This past week, while I was at work, another strong wind blew through Stara Zagora but I wasn't concerned because I had a chair in front of the doors. When I got home, the chair had been thrown across the room by the force of the wind that had slammed the doors shut and the terrace was an inch deep in shattered glass. This time both doors were shattered. Hristo just shakes his head when he sees me at his door. Now I have placed heavy stools in front of the doors. Wouldn't it be safer to just close the doors, you ask. Probably, and your point is....?

On August 9th I celebrated the anniversary of my arrival in Bulgaria. It's been a great year and a wonderful experience and from this end seems to be going by very quickly. I'll see you all at home soon.

My primary project is to help the women from the Home for the Handicapped form a self-supporting and self-sustainable business. 'Self-sustainable' is the catchword in all areas of developmental work, especially in the Peace Corps. It's the old concept of 'teach a man to fish'...and so on. Unfortunately, my ladies aren't the least bit interested in learning to fish, no matter how often I suggest it. "But you'll never have to buy fish again.", I tell them. "We don't like fish!", they always reply. I suppose that there are also issues with wheelchairs on small boats, but I was willing to overlook that in order to teach them to fish. So, we're learning to turn our knitting crafts skills into a self-sustainable business instead. There are days when it becomes so frustrating that I think it really would be easier to teach them to fish.

We are moving towards sustainability at a speed measured in geological time. Glaciers advance and recede more rapidly than we measure our progress. The first task is to write a Business Plan. The ladies all agree that a Business Plan is an excellent idea and promptly asked me when I thought I'd have it finished for them. I explained that it would be much better for them if they wrote the Business Plan with my assistance, so they'd have more input into the creation of the business and more awareness of the goals. I gave them an outline of a basic Business Plan and went over all our objectives very slowly and very carefully. Then, in order to reduce the level of whining in the room, I told them to just work on the first item on the list. Have a meeting and decide on approximately twelve items to make up our intial catalog. They immediately began to shout out all the items they are capable of producing. Shawls, scarves, tops, bags, rugs, skirts, hats, mittens, blankets..... Robert's Rules of Order aside, I had to bang on a table to recover the chair.

Yes, but we need to pick a manageable number of items to get the business started and then we can add items to our list later. More shouting and lots of disagreement. I explained that we will be designing a website to enable us to market our products globally and that we have to focus on a few items that we make particularly well so we can build a reputation. So, please, have a meeting and give me a list of the items you'll start off making. After a lengthy discussion they finally agreed that it made sense to start the company up with four categories of items and three or so models in each category. Perfect! When you factor in different sizes and colors, the number of possible variations is quite sobering but still manageable. However, the more they considered it, the more they liked the idea of reducing the items to one. Sort of a Henry Ford approach to hand knit crafts..You can have anything you want as long as you want a beige shawl.

After a great deal of heated debate (they love to debate heatedly), it was agreed that we would begin the company by offering four categories of products and have three or four models in each category. Now they were all tired and didn't want to decide any more about the categories or models, we'd have another meeting soon. Oh, and by the way, could I please just write up the first part of the Business Plan as long as they had done all this work? So I did.

Next I got together with the designer to explain the business concept to her. The concept is simple, we'll offer four categories of hand knitted products for sale on the internet. The categories were determined during a brief meeting with my colleagues at the Agency and will consist of Women's Knitted Suits, Women's Tops & Sweaters, Women's Winter Wraps & Coats, and Women's Bags. Now we just needed the designer (Leonora) to design three of each and make them all sort of coordinated to encourage customers to purchase a bag with that shawl or a top with that skirt. In some strange way I think of this as Marketing.

Leonora thought of it as totally insane and wouldn't even consider it. She, it seemed, had already chosen and designed quite a few arbitrary and mismatched pieces and wasn't at all pleased when I said that they were nice but we couldn't use them. For one thing many of her designs followed the current fashion in the country of dressing like hookers and that might not appeal strongly to the international market. And this is where things became truly bizarre. I have now become the fashion designer consultant. I found myself in an hour-long discussion over whether long fringe on skirts was attractive or not. My position is that it is okay only for cowgirls and really tall women with terrific legs and we're seeking a broader market. This, I know, will come as something of a surprise to those of you who know that I can rarely pick out the right tie for myself, but I'm giving an enormous amount of advice on women's clothes these days. Hey, I might have a talent, who knows?

So it was decided that the next step would be to gather all the combatants into one room and see what kind of progress we'd made. Leonora vs The 8 Ladies vs My Colleagues was a fight worth seeing. The meeting had all the gentle ambiance of a bag of marbles being dropped from a great height onto a cement floor. Leonora is a very very stubborn artist and my colleagues are very very stubborn business women. The 8 Ladies enjoy being obstinate just for a welcome break in their day to day routine. Leonora doesn't shout but she doesn't agree to anything either. My colleagues shout (mostly to be heard above the chaos) and are the only ones making any sense. The 8 Ladies wave the thirteen or so arms they have amongst them and wheel violently back and forth while shouting. I stand out of the way. After a while, the meeting ended and everyone agreed that we'd had a really good time and that we were making terrific progress.

