So, as it seems I do with every blog entry here, I will begin with an apology to anyone who has been checking this in hopes that I have actually written something. I have realized that blogging is just not my thing, I don’t really enjoy writing about myself and what I do every day, most especially when it must be generalized for a mass audience. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. That said, I will try to give a brief synopsis of what I’ve been up to since… oh god, January 19th?! How has it been that long…

I suppose this sentiment would actually be a good starting place. I’ve been in Bulgaria for 8 months this Sunday, and while I am very much into the groove of living here at this point, it still often feels like yesterday that I was back at Trinity, scrambling to complete all of the numerous documents that were sent back to me over and over again by Peace Corps. Anyway, yea… eight months in (5+ of those being actual service), and I am still utterly lost at times, both metaphorically and literally. What has really changed I suppose is that I no longer worry so much about it, or find it odd. I can deal with whatever situation I find myself in here (within reason, of course) without panicking about what I will do next. I like to think that I was fairly laid back before coming to Bulgaria, but Peace Corps service really forces you to learn how to be adaptive and to forget about any pre-conceived notions you may have had about a given situation (like, for example, the pre-conceived notion that a bus might actually show up at the time indicated on the schedule… or at all for that matter). Additionally, many aspects of Bulgarian life, and MY life IN Bulgaria, have become very familiar and almost routine now, something that I could not have fathomed back in pre-service training.

Anyway, now for something more concrete. So as one may expect, a lot has happened since January. I will try to cover what I remember and what I feel was significant. Between my last update and mid-February, not too much changed for me work-wise. Thankfully the weather was a little more reasonable, meaning we enjoyed visibility greater than 25 feet and temperatures that made my family and friends back in Maine quite jealous. The only significant event that I can really think of during this period of time was a Kuekri festival here in my town. This is pretty much the event for my town, and is held every January (or was it early February…). These festivals take place in towns, villages, and cities all over Bulgaria, and some are bigger than others. They are all mid-winter, close to the time of our festival, but no single date seems to have significance. The festivals include groups of Kukeri from all over Bulgaria, as well as similar groups from Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Romania, etc., as there are many cultural similarities between these countries and Bulgaria. This is my understanding, and I do not mean to group them all together by any means, but… they all seem to have Kuekri. So, what is a Kuker? Men dress up as these beasts, which almost always include intricate masks and various different costumes, and dance around to scare off evil spirits that harass nice Bulgarian families. They wear bells which are similar to sheep bells, but are often huge oversized versions, strapped onto them with belts. The dances include a great deal of jumping and stomping, causing a deafening, evil-spirit-scaring roar to fill the air due to all of the clanging bells.

At our Kukeri festival, which lasted two days, there were groups present from several different countries and many from Bulgaria. They all had unique costumes, and each put on a different kind of performance. Some were quite lengthy, and included elaborate skits with many different characters. I am actually forgetting some of the significance of all the characters now (I will have to write a more prompt account after next years festival, I suppose) but there is often a doctor, a police officer, a man dressed as a woman (frequently a bride), someone dressed as a horse or other animal, and a variety of different characters that represent the “evil spirit.” The skits mostly follow the theme of the Bulgarian family looking happy and wholesome, eating together, drinking rakia and sewing their crops, and then of course being harassed by “evil spirits,” which some groups in fact depicted with incredibly racist representations of the minority Roma culture (but I won’t get too into that as the racism issue is far too complex to address here). At this point, the Kukeri enter (if they have not already been parading around), and save the family and their crops by dancing, jumping, scaring, and often times physically fighting off the evil spirits (sometimes with swords). The real treat here are the costumes, which as I have mentioned are extremely elaborate and every group, in fact each and every Kuker, is unique. So, here are some pictures to give you just a tiny taste of what goes on at these festivals.

Perhaps the best example of an evil spirit present at the festival, this man was nearly-naked (keep in mind it was January) all day, and in fact harassed almost everyone in attendance with his third arm and giant phallus (young children and old women were favorite targets). In case you're wondering, the sign he is wearing on his chest translates to "ladies with priority", or ladies first... the sign on his back said something like "the men next."

Ok, so mid February I had a week of so-called “In-Service Training (IST)” in a town located in central Bulgaria noted for its natural hot springs. In fact, it has been noted for these hot springs for many hundreds of years, and has some very interesting history as a result. But, that is literally ancient history, so I will stick to my experiences there. The week was great fun for all of the volunteers, and the change of pace couldn’t have come at a better time for me. As I mentioned, not much new was going on for me work-wise up until this point, which was not at all a good thing. This, coupled with the winter doldrums, was really starting to make me a little concerned for what my future in this country might be like. Getting together at a spa hotel for a week with about 70 other Americans was just what I needed to get re-energized. We had classes all day in which we discussed our challenges and successes thus far as volunteers, and spent two days specifically working on project writing techniques (to secure funds for our host organizations or our side projects). While these sessions helped me to get back into the right frame of mind, I really think it was more the informal discussions with my fellow volunteers that helped me to come back from the conference a re-energized person.

