My job search has ended relatively quickly. I've been offered and accepted a position with an environmental consulting firm called ENSR, and I'm excited to start working. I begin January 8th. Environmental consulting is an amorphous field, and I'll be working on a variety of projects. Environmental impact statements and assessments, pre-construction planning, pollution reduction, and various compliance and permitting work. The job is in Long Beach, CA, which is only about 45 minutes from my parents house in Whittier. Long Beach is the 35th biggest city in America, according to the Wikipedia. Now I just have to find a place to live and buy a car, and I'll be all set.

The job search process was tedious and a test of patience and self-confidence. I sent out plenty of resumes for jobs that I KNOW I was qualified for, and never heard a thing in reply. If there's anything I learned in the Peace Corps, though, it was to work hard, but relax and trust that things will work themselves out for the best. This seems to have come true, as it always does.

I took this picture the other day in the Orange County coastal city of Laguna Beach. Note the Christmas lights and wreath. This is how people decorate in this sunny, hot, and surreal corner of the world.

Second only to "what are you going to do now?", the question I seem be asked most often is "what is it like being back in America?" After being home for about a month, a satisfactory answer still eludes me. What's it like being back, after two-plus years overseas? That's a difficult question for me to tackle. It's even harder to compare my former life in Svishtov or Dupnitsa, to my current life in suburban LA. I've moved from a small remote community at the fringe of Europe, to one of the biggest metropolitan regions in the world. These communities could hardly be more different, and finding a balance to my daily life, bridging my old life and my new, is challenging.

Maybe the hardest thing for me to adjust to is the scale of life in Southern California. Our closest grocery store is probably two kilometers away. I sat in my car for more than two hours last weekend to visit a friend who lives 30 or 40 km from me, which is of course still in LA county. Yet at other times, I've been driving at 80 miles per hour and still been passed by other cars on a 10 lane LA freeway. Our small suburban house seems huge, and the genuinely big houses make me gasp. It's an impressive feat, when you think about it, to design an entire urban region, home to 15 million people (or more) and completely eliminate the need to walk anywhere. Has there ever been a worse invention than the auto-dependent American suburb? And the prices seem sky-high, even though it's relatively cheap compared to Western Europe. There are still some nice places in Southern California (see picture of Laguna Beach above), yet I could never even dream of being able to afford to live there. These are the things that have not been easy to adjust to.

On the other side, one great part about returning to America is how genuinely nice and friendly everyone is. This is cliche, I know, but I never thought about it until I went to Bulgaria, where it's, um, not so common. People ask me how I'm doing, help me find what I need, wish me a good day, and genuinely mean it. And of course, the best part about being home is family and friends. This needs no explanation.

The strangest part of life right now is that I'm still in transition. I refuse to stay in Southern California, but I haven't yet decided where to go or what to do. It's like the readjustment hasn't even really begun, because I'm still moving. I can hardly start processing my Peace Corps experience, adjust to a new life in my suddenly-unfamiliar native land, because life for me is still temporary. There are a few places in America where you can replicate a European lifestyle - walkable cities, public transportation, liberal minded stylish people, minimal environmental impact. When I get there, then the readjustment process will begin in earnest. Until then, I'm going to hole up in the house and do Sudoku.

Plus, it's too damn sunny and hot in LA. It shouldn't be 20 C in mid-December.

This is the back of a school bus that got caught in the fires in Green Valley Lake. I like the color of the license plate, a pale, dirty yellow, set against the blackened, bubbling paint of the bus.

For the long Thanksgiving weekend, my parents and I went up to our family’s cabin in the San Bernardino Mountains, southeast of LA. Our cabin is in the tiny resort community of Green Valley Lake, in the forest between the larger towns of Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead. Green Valley Lake has an idyllic name, and the place holds a lot of good memories for me. But during September and October, massive wildfires swept through the San Bernardino Mountains, including much of GVL. For a few weeks we didn’t know if our cabin survived, until my aunt went up to check. Fortunately, there was no damage to our cabin or any on our street. Many others, sadly, weren’t as lucky.