I tried to ask my colleagues what had been decided and was told that nothing was decided in its final form, but everyone was thinking about how to resolve the problem. So there we are. We have a designer who won't design for knitters who won't knit and a web designer who is waiting patiently for a list of products that we can't make to be put online. My skills in designing women's clothing are improving rapidly and it's only a matter of time before I open my own Hair Saloon, you know, a place where a woman can go to get her hair and nails done while she enjoys a beer and a shot of whiskey, but only if she's wearing a skirt with long fringe!

I woke up on Sunday with a craving for a big tray of Italian food. My options, in this case, were to either fly to Italy or to make it myself. Some weeks ago I traveled out to the Black Sea to visit Sara and we made an awesome eggplant parmigiana together, so I decided to go solo and have the benefit of keeping all the leftovers for myself. I began to plan the shopping list and then determined when I'd need to begin to coax the oven into cooperating, I rehearsed every step of the operation and made a damn near perfect eggplant parmigiana in my mind, I plotted out which stores I'd need to hit to pick up which ingredients and then, because I had no alternative and it was almost noon, I got out of bed.

The first fly in the Bulgarian ointment was a familiar one. It was Sunday and the 'ascensiors' weren't ascending, nor were they descending. So I skipped down the eight flights of stairs and walked across the center to the market to pick up a dozen eggs from the 'egg lady'. I could probably get them elsewhere, but she knows me and I think she looks forward to giving me eleven sound eggs out of every dozen I buy. I had to buy the eggs first because the egg people don't tend to be there all day and it was getting late. Then, because they were eggs and I didn't want to lug them all over town, I took them home, hiked up eight flights of stairs, put them in the fridge and walked back down to the street to continue shopping. Next stop was the Billa grocery store. It's about two kilometers outside the center of town and it's a nice walk on a pretty day. This was a pretty day so off I went. There were a couple of things I thought that Billa might have which my local store, Accent, probably wouldn't, parmigiana cheese for example. There was also a rumor going around that the Billa had 'angliiski bekon'. English bacon is as close as you're likely to get to real bacon and it alone was worth the hike.

Sure enough, English bacon was available at the deli counter so I picked up half a kilo. I was also able to locate, without too much trouble, the mozzarella cheese and a packet of oregano. The parmigiana cheese proved to be more difficult to find so I had to ask the woman at the deli counter if the store had any and where they kept it. Yes, they had parmigiana cheese and it was.... A long string of Bulgarian directions followed with much gesturing and I had no idea where to find the cheese. After asking her a couple of times to slow it down, she became a little frustrated and spoke to the man next to me. He took me by the hand, led me five steps down the aisle and guided my hand to a package of parmigiana cheese. He then patted the back of my hand and walked away shaking his head thinking, no doubt, that it was terrible that they let people like me go off unattended.

So I hiked back home, trudged up the eight flights of stairs and dropped off my Billa groceries. I then realized that I hadn't gotten any tomato sauce so I gritted my teeth and went back down to the street. I went over to Accent, which is only a couple of blocks away, and picked up cans of tomato sauce, chopped tomatoes,and lutenitsa (which looks like tomato sauce but is made of peppers, onions, garlic and spices) for flavor. Then I climbed Mt. Everest and collapsed on my couch!

In making eggplant parmigiana there is an essential ingredient, and I mean 'essential' in the sense that it is necessary and required in each and every instance and cannot under any circumstances be omitted. As I was lying in total exhaustion on my couch it occurred to me that I hadn't bought a single patladjan (eggplant). If you omit the eggplant from the eggplant parmigiana you have more of a tomato sauce and cheese stew than anything else. Cursing those gods responsible for elevators and memory, I dribbled like a Slinky back down the eight flights of stairs and went back to the market. The market had exactly no patladjans but I remembered seeing some at a vegetable stand across the street from Accent. So I lumbered over to that side of town again and bought two. I made my last trip up the stairs and set to cooking!

I made a sauce from chopped tomatoes, whole tomatoes, sauce, lutenitsa, garlic and oregano. I added chopped mushrooms and onions then simmered it for an hour. I sliced the patladjan, dragged the slices through egg, breaded them with flour and spices and sauteed them in sunflower oil. I grated the parmigiana cheese and crumbled the mozzarella. I preheated my oven which only has two temperature settings, off or surface of the sun. I layered the ingredients in a baking pan and pushed the whole affair into the oven for thirty minutes.

Sort of like the bell on an oven timer, the smoke alarm woke me up. It turns out you can be groggy and still move quickly. I ran into the kitchen, opened the stove and pulled the smoking pan out...with my bare hand. The pain startled me somewhat and I dropped the pan upside down onto the kitchen floor. This is where the silver lining comes into the story.

With the hard blackened crust lying down against the floor, the underside of the patladjan parmigiana could be scrapped off and put on a plate. Although the top layer of cheese had become a carbon-like substance the hardness of marble, everything underneath was virtually edible. If I hadn't flipped the pan upside down onto the floor, I probably would have just pitched the whole thing into the trash. Modesty prevents me from giving the finished meal the praise it so rightly deserves, but it was a good one.

I have since looked online and discovered that it really isn't all that expensive to fly to Italy for a meal...arrevaderci Bulgaria!!