Back in town, I immediately started seeking out kids much more actively. This led me (no major shock here) to start working with the local 1st-8th grade school. More specifically, I re-connected with an ambitious English teacher there who I had met long ago but had foolishly not attempted to re-connect with. I started going to his classes to meet kids and help out with the English lessons, and he allowed me to use his time to talk with the kids about what kinds of activities they would like to organize with me. Since then, I have had meetings with several different groups outside of the school and have begun several of the activities we have planned. There are activity group leaders (kids) for each of the plans we have made, such as Drama Club, Photography Club, Frisbee, Basketball, Volleyball, Tennis, and we have plans for a sort of nature hike/picnic as well. I am still teaching several English classes with various groups of adults and children here at the chitalishte, so my days are very busy now, which makes me really happy. I still go to the school for anywhere from 1 to 3 classes per day to see the kids, and as a result I am feeling better than ever working here and really feel my presence in the town has become known to all. Everywhere I go (I mean this literally), I hear a chorus of young voices calling my name so that even those who have not met me often ask others around them who this young man is that all the kids seem to be so excited to see. It’s a great feeling, and of course it can be tiring, but Peace Corps warned us that this is the “Toughest job you’ll ever love”, and that it is a 24/7 commitment. As it turns out, the more active you are during those 24 hours, and thus the tougher the job is, the MORE you love it, as the rewards are innumerable.

I am trying to think of other specific events to write about, but generally I think that my work has been nearly all-consuming since I came back from the conference, and I can’t think of any real “events” since that time that have been especially noteworthy. OH WAIT yes I can, of course… Giorgi has moved out! As you may recall from previous entries, I had until very recently been living with my landlord, who was working on remodeling part of my house. Welll, although he had originally promised to be finished and moved out by late November… and then mid January… he actually just left about 3 weeks ago (so mid March). Although I was used to our living situation, it was really starting to get old having to walk outside to get to a bathroom or any running water, and not having a kitchen, etc. etc. In addition to this, Giorgi had not been working for several months because he came back to Bulgaria from Italy to help his sick mother, and then began working on the house after she passed away. So, he was broke by the time January came around, and had no money to help pay the absolutely enormous electrical bill. There are many reasons for the bill being so large: not only did he use a great deal of power living and working on the house, but while he was there I was living in an old drafty room and using far more heat than should have been necessary. In any case, I got all of this worked out with him and with Peace Corps, but it certainly caused me additional stress and made me more anxious than ever to have Giorgi back in Italy.

Now that that wish has been granted, I have the whole house to myself, and I immediately set about moving all my things downstairs into the nice new part of the house that Giorgi had been working on. I have also been preparing the garden, and have many seedlings growing in bottles and yogurt containers in my house. Very soon it will be warm enough to plant them outside (in fact, I think it is actually plenty warm right now, but I am waiting for them to get a little bigger first). I will take some pictures of my living space now that I have at last moved in properly, and will try to get those up soon (although my track record here is not great…). I think that will have to be all for now, and hopefully it won’t be another 3 months before I update this thing again.

I will leave you with a link to the fairly-new “B22 Blogstars” blog, which includes a select (or so they would have you think) group of my fellow B22 Volunteers who each apparently have entirely too much time on their hands here, but luckily use it to actually keep up with their blogs.

http://b22blogstars.blogspot.com/

They created this site as a way of covering many different aspects of Bulgarian culture, so check it out, and be sure to look at the history of posts as they update this constantly and have been at it for a few weeks at this point. Ok, that’s all for now, dovijdanay!

Well, not too much has happened since my last blog, but I am trying to commit to at-least-weekly updates here, so I will cover some points of interest (for me anyway). Last weekend was very low key here in [Bulgarian town X], largely due to the fact that it has been extremely cold and not a lot goes on in the dead of winter here. Thats not completely accurate because there are of course various holidays and such that are celebrated throughout the chilly winter months, but on an average icy weekend, staying warm seems to take priority. In any case, I needed the break to take some time to relax, so I was happy.