The fires essentially burned a ring around the community, and most of the cabins that burned were the ones on the edge of the forest, though a few further in-town also burned. Like all natural disasters, the damage seemed fairly random – some cabins were reduced to ashes, while neighboring places were left unscathed. Walking along our favorite hiking trails through the forest was a surreal and melancholy experience, as nearly all of the forest surrounding the community has been burned. Giant pine trees stand blackened, and the undergrowth is entirely gone. The forest floor is ash and dust.Southern California is in the middle of one of the driest periods in recent history – it has rained four inches in the past year (the “rain year,” in local parlance), and not at all since early spring. The mountains and hills surrounding LA (and down near San Diego) burn nearly every year, and I know fires are a natural part of the ecosystem processes. But the scale and severity of the recent fires has been worse than ever before.I have posted many pictures from the fire damage on my flickr site, linked from this page.

Oddly enough, I find myself writing this from my parent’s living room in Whittier, California. I’ve cut the trip short (way short, considering the original scope) and returned home to the US, home of big cars, friendly people, and an incredible selection of cereal. I swear, just the cereal aisle in my local supermarket is bigger than the biggest store in all of Svishtov. But I digress. I’m home for some personal reasons which I won’t get into on the public forum. All is well, but I just needed to be at home right now with my family. It was a quick decision, but not one I took lightly. Trevor, my former travel buddy, is valiantly continuing on the journey. So, 27 months after the grand Peace Corps adventure began, I find myself starting over again. The readjustment has been going about as well as I could have hoped for (aside from coming down with a bad cold). The process has certainly been smoothed by having a loving and caring family to return to, who feed me well and at least pretend to listen to me when I drone on about life in the strange little corner of the world that is Bulgaria.

The wonderful American writer Bill Bryson once wrote a book about returning to life in the States after many years abroad, entitled “I’m a Stranger Here Myself.” This is how I feel. 27 months is a long time to be gone, and much has changed. I'm having to relearn how to live in my own country, just like I had to learn how to live in Bulgaria.

Social norms, customs, habits, well, I didn’t realize how much I’d changed until I came home. In every store I enter, I have this feeling that the female employees are hitting on me – but of course they’re not, it’s just called customer service, something I’d practically forgotten about in Bulgaria. It’s awkward for me to be in my house wearing shoes, but that’s just how it’s done here. Prices are shockingly high – today I paid $15 for a haircut! And I have to remember that that is a really cheap haircut from Supercuts. My last haircut in Dupnitsa cost me 2 leva, which seems appropriate for 10 minutes work. Most delightfully, I bought a new pair of running shoes, size 14 – a size which was in-stock, and the clerk didn’t even bat an eye bringing out to me. 14 in America is a normal size. In Bulgaria, I was once laughed – yes, laughed – out of a store for requesting a shoe that size.Now I have to make some plans and some decisions about what to do with myself. It’s wonderful being at home with Mom and Dad, but Southern California is not where I want to be. It was 90 degrees today (32 C), and I can’t stand this heat. I need to be somewhere where I won’t sweat in mid-November. Though, we did go to the beach last Monday, no complaints about that.

I'm not going to let two small incidents ruin my impression of this beautiful and complicated country, but we've had our first run-in with anti-Americanism. It started on our trip from Denizli (home of the textile engineers) to the town of Konya. The only reason we were stopping in Konya was to break up our long haul to Cappadocia, and we also found some couchsurfing hosts, so we decided to stop overnight. Konya is known as the most conservative town in Turkey, and is also the home of the "whirling dervishes," or Sufi, as they are properly called. Anyway, here's the two stories.

All the long haul buses in Turkey have one or two attendants, all young men, who bring you bottles of water, tea, coffee, and snacks. It's a lovely system. But on the bus to Konya, the attendant found out we were Americans, and immediately made a little gun with his thumb and finger and pointing to his head, said "Bush," I guess implying that he would like to shoot our President. He then leaned over to some high school kids, asked something, then turned back to us and said "Fuck Bush." The unsettling thing was that he did it with a smile and a laugh, as if we were all in on some big joke. He wasn't terribly menacing, and I never felt threatened, but what a way to meet a guest on your bus. He still brought us our tea, though.

The second incident was a bit more frustrating. In Konya, we were at a cafe having a tea, when another client sat down next to us and said in English, "are you Englishmen?" No, Americans, we replied. He then went on a tirade, again with the "fuck Bush," and after a minute told us to get out of the cafe, getting into the face of my buddy Ryan. Again, it wasn't terribly threatening, the guy was pretty old and frail, but really frustrating. The other people in the cafe didn't come to our rescue.

But those have been only two isolated incidents. In fact, immediately after getting kicked out of the cafe, we found another one down the street with backgammon. We sat down to play, and were soon joined with a dozen high school kids who played with us for an hour, practicing English, laughing and having fun playing us at the Turkish national pastime. It was a great experience, and easily overshadowed the annoyance of the other incidents.

In Konya, as in Denizli and Izmir, we had wonderful couchsurfing hosts - Konya is home to a very large university, and we were hosted by four beautiful communications and journalism students - a wonderful time. One of our hosts was the presenter on the local cable TV nightly news, and we got to go into the studio and watch her run through the day's happenings ("industrial trade show in Konya"), which was a lot of fun. We then went out for dinner and tea with the gang, 7 or 8 friendly, intelligent, and ambitious young students and professionals, and as in all our previous evenings with Turkish people, had fascinating and honest conversations about all the issues facing Turkey.

Two small negative incidents that I've nearly forgotten already, and a million positive ones, the memories of which will last my lifetime.

On the road, and happy. Here's the quick logistical wrap-up. Traveling with Trevor, my friend from the PCBG, and his hometown buddy Ryan, who will be with us for another week. Last Thursday night Trevor and I left Bulgaria for good on the night train to Istanbul, which was promptly 4 hours late, and auspicious start to the journey. But it's all been golden since then. Spent two days in Istanbul, took a 10 hour bus ride to the 3rd biggest city in Turkey, Izmir, which is on the Aegean coast. Spent 3 nights there, then bussed it to Denizli, where I write this, which is a medium sized inland city.

The good stuff: Except for Istanbul, we have been doing what they call "couchsurfing," and it is fantastic. Through a website, we connect with local people who are willing to host travelers for a few days and show them around town to varying degrees. We have hit the jackpot, and have stayed with the most wonderful, caring, and open people I could have imagined. I'm learning so much about the fascinating and complex nation of Turkey, so much more than I would staying in hostels or hotels. I fee like we're experiencing the "real" Turkey, off the well-worn tourist track.

In Izmir, we were hosted by a terribly kind and welcoming woman named Gulchin, who made us tea and toast for breakfast every day, and showed us all around her home, known as the most liberal city in Turkey. Last Monday was the Turkish national holiday, like our 4th of July, and we got to see the parades and orchestras play around the city.

From there we have traveled inland to the university town of Denizli, where we are being hosted by Mustafa, a textile engineer. Last night we hung out with his friends, all textile engineers. All friendly and intelligent, and again, wonderfully welcoming.

Turkey is a country in transition. The people we have met have been open and honest with me about their views, and I've been able to get genuine insight into this country. The east/west divide in Turkey is strong, as is the liberal/conservative, secular/religious, and rural/urban. I need another long blog posting to go into detail about the importance of all these issues, and maybe another two blog postings to discuss the man who looms over everything in modern Turkey, the founder of the country who is simply called Ataturk. He's a revered leader, idolized in a deeply genuine and sincere fashion - a young woman I talked to last night told me she owed "everything in her life, every opportunity, every possibility" she has to Ataturk. But that's another story for another day.

Mustache politics. Well, I'll admit, we three boys are growing mustaches. It seems to be a bit of a national joke that all Turkish men of a certain age (that age being older than 40) sport a thick full mustache. So, in a feeble attempt at integration and irony, we're growing them too. But like the country itself, nothing is simple or straightforward. I learned last night that your style of mustache determines your political views. A curl down around the mouth, like a half-fu man chu, means you are a nationalist. A thin straight across the top lip 'stache, means you are an Islamist, or at least of a more-religious bent. We are treading tricky waters here with the hair on our faces. How fascinatingly interesting.

There is so much to tell, but time is short, and we have a bus to catch to our next destinations, Pamukkale and then the town of Konya. We're pushing towards Capadoccia.

They took back my Bulgarian residency card. They punched a hole in my Peace Corps ID. The doctor poked and prodded and ran tests (I’m healthy!). I emptied and closed my meager Bulgarian bank account. I filled out forms, collected signatures, and gave back my water distiller, my fire extinguisher, and my trusty Bulgarian-English dictionary.