After returning from the holiday break, things have been rather slow to get started. Most of the English classes that I have been teaching were cancelled that first week or so back (at the behest of the students, or the implied behest of their absence), and are just now getting started up again, albeit with slightly lower headcounts. I kind of get the feeling that many people just sort of don't feel like jumping back into to work, school, and all of their other routines after the holidays, which of course makes sense, and my informal English classes are an easy target for those looking to blow something off. I have used the extra time afforded by this lack of work to finish translating the chitalishte's blog, which I had only just begun prior to this, and which took me a completely unreasonable amount of time to complete, especially given the rough nature of the translation. I am providing these disclaimers (read "excuses") only becasue I will provide a link to the site here, but I want everyone to understand that it was not easy for me to create the translated version, I did do it completely on my own, and my counterpart who writes this blog (the original version) is a well-educated woman and writes like one, while my Bulgarian vocabulary as of this moment is similar to that of a 4 year old. Plus, due to the sentence structure and the use of phrases that would never have made sense in English, I had to basically attempt to translate each of these twice: first directly and literally, followed by a version that I thought made something approaching sense in English. Still, they do use mostly my Counterpart's (henceforth known as Aneta) wording. Anyway, I think I was able to capture the gist, so go ahead and check it out:

http://kiril-i-metodirakovski-chitalishte-en.blogspot.com/

This is of course the English version, but i urge you to check out the Bulgarian version too, if only to gain an appreciation for my efforts and to see the work I put in to make this version mirror the Bulgarian one almost exactly. Flip back and forth between the two even... they're exactly the same! Nifty.

I also spent some of my extra time the past week looking for more interesting ways to teach my English classes. Learning to teach has really been quite an experience for me, which I have for the most pasrt taken on without a lot of outside help, and the process has so far left me with a great deal of respect for all the teachers of the world, and of course specifically those who I have had the good fortune to learn things from. It is not easy, but it is a very rewarding experience and I do enjoy it very much at this point. I teach all ages, and I have found that it is really difficult for me to teach the younger kids effectively without using some device to catch and maintain their attention and excitement. To accomplish this I have used songs (such as "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes", "The Hokey Pokey"), fun themes for lessons, and I am working on adding some kind of skits or little plays in the near future. For the adult classes, I of course use themed lessons as well, such as eating out at a restaurant, checking into a hotel, traveling, etc., and I sometimes write dialogues for them to read, but I have not added in too many other exciting learning tools. Wellllll, all that is going to change very shortly. I spent some time over the past week looking around the chitalishte library, and I discovered that we have books such as Curious George adventures (and other "weekly reader" selections) in sets of five or so, in English. Since the latest unit introduced to most of my adult classes is the past tense, these books are perfect because they use the past tense to tell their stories ("George went to the animal shelter...."), and so I have designed several lessons around different children's books.

In other news regarding my work here, which I remind you is technically supposed to be Youth Development, we recently received a call from one of my program supervisors at Peace Corps asking why I wasn't doing more development work with the kids. I feel that I am doing what I can at this point given my difficulty understanding most of the kids at this point, and given that at has been so cold out and most people seem to looking to do less activities right now as opposed to adding new ones, but of course I also feel the need to branch out and connect with the children more. This is my general goal for the near future: someway, somehow get out there and get more directly involved with the kids.

Ok, so thats the update work-wise. Socially, not much new to report. I must say that I am already getting anxious for warmer weather so that there will be more people just out and about and hopefully I can meet more new friends in my town. I suppose this would be an appropriate point to discuss the weather a little bit, which has been somewhat interseting as of late. Right after I returned from my New Years Plovdiv adventure, we had the first really significant snowfall here in my town (and even more so throughout much of Bulgaria). This left us with snow almost up to my knee, so it was not too extreme but at least everything was white. A few days later, I awoke to incredibly dense fog, the likes of which I have never experienced in weather this cold (at this point it was topping out just around or shy of freezing each day). I don't know what casues this phenomenon here, but i guess winter fog is fairly common. I tend to think of cold, crisp winter days as being especially clear due to the frozen atmosphere. If anyone is more enlightened in the realm of meteorology than I, I welcome any explanation that can be provided for this phenomenon. For the time being, i will just try to describe why it was that this blanket of white was so dramatic. For one thing, when most everything is snow-covered and white to begin with, it should be immediately obvious why the very AIR being white would add a certain level of eery palor to life. This fog was so dense that I could literally barely make out what was across the street, and when coupled with the cold temperatures, the combination made for some very interesting frost accumulation. I have never seen anything like the crusty, crystalline layer that formed on everything. The fog proved as enduring as it was thick, and the world remained enveloped in this cloud for almost a week before we regained a more normal level of visibility. In this time, the ice crystals covering the surface of literally everything continued to grow and eventually formed what almost appeared to be a 360 degree snow blanket, as if snow had been flying at objects from all angles. Anyway, I did capture some photos of this during the last day of the fog, and while they certainly can't do the "frost" the dramatic justice it deserves, they will provide some examples from which you may extrapolate and try to imagine everything looking like this.