My training job in Dupnitsa is finished, the trainees are now all volunteers. I’ve moved out of my apartment and now have my life packed in my backpack. And now, I’m finished with the “COS” (close of service) procedure. I’m still technically a PCV until Thursday, which is the date I selected a few months ago, but there is a staff retreat starting tomorrow and I needed to finish all my work today. So I did, and after I leave the PC office this evening, I might never return. That will be it. I’m finished, done, completed my service, survived two-plus years in the wilds of Bulgaria.

It’s been an incredible, life changing experience, in ways I don’t think I will fully realize until months or even years from now. They always say that leaving the PC is harder emotionally than entering – and I might just agree with that. When I left for Bulgaria in August of 2005, I knew that I could always return to America and be with my friends and family, and replicate to some extent my previous life. But leaving Bulgaria, I don’t know when I’ll be returning. Hopefully not too far in the future, but this country isn’t easy to get to, and the world is big with much to see. It’s been a teary goodbye.

And so, what’s next? I’ve been answering this question for months now. The answer is that I’ll be traveling for a while, as I’ve written about previously. The meta-theme for the trip is to go from here to Asia, though the details are purposefully vague. There are a lot of places I’d like to see along the way, and all I think I really need is an open mind and an open map. Thursday night my buddy Trevor and I leave Bulgaria on the night train to Istanbul, from where we’ll travel down the Turkish Mediterranean coast and then into the interior of the Anatolian peninsula. Wish me well, and if anyone sends me their mailing address, I promise to send you a postcard from somewhere on the road.

The other news: I’ve decided to switch to a new blog site. There are rumors that yahoo will be closing this service, and I didn’t want all my stories to be erased. So I’ve spent lots of time over the past month migrating to blogspot, which is owned by internet behemoth Google. This will be my last posting here, but I will definitely be blogging from the road. You can read my new stories, and all the old ones, at:

maxwellwoods.blogspot.com

And so this is it. I’m closing the Peace Corps Bulgaria chapter of my life, and beginning the chapter as an “RPCV” – Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. It’s time to move on, time to hit the road. Haide ciao, Bulgaria.

Here's a group photo of the newest Peace Corps Bulgaria volunteers. Aren't they all so happy and good looking?

Last Thursday around noon in Sofia, my 36 trainees took the very official Peace Corps oath, and with that, they formally moved from “trainees” to “volunteers.” And so ends PST – I just have to finish up a final report and give a short overview presentation to the staff on Monday, and then I too will be done with PST.

Swearing-in day is probably the most surreal one in the Peace Corps – following the ceremony and a short reception, the trainees change out of their nice clothes, pick up their luggage, and go to the Sofia central bus station to travel to their permanent sites. Just like that, you go from being surrounded by the warm cushion of the Peace Corps training program, living with a loving (if not overbearing in some cases) host family and going to classes every day with three or four other trainees, to being dumped into your new home, sleeping alone in an unfamiliar apartment, relying on counterparts who may or may not speak English, and trying to sort out your new life. Stressful is too mild a word.

In a way I didn’t expect, I feel like a proud father watching his children go off into the big wide world of Peace Corps Bulgaria (or at least I assume it’s something like what I’m feeling). I miss them already.

So what is Peace Corps “technical training” really like? What have the trainees been doing the past 11 weeks, aside from learning Bulgarian language? Well, they’ve been designing and implementing a small community development project. Each of our five satellite sites had to come up with an idea for a project – preferably, they had to use an idea generated by the community – and then adapt that idea to the very short time frame of PST and the Peace Corps provided budget of 100 leva (about $70). As you’d expect from Peace Corps volunteers, we’ve had some very creative and hopefully sustainable projects. Despite their small size and the short time frame, I think some of the projects will genuinely provide lasting benefits for the communities.

During the last few days our trainees have been busy implementing their projects, as Thursday is the last day of training. My counterpart Toni and myself have visited some of the sites to observe and trainees at work. Last Friday one of the groups gave a lesson to local children on environmentalism, and then created markers for a local hiking trail. The kids painted pictures on pieces of wood, and then posted the signs along the trail, imploring hikers to pick up their trash and help prevent forest fires. Last night I attended an event in another community, where the trainees had started a tourism-development campaign to promote the village and hopefully create a sustainable revenue stream by selling t-shirts and postcards to visitors. Another training group worked with their local police department to create a pocket Bulgarian/English phrase book that will help the policemen and other community members assist travelers who do not speak Bulgarian.