This is a large evergreen located directly in front of my house. As you can see, the chunky, heavy snow is left from the snowfall a week or so before, but the majority of the white on each of the needles is frozen-fog.

This illustrates what I'm attempting to describe very well. These are grapes vines in front of the house (clipped back for the winter, of course), and these had no snow on them whatsoever, thats all frost that grew little by little.Again, just to illustrate the frost: some chain-link.

While I was getting my frost pictures, I figured why not take a shot of the dog who lives at my house. Under different circumstances, I might refer to this creature as "my" dog, considering Giorgi will be leaving this house very soon and I am fairly sure that the dog is here to stay. Unfortunately, this is no ordinary dog. This dog, which is about the size of a medium-to-small cat, is incredibly mean and will have nothing to do with me. In fact, at the very sight of me it begins making hellish noises that are completely unrecognizeable as having come from a dog. Most people who know me know that I love animals, and dogs are certainly included, but this little lady is a rare exception to that rule.

This is not a very good shot, and I do plan to get more pictures in the near future, but here is my house, as viewed from the back corner. The concrete portion that you see is the area of the house that Giorgi is just putting the finishing touches on remodeling. He added insulation on the outside, which is why there is fresh concrete. To the left is the front of the house, which is somewhat difficult to get a good picture of because it is surrounded by a large wall. The stairs that are visible toward the front-corner of the house are the ones that lead up to the rooms on the second floor, which is where I live now. When the work is done downstairs, which it very nearly is, I will be moving down there. Well, I think thats just about it for now. As I said, I will try to get some better pictures of the house over the course of the next week, and I'll try to give everyone a better idea of where I live here, and maybe what Bulgarian houses are like in general, as this house is an excellent example. Until then, vsichko hubavo!

Dinner at the Middle Eastern restaurant on New Years Eve... and boy was it good

Not really sure how this is spelled in latin letters, but... Baba-G'noosh! One of the highlights of the meal, along with some of the best hummus I have ever had the pleasure of ingesting.

I had always intended to get a picture or two of my host family's pantry so people would understand what I meant when I said they do a ton of canning here, so when I went back for the holiday I took this one. Well, this is not quite full, since for the holiday alone we decimated many a jar of fruits and veggies, but this gives you some idea. This is only one corner of the room... and those shelves are deep too...

After dinner, Misho decided it was time to dance, and I don't mean the horo. This went on for quite a while, during which he requested specific songs to dance to, such as "Boyfriend" by Avril Levigne.

This is the big loaf of bread with everyone and everything depicted on top. It was delicious, ceremonial, and fun to make. I think that this is one simple Bulgarian Christmas tradition that I will carry back to the states with me! (And by the way, I'm the third from the right, with the hat)

This was the pile that included banitza, another Bulgarian pastry that was similar to banitza, the big loaf with all of us on it, and finally the little loaf with the trinkets baked into it.

Host Mom and Host Dad (Vasil & Milena) enjoying their gifts

This one is actually taking a step back in time a little, to our Thanksgiving get together at Anita's. That delicious looking plate in the foreground belonged to yours truly. The men before swearing-in ...

... and the women

Well, this is it. I'm really doing it: I am updating the blog.

I have been through quite a lot since the last time I posted an update here. At that time I was still living in the safe and secure environment of the host family, with little more than a clue as to what form the next step of my service, the beginning of my service in truth, might take. Well, since that time I have been sworn in as an official volunteer and employee of the US government, moved to site, and begun my work as a volunteer in Bulgaria. I have had myriad new and exciting experiences of course, although in the context of the permanent work site as opposed to training they have a somewhat different feel to them. I will try to explain this and touch on some of the more interesting points to give a general idea of what it is I have been up to over here for the past few months.

So, my story picks up back in mid October, when shortly after my last blog entry I hopped on a bus with all of my fellow trainees to be sworn in at a hotel in Sofia. My friend Eddie was elected by the group to be the speaker, and he did an absolutely amazing job. His Bulgarian is very strong, and he delivered the speech in both languages, but he also really inspired all of us and prepared us for what would come next. At the conclusion of this ceremony we had a brief snacking and photo op period before once again boarding the bus and heading to Peace Corps Bulgaria headquarters to collect our things and take off for site. It was a whirlwind day for everyone, but for me there was an additional twist that I didn’t find out about until just about as we were leaving the hotel in Sofia. As it turned out, the house I was to live in is currently under construction (as it is to this day), and at that point the bathroom was not finished so I couldn’t move in. This meant that I got to spend about 4 days living with a volunteer in Plovdiv. This turned out to be great, I actually think it was a nice little break between training and my assignment. I got to explore Plovdiv, meet the 4 volunteers who live and work there, and generally take a breather before diving into site.

Once I did get to site, things were a little slow at first for me, as they are for most new volunteers who are trying to find their footing while still struggling with the language, but it was not long at all before I was teaching English classes. Although my assignment is youth development and not specifically teaching English (there are TEFL volunteers for that), this is a great way to begin meeting people in the community who I will hopefully use as a support base for work on future projects. My very first class was with the police force of the town, and it was a disaster. That was probably my worst day in Bulgaria so far. I froze up in front of the room full of about 25 uniformed police officers, and delivered a disaster of a lesson. While this shook me up at the time, it was a good learning experience because I sought out as many English-teaching resources as I could get my hands on after that shocking experience, and my following lessons went progressively smoother from that point on. For the first few weeks after that class, I was adding a grouo to my schedule just about every week. I now teach the police (who I am now very friendly with and who I actually enjoy teaching the most), teachers from two different kindergartens (again – this is good for future youth development networking in the community), the employees of the bank located above the community center I work in, the traditional Bulgarian dance ensemble from the community center (mostly around age 16-20), and three different groups of 1st graders. I should be adding a class for employees of the town hall fairly soon, but things have gotten off to quite a sluggish start following the holiday break.

So yea, basically I have spent most of my time teaching English so far. As I mentioned, I work at the chitalishte here, which is an institution commonly found in most Bulgarian towns that serves as a community center, but additionally has the stated goal of preserving Bulgarian customs (such as their distinctive songs, dances, and holiday celebration traditions). My boss and co-worker/counterpart are both great and I once again feel lucky to have this assignment. The town I live in is actually fairly affluent comparatively, and is good sized when compared to the last town I lived in. It is a little more modern due to the fact that it is located outside of Plovdiv, the second largest city in Bulgaria (after the capital, Sofia). There are many more people my age, and in general I think it is a great place to be assigned (again, largely due to the proximity to Plovdiv). My house here, as I mentioned, is under construction at the moment, but yes, I do have an actual house. This is unusual for PCVs here, as most of us live in block apartments, but in my town there was apparently not a lot of options in terms of housing, so I live in a house that would normally be large enough for a family plus the in-laws. It is an old house, and the elderly woman who lived here passed away just before my arrival here, so now here son is living downstairs and remodeling the a few rooms down there while I occupy the upstairs. He is a good guy and I am happy to have him here for as long as the remodel takes, although I don’t think it will be much longer at this point. I don’t actually have any good pictures of the place, but I plan to take some soon and will post them when I do.

Apart from my daily grind, I have had many great experiences here. These include, but are not limited to: checking out the absolutely huge and out-of-control Sunday market in my town, building some sort of an animal shelter for hunting with my boss, going to a town with natural hot springs and getting tons of FREE water, etc. There are many more similar little stories, but it is too much to attempt to recount them all. I am hoping to keep this blog more up to date as I have a laptop and internet bat home now, so these little anecdotes will not fall by the wayside. In any case, perhaps the most significant adventure that I had between moving to site and the holiday break was spending Thanksgiving with a group of (I believe) about 17 or so other volunteers in a small city about a couple hours from here. Anita, our gracious hostess, provided two turkeys that she was able to get from local Bulgarians. The rest of us cooked a wide variety of traditional and loosely-associated Thanksgiving dishes to compliment the birds, and the holiday was a great success (with the help of the cheap, abundant, and delicious Bulgarian wine). I personally baked a large bread pudding with dried cranberries substituted for the raisins (it was for Thanksgiving, after all), which seemed to go over quite well.

A few weeks later it was time for Christmas break (no politically correct holiday break around these parts, its Christmas baby), which I spent with my former host family. My several days there were extremely relaxing, and I learned first hand what it is like to celebrate the holiday Bulgarian style. As with most things, there are more traditions surrounding Christmas in Bulgaria than you can shake a stick at, and in fact one of these traditions includes children shaking a decorated stick at people and reciting some verses for health and prosperity in the New Year. Many of these I have learned about from my language tutors or co-workers but there are so many I am just going to stick to the ones I directly took part in. First major difference here is that Santa Clause is called “Grandfather Christmas”; not St. Nicholas, either, he has his own holiday in Bulgaria (which involves eating lots of fish and drinking lots of wine). The major celebration here takes place not on Christmas Day, but in fact on Christmas Eve. This is when the family (or in some cases the entire community) gathers, this is when the holiday meal served, and this is when gifts are exchanged. The holiday meal itself has many traditions involved. There must be an odd number of dishes on the table, or in my family’s case specifically either 7, 9, or 12 (I know 12 is not odd, but these are for the days of the week, the months a woman is pregnant, and the months on the year). I think we ended up with 15 dishes at our meal. The next important rule is that the meal must be essentially vegan: no meat, no dairy, etc. Everyone at the table must try at least a little bit from each dish, and no one is allowed to get up from the table until the meal is over (which may end up being quite a long time). There are several must-have foods at Christmas Dinner: one is a small loaf of bread baked without yeast that includes many trinkets baked inside, each representing a different fortune. At the beginning of the meal, the man of the house break up and distributes the loaf to those present at the table, and depending on what you find in your chunk you may have any variety of responsibilities in the coming year. If you get a small stick, it is your job to tend the garden; a large stick means you will be taking care of the livestock; a button means you are responsible for mending the clothes; and by far the best piece, the coin, means you will have good fortune in the financial sphere for that year. Another essential is a large loaf of regular bread that is baked with depictions of many different things on top, such as the members of the family, the animals, the garden, etc. – anything you want to have good health and luck in the coming year.