All of these small projects were accomplished in only a few weeks for less than $75, and have the potential to make a lasting positive impact on the communities after the trainees have finished PST and moved to their permanent sites. That’s the Peace Corps in action.

In the picture above trainees Kellen and Steve show off the t-shirts they made for their community to produce and sell. It says "Az [heart] Boboshevo," or I love Boboshevo (Boboshevo being the name of their host community).

These striking teachers paraded by the cafe where I was sitting in Sofia last week, carrying the Bulgarian and European Union flags.

One month after the supposed start of the school year (school here always starts on the 15th of September, even though that day fell on a Saturday this year, oddly), classes have yet to begin. But not everywhere. Some schools are open and functioning normally. Some are partially teaching. Some are closed. Some are open but not teaching. What am I talking about? There is a teachers strike in Bulgaria, but no one really understands what exactly is happening. Here’s what I’ve pieced together through various sources.

The majority of teachers in Bulgaria from all grade levels are striking for higher wages. Some schools, however, are not striking at all, and no one can tell me why. At the schools that are striking, some are being picketed and no students are being taught, period. Some, however, are having a “sit down in-class” strike, meaning the teachers are showing up to school as they normally would, but then just sitting at their desks without saying a word.

Then of course there are the Peace Corps volunteer English teachers – some of whom are teaching, some of whom are not. Officially, the Peace Corps takes no stance on the strike, and teachers are, I believe, expected to teach as they normally would. So bizarrely, in some cases, students are expected to show up for their English classes but have no other classes during the day. Not surprisingly, few students bother to show up for English class, leaving many PCVs with empty classrooms. Then there are other volunteers who have been instructed by their principals to not teach at all, which must make for a very boring life for the poor volunteers.

The striking teachers are demanding a 100% raise. The education system here is run by the national government, not local, so striking teachers have been coming into Sofia to march and picket. Bulgarian teachers are paid a pittance by Western standards – average pay is around $150-$200 per month (and that high end only after 20 years experience), which is not enough to live on even in this cheap country. But still, to demand a 100% raise at one step is asking a lot. The Prime Minister was quoted as saying recently something along the lines of, “do they think we have a giant vault of money to tap?”

One of the biggest challenges the European Union faces in Bulgaria is the disparity in standard of living across member states. It is exceedingly difficult for a Bulgarian teacher to look across the continent and see, for example, a Dutch or German teacher making perhaps 3,000 Euro a month (more than 20 times what a Bulgarian would make) – and yet officially, on paper, all are members of this same unwieldy association, the EU.

In the abstract and rarefied world of Brussels, the Bulgarians have the same voting power in European affairs (the rich don’t get more votes, obviously), have the same rights, and are subject to the same laws. Yet at a very real, tangible, personal level, the standard of living and quality of life is vastly divergent between the poor East and the rich West.

I took the picture above in Sofia last week. I was sitting at a sidewalk café, and down the street came this parade of striking teachers.

On August 14, 2005, 50 soon-to-be Peace Corps volunteers got on a plane in Washington DC, and landed a day later in Bulgaria. This group, my group, has slowly dwindled as people dropped out, returned home for various reasons, and finally now are finishing up service and traveling or reentering American life. I'm amongst the very last to leave from the "B18s," and it's been sad watching friends depart not knowing if or when we will see each other again.

In a strange way, the Peace Corps forces friendship upon the cohort of volunteers in a group. "These will be your friends for the next two years," is the implicit message. Obviously, volunteers have much in common, and friendship and camaraderie comes easily. I've bonded with my fellow volunteers in a way I haven't done with a group of friends since my college days. We can genuinely and sincerely relate to each other, empathize, sympathize, and understand each other. Our individual experiences are unique, but the travails, the challenges, and the success that arise from Peace Corps service and life in Bulgaria are common to us all. We share each other's high moments, and commiserate during the low points, and through it all become a very tight knit community. Then at the end, we scatter to our respective homes across America and the world, and try to hold on to the friendships through time and distance. But isn’t this always the case in life?