After dinner, we exchanged gifts and then played a game where a walnut (there are many walnut trees here so they are abundant) is balanced on top of an empty liquor bottle. Each child in the family is given 7 walnuts to begin with, and they sit across the room and throw the nuts at the bottle in an attempt to knock the nut off the top. Each time the nut is successfully toppled, the child (which, by the way, includes 23 year olds) collects all the walnuts lying around the bottle at that time. When all but one of the children runs out of nuts, the winner is declared. This simple game was great fun and we played it over and over. For the rest of my time with the family we relaxed, visited with other relatives, and ate too much on a regular basis. They really continue celebrating Christmas all week until New Years here, so it was a lot of fun.

So, in case it was not entirely evident, I really like Plovdiv. I go there often on the weekend, and actually spent new years there with a fairly large group of my American colleagues. A mere few days after returning to my house from my Christmas visit, I hopped on the bus to Plovdiv where about 20-something of us had reserved beds at a hostel in the beautiful and historic Old City. We were there for two nights and we all had a great time. The first night we actually went to a bar where a Bon Jovi cover band was playing. They spoke Bulgarian of course, but boy could they belt out Bon Jovi songs. The next day and night were great; we had an early dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant and then took on the town. We attended the concert in the city center, complete with giant horo (dancing) circle, and ended up meeting a group of young Iraqi men who we quickly befriended and went to a dance club with. It was a great couple of days, but by the end we were all exhausted and I must say it felt great to come home to my site and get back into the regular swing of work the following day.

So there it is, that pretty much brings us up to the present. I promise this time, I am going to try to keep this thing updated. I do have internet at home finally, so I suppose I no longer have any excuse.

I was going to put some pictures up to accompany this entry, but it got way longer than I had originally envisioned and the night has grown late… tomorrow, pictures. Until then, vsichko hoobavo!

I know its been a long while since I have updated this blog, but look, there are pictures!!! As before, I have been insanely busy, blah blah blah. Anyway, these pictures offer just a tiny taste of some of my more interesting and exciting travels in Bulgaria (although truly, every single day is an adventure). Since the last time I wroteI have traveled to visit my permenant work site, visited another volunteer who is currently working in a job similar to the one I will soon have, and had a host of other new, difficult, confusing, and wonderful experiences. After about a week and a half I will be leaving my host family and the home I have grown so comfortbale in to move out to my permenant site. At this point my training is complete, and I will be sworn in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer. I will move into my own house (which I have yet to see) in the small town where I will work for two years. My job is to work in a chitalishte, which is a type of community center unique to Bulgaria. These organizations provide after school programs, libraries, classes for adults as well as children, and often traditional dance and music groups. They are unique in that they not only work to provide communities wioth these opportunities, but specifically have the stated goal of preserving Bulgarian traditions as well. I am extremely excited (and nervous) to begin my job working at the chitalishte in my town, and hopefully I will have a great number of stories to share in the coming weeks and months. Pre-service training, which I thought would never end, has flown by and I cannot believe that I will actually be starting my service here in two weeks! In other news, we are down to 36 of the original 40 people from my group, known as the B22's (the 22nd peace corps group to serve Bulgaria). The last one to go was forced to leave, and was a guy that I was becoming good friends with. This is an upsetting situation, but but there is nothing any of us can do about it. We have all learned from his situation how careful we must be here in Bulgaria if we do not wish to have our service cut short. Aagain, I apologize for not being able to keep this blog up as I had originally intended, but I am hoping that this will be more feasible once I am at my worksite so don't give up on me yet everyone! Until next time, ciao! Me in my official Bulgarianworker clothes. Everyone wears suits like these to do manual labor here. They are all almost exactly the same - I believe the uniformity is a leftover from the communist past, as it is with many things in Bulgaria. Also, this is a nice shot of the beard I grew for the first month and week or two I was here (its gone now, but it was kind of fun while it lasted)

This was taken just yesterday, afetr a day of working to fix up this playground in the town where I am currently living (until training is over). It rained off and on all day, so the smiles are fake, but hey good times.

Me on top of Rila, also known as the most beautiful place I have ever been. This was the culmination of an all-day hike I took a couple of weeks ago with about 50 otrher volunteers currently serving in BG. That night we stayed in a Hija (mountain hostel), which was of course a lot of fun as well.

Again, Rila. The hike we took was of the seven lakes, which are all way up. I believe this is number three, (number 1 being the highest lake, or the last one we reached).

I believe this is lake 5. Beautiful.

This is just a random street in the old part of the city of Plovdiv, which is near the site I will be moving to soon to work. When I visited my permenant work site a few weeks ago, I stayed in Plovdiv and had time to explore the gorgeous old city. There is a fairly large area where all the buildings and streets are preserved, and they all look more or less like this in terms of style.

This is a huge preserved house/museum in Plovdiv. A Peace Corps volunteer actually works for this organization, and I met her there and had a chance to see the museum.

This was taken at a sabor that several of the volunteers and I went to in a small town near mine. At this sabor, they cook a giant soup called kourban that is then blessed by a priest and eaten by everyone in the community to ensure good health. Almost every town and village in BG has their own sabor sometime in the fall. Each one is different, but they are all lots of fun and usually involve lots of traditional Bulgarian music, dancing the horo, eating, and of course drinking rakia.

"Rilski Monastir" (or Rila Monastery). I wrote about my trip here several weeks ago with my host family. This is a picture of the church in the center of the monastery. Very cool.

Me and the host fam. - they are the best

Locally cultivated honey being sold at the "Pazar" (open-air market) in my village.

The rakia stil! A rough form of grape wine (or any other kind of fruit, as long as its fermenting in a barrel of water it can be - and is - used) goes in, it is heated for a day or so, and a liquor that is closest related to brandy comes out! This is the national drink of Bulgaria, and I like it very much (which is good becasue Bulgarians drink it literally all the time).

I want to start by apologizing profusely to anyone who has been checking this blog and finding no updates.  It is tough for me to find time to write this because between language classes, technical training (for youth development work), spending time with my host family and the myriad other activities that consume my time I do not have much time to make the 20 minute walk to the internet cafe. I also cannot upload pics from here so, sorry, those will have to wait even longer.

The good news is I am still having a great timer here, and I have been busy with many fun things.

Two weekends ago I took a trip into the mountains that are near the village I live in.  There is a beautiful monastery there with over 900 years of history.  We visited this historic spot, then found a campsite near a river on the mountain and had a barbecue/picnic all afternoon.  The following Sunday, my family had cousins from Moscow visiting who were close to my age and spoke good english.  It was very interesting to talk to them about the differences between Russia, America, and Bulgaria.  The older cousin was 21 and had one year left in University to achieve her degree in international law!

The first half of last week was spent attending lenguage class , and then on Wednesday we took a trip to a nearby city where we visited an orphanage, an NGO, and a chitalishte (community activity/cultural center) so that we could have a better idea of the types of places we may be working as youth development volunteers.  The orphanage really tugged on my heart strings, and I think that I am going to request to be sent to this type of institution.  Thursday and friday we had what is called a "hub", meaning all 40 (well, 38 now) people in my peace corps group get together and have class sessions together.  This was great because we had all begun to get close before we went to our training site towns (with 4 to 6 volunteers in each site), but we had no contact with one another (or any other americans) since that time.  We stayed in a hotel in a city that is located between all of our towns.

Last weekend I went to a tiny village with my host family for a village-wide, all day celebration.  It was great fun - lots of food, drinking, and dancing the hora in a HUGE group.  This dance involves everyone holding hands and doing various sets of specific kicks and skipping... sort of.  Its fun, trust me, and EVERYONE does it.  Babies to grandparents.Lots of great traditional Bulgarian folk music too.  I think the band played in the center of town from about 1pm to midnight.  This week I am back to more language, technical, and culture classes.  The culture component this week involves going to the market with a small

 budget, purchasing ingredients, and preparing traditional Bulgarian dishes.  I am looking forward 

to it very much because, as I have mentioned, the food here is unbelievable.  In a good way... delicious.

I would love to fill in many more details, but I have more classes to attend! I will try to keep this more up to date in the future.  Ciao!

The town where I am living

Host brother Mihail - age 6

Grapes growing beside the house - they are EVERYWHERE here!