Communication technology certainly makes it easier to maintain relationships, at least to a certain degree, but I also know that time and distance strain and bend those ties despite the best efforts of Facebook and Instant Messaging. The experiences I’ve undergone through the past two years are not replicable, and the only people who can truly understand this time in my life are my fellow volunteers who have lived the PC Bulgaria life at the same time. There’s immense value in that, and it’s not something I ever want to lose.

The picture above is of myself and fellow PCV friend Boudreaux.

Originally posted October 7, 2007 on my other blog, http://360.yahoo.com/maxwell_woods

Bulgarian youth culture revolves around one word - coolness. It is the single most important thing for a young Bulgarian to be cool, to appear cool, to act cool (according to local standards of "cool," of course). This plays out in many ways, some of them positive, some less so, some that are just boring. For example - almost never do I see young Bulgarians getting in fights or acting agressively towards anyone. To be agressive is very uncool. So they sit back, they drink and smoke, they flirt, but they never do it agressively or "in your face." Compare this to the American frat boy, or the college kid on spring break, or the drunk British soccer fan, and the laid-back cool Bulgarian is a very good thing.

In my opinion, it also leads to Bulgarian youth being very, um, boring. Here's my example. The PC trainees had to give presentations last week on Bulgarian culture. The girls above did popular music and dance - they started with the traditional Bulgarian dancing called "horo," (where everyone holds hands and does the hokey-pokey in a big circle), and moving on to a silly and hilarious 1980's dance-off, just having fun. The presentations were done in front of all the trainees, staff, and some other volunteers, maybe 70 people in all. This is something that would NEVER EVER EVER be done by young Bulgarians, because being silly in public is decidedly uncool. Laughing, being goofy, being creative, self-deprecating, having fun like this, would be the nadir of coolness for the overly serious young Bulgarian. How dull.

As you can imagine, the American audience loved the dancing, whooping and laughing the entire time. The Bulgarians (at least, those who weren't used to the outlandishness of Americans) just rolled their eyes. I could almost hear their embarrasement.

Originally posted October 7, 2007 on my other blog, http://360.yahoo.com/maxwell_woods

The barter system is alive and well in Bulgaria. Last week I returned from a run, and before I could get into my apartment my neighbor (and landlord, owner of the building I live in) asked me if I could help him with something. We were tasked with moving a giant wooden wine cask from the backyard into the basement, going through a window. The cask was empty, but held nearly 500 liters - that's a lot of wine. We managed to roll the barrel down into the basement, and as gratitude, my neighbor gave me these grapes, the jar of super-sugary preserved apricots, and that mason jar full of rakia (BG moonshine).

My neighbors are an interesting family - they just returned to Bulgaria after living for five years in Louisiana, of all places. The husband, with whom I helped move the cask, told me that these are the things he missed most about life in Bulgaria - making wine and rakia from grapes he grew himself, eating preserves canned by his wife from their own fruit. None of that was possible in Louisiana, he lamented. I'm sure there are other reasons why they returned, fruit doesn't seem like enough of a reason to come back to Bulgaria if you have the Golden Ticket to America (a work visa!), but at least on this night, my neighbors were satisfied with life in their homeland. Or maybe it was just the homemade booze.

Originally posted October 3, 2007 on my other blog, http://360.yahoo.com/maxwell_woods

In yesterday’s NYT, David Brooks (“The Democrats’ favorite Republican columnist”) wrote an interesting op-ed piece on the 50th anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” about how the book relates to today’s American youth culture. As Brooks describes it, when the book was originally released it was met with reviews praising it as a “burst of rollicking, joyous American energy,” that the book“ rejected the pessimism and cynicism of the Lost Generation…the heroes of the book savored everything, enjoyed everything, took pleasure in everything.

Now, 50 years on, literary critics are returning to the book with a much different mindset. Brooks quotes to reviewers who say that “above all else, the story is about loss,” and “it’s a book about death and the search for something to hold on to – the famous search for ‘IT,’ a truth larger than the self, which, of course, is never to be found.”

In Brooks’ analysis, he writes:

“If Sal Paradise were alive today, he’d be a product of the new rules. He’d be a grad student with an interest in power yoga, on the road to the M.L.A. convention with a documentary about a politically engaged Manitoban dance troupe that he hopes will win a MacArthur grant. He’d be driving a Prius, going a conscientious 55, wearing a seat belt and calling Mom from the Comfort Inns.