Old house / garden with onions, potatoes, korn, peppers, tomatoes, beans, plums, hazel nuts, apples, more grapes, pears, carrots, many spices for food and tea, etc. - lots of incredible food

A donkey on the hill at the edge of the woods

The town is surrounded by beautiful mountains

My host sister, Ventsy Ventsy and her best friend, Gerry

Well, where to begin.  It has been an incredibly long couple of weeks.  Actually, it hasn't even been that long since I left but it could have easily been two months withg all that I have been through.  It all began in Philadelphia, where I had my peace corps staging.  Staging was fun, we just covered the basic ideas behind peace corps, the important rules (i.e. what not to do if you don't want to be sent home early), anmd general things like that.  We went out as a group (there are 40 of us... well, 39 now) and had a great time in Philly when we were not in our sessions.  They even give you money to go out and get food, drinks, etc. so so really started bonding as a group right off the bat.

After two days in Philly, we took a bus to JFK airport in New York, flew to Frankfurt, Germany, flew to Sofia (the capitol city of Bulgaria), and took another bus to a hotel in the mountains (about two hours away).  We stayed at a hotel high up in the gorgeous mountains for about 5 days, where we had intensive training sessions all day long.   After having travelled for 24 hours straight, not to mention the jet lag, we were all pretty exhausted and this last week was quite a challenge.  At this point I know the Bulgarian alphabet pretty well and a few of the important phrases for survival, but not much more than that.  I also came down with a nasty cold 

by the end of our week

 in the mountain, which did not help matters much.   

The big day came on Friday, when we all met 

our host families.  

I honestly believe that I got placed with the best family in all of Bulgaria.  The 

food is amazing, they grow many vegetables, fruits, and nuts at or near their home.  

I have my own

 small house/apartment that is across a little courtyard from the actual house, so it is an ideal setup.  

I have many

 pictures of this, but unfortunatley I am at an internet cafe 

right now and cannot figure out how to 

upload pictures from my camera.  Hopefully soon.  

My host - sister, Ventsy, speaks great English 

(most of the host families do not speak much if any) which has made my 

first weekend with them 

much easier and more realxing.  

We have gone on several walks through the town and through the

 forest nearby, we have gone berry picking, and I have even helped (watched) them 

make rakia (a 

home-made liquor) and blackberry jam.  

Since they grow much of their produce, they also do a great deal

 of canning and they have a cellar full of wonderful foods.  

I begin my classes in the town where I 

live tomorrow morning, which will include mostly language class but also some assignments that 

have to do with getting me ready to work in my assignment community as a youth developer.  

I do

 not know where this assignment community will be at this point, but I love 

the town I am in for training, 

which is good since I will be here for the next 10 weeks.  

Ok, I know that was a little rushed and somewhat disjointed, but I am just

trying to catch everything up to the present.  

I should be able to update this blog regularly from now on with no problem.  

Keep checking because I am going to get som pictures up as soon as possible as well.  

Until then, Dovijdane!

Well, I have four days left to get ready for Bulgaria. For anyone reading this who doesn't already know, I found out a few weeks ago that I will be serving in Bulgaria doing youth development work. The job description for this assignment includes working with at-risk children basically helping them to mature into responsible, productive adults. I do not know much more than that in terms of what I will actually be doing day to day, but I will most likely be working with either local schools, NGO's, and/or orphanages. My first three months or so in Bulgaria will be spent learning the language (Bulgarian) and about other relevant aspects of the culture. This training period apparently takes place at a central Peace Corps training facility, and I will not know the details of my actual assignment until I have completed this training. Until that time, I believe I will not know what part of the country I am actually serving in, what my specific job will be, or what my living situation will be like. I do know that during training I will be in a home-stay, and I am extremely anxious to find out what my host family will be like.

For the next couple of days, before I fly out to my two-day staging in Philly, I will be continuing to go through some of the paperwork and reading that the PC has sent me. Some of it is just general information about the PC and some is specifically about Bulgaria, but all of it is very interesting and exciting. The more I read the more excited and anxious I become, which is good because as my date of departure draws near I cannot help but think of everything and everyone I will be leaving behind. Focusing on what I will be gaining rather than losing makes me feel more positive about the whole situation.

So, as I mentioned at the beginning of this entry, I have four days (including today, which is mostly over) before I get on the plane to staging in Philly. In that time I still have several thank-you (and other) notes to write, all my packing to do, and a variety of smaller tasks to take care of in between. I am not exactly stressed out by this but I just sort of don't feel like doing it. I just want to relax and spend time with my friends before I go, but I am managing to do this and make steady progress getting ready at the same time. I am no longer working (except for a 3 hour mini-shift tomorrow night), so I should have plenty of time. Luckily I got a chance to see many of my family members last weekend, which is good because I am not sure I would have had time for last minute visits with all of the otherwise. Between tying up loose ends and preparing for the next 27 months, I have my work cut out for me. I am going to make a sincere effort to update this blog at least weekly, so this is the beginning right here. Hopefully I will be able to do an entry at staging and then again once I'm in Bulgaria, but who knows. Until then, wish me luck!