The only thing we know for sure is that this ethos won’t last. Someday some hypermanic kid will produce a moronically maxed-out adventure odyssey that will spark the overdue rebellion among all the over-pressured SAT grinds, and us grumpy midlife critics will get to witness a new Kerouac, and the greatest pent-up young-life crisis in the history of the world.”

What Brooks might not realize, though, is that this movement is already here, but in a different form, and he just needs to look in the right places. Join the Peace Corps, or AmeriCorps, or spend time on a college campus, or with young artists or technologists, or even just talk to the backpackers in any hostel across the world, and you’ll meet a generation of youth who still believe in the relevance, and really, the imperative, of undertaking that Search for Truth. And if we end up back in the US, driving a hybrid and hanging out with Manitoban dance troupes, so what? What’s wrong with striving for cultural consciousness, environmental sustainability, maintaining family ties, while leveraging information technology and connectivity? I believe that life today is richer and fuller than ever before, with more opportunity, more possibility, and yet more awareness – and this is something to be celebrated, not denigrated. If Sal Paradise were alive today, he’d have a PhD in anthropology, and would have documented the last remaining traditional dances, languages, and cultures of the Northern Plains Indians. And that, I think, is the spirit of the new American generation. Something for the world, and something for ourselves – it’s a very cool combination. The Search is alive and well today, and Kerouac would be proud of this generation.

Originally posted October 3, 2007 on my other blog, http://360.yahoo.com/maxwell_woods

My new job has me in the unusual position of being technically a PCV, but also PC staff – and the difference between the two has significance. Being “staff,” I am subject to a different set of rules, mainly that I cannot drink alcohol with the trainees or, as they say in the jargon, “fraternize” with them either. Of course, I also get paid like the volunteers, or more accurately speaking, I don’t get paid.

The upside is that I frequenly get to sit in on staff meetings, and have an inside glimpse into the inner operations of the Peace Corps Bulgaria. I also often get to travel around in the PC vehicles (giant SUVs with diplomatic license plates), and last weekend, I got to attend the PST team retreat. The retreat was in a hotel in the middle of nowhere 10 km or so from the Greek border, which to get to we had to travel three hours over bad roads.

Bulgaria seems to have a penchant for placing hotels in the middle of nowhere, miles outside of the nearest town. I don’t think I can blame this on the communists, because Bulgarians genuinely seem to enjoy going to these places. All meals are provided by the hotel, meaning there is no food autonomy, so you're stuck eating mediocre Bulgarian food (also, the staff can be as mean and surly as they want because there is no other option). There are sometimes short trails through the forests and hills, but they generally don’t go very far. To a Bulgarian, sitting at a table on the hotel patio doing nothing but drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes for hours at a time is a relaxing and enjoyable way to spend a few days. It drives me crazy.

The only redeeming thing about these hotels is that they are generally in quite scenic locations. At the one last weekend, there was a small creek running next to the hotel spanned by this rickety old suspension bridge pictured above. The bridge was like something out of an Indiana Jones movie – it appeared on the verge of collapse, and I expected to step through a slat and have to hang on for my life, while being attacked by crazy local tribes shooting arrows and throwing spears. Well, except that the bridge was only 15 feet or so off the ground. I could have jumped off without so much as a scratch. Despite what I’d sometimes like to believe, I guess my life really isn’t very similar to that of Dr. Jones.

Originally posted September 28, 2007 on my other blog, http://360.yahoo.com/maxwell_woods

Every day this week I have been subjected to a relentless auditory onslaught of traditional patriotic Bulgarian songs. One CD, looping over and over, from when I get to the office to when I go home at night. If I have to hear “My Love, My Bulgaria” one more time, I’ll scream. Imagine listening to “America the Beautiful,” “God Bless America,” or heaven forbid, “Yankee Doodle Dandy” half a dozen times a day. Insanity would come quickly.

During the communist era, the government installed a PA system of large speakers placed around the center of most Bulgarian cities and towns. I have been told that they were generally used for traditional propaganda – songs extolling the virtue of the state and the proletariat, party messages, announcements and the like. They were also supposedly in place as a warning system for, you know, when the Western Capitalist Pigs attacked the Socialist Workers Paradise of Bulgaria.

I noticed the speaker system in Svishtov, but never heard them used, and I assume they were broken. Here in Dupnitsa, for the first two months I was here, the speakers have been used occasionally – on September 6th, Bulgaria’s national holiday, for example, or when the Bulgarian nurses were freed from Libya (see postings from sometime in August). For reasons unknown, they have been blaring music from the speakers all this week. My office sits on the center square of town, directly above one of these speakers. Thank god it’s Friday, and I won’t be in the office the next two days.

For more than two years I’ve been in Bulgaria, and it still frequently feels like the bizarro world. Up is down, in is out, black is white.

Originally posted September 25, 2007 on my other blog, http://360.yahoo.com/maxwell_woods

Exactly one month from today, on October 25th, I will formally end my Peace Corps service. This training job ends October 18th, when the trainees are sworn-in as official volunteers, and then have one more week to finish up final reports, take care of PC paperwork, and pack my bags.

It will have been nearly 27 months since my arrival in Bulgaria in August of 2005. On one level, it’s hard to really fathom that my time has nearly concluded…and on another level, I’m good and ready to be finished. It’s been a long two years (two years plus!), and it’s time to move on to the next phase of my life.

I took the picture above during last weekend’s hiking trip, and I think it’s a good metaphor for finishing my service. Ok, so it’s a pretty blatant and obvious metaphor, but still. I like the picture.

Originally posted September 25, 2007 on my other blog, http://360.yahoo.com/maxwell_woods

Last weekend I co-led a hiking trip for trainees and some current volunteers into the beautiful Rila Mountains, to an area called the Seven Lakes. It was stunningly beautiful, and we had perfect weather – some clouds and fog on Saturday, but that only made for prettier pictures, and Sunday was sunny and cloudless skies. The Seven Lakes are, as you’d assume, a series of shallow high altitude alpine lakes all within a few kilometers of each other, way above the tree line. As on my previous hiking expeditions, we stayed at a “hija,” which is like a big hostel up in the mountains.

The group was large – 50 people, including nearly all the trainees, 10 or so current volunteers, and a few guests and friends. Not exactly the solitary wilderness experiences, but that wasn’t the point of the expedition. Instead, it was a chance for the trainees to experience some of Bulgaria’s natural beauty, to meet a few current PCVs, and to have a relaxing weekend in the mountains. Thankfully, we only had one slightly twisted ankle, and the trainee was able to get down the mountain just fine.

The trip was probably the last time I will get to hike in Bulgaria’s mountains, as my time here is rapidly coming to an end. It was a fitting way to end, as two years ago during my pre-service training I did the exact same hike (it was snowing then!). This time, I led the group. There’s a nice symmetry in that.

I have uploaded lots of pictures from the trip to my flickr account, at www.flickr.com/photos/maxwellwoods

Originally posted September 25, 2007 on my other blog, http://360.yahoo.com/maxwell_woods

Last weekend I led a group of 50 people (the trainees and various currently-serving PCVs) on an overnight hike into the local Rila Mountains, to a place called the Seven Lakes.

And yes, that's a BG track-suit jacket I'm wearing. Integration!

Originally posted September 18, 2007 on my other blog, http://360.yahoo.com/maxwell_woods

The physical scars of communism are visible across Eastern Europe, Bulgaria being no exception. The most readily apparent are the hulking concrete apartment blocks that litter every town in this country with more than, say, 2,000 people. The blocks that ring the major cities are truly astounding in size, some of the ones in Sofia can rise to 20 stories with more than a dozen vertical rows of apartments - that's 240 individual units, and if four people live in each one, that would mean nearly 1,000 people in a single residential building. The majority of Bulgarians live in these buildings, as do nearly all Peace Corps volunteers (as I did in Svishtov).

In the bigger and more prosperous cities, some blocks closer towards the city center are being renovated into fairly decent looking facilities. A good coat of paint can go a long ways to restoring respectability. The vast majority of the buildings, unfortunately, appear to be on the verge of collapse. The invisible scars of communism (existing in the minds of the people) are slowly being cleaned up, and everyone hopes that within a generation the horrors of the past will be reconciled...but these physical reminders will stand for years to come.

I took this picture on the outskirts of Dupnitsa, and to me, it's the classic dichotomy of the Bulgarian landscape - beautiful mountains juxtaposed against unsightly mounds of concrete, housing thousands of people, and a vacant junk-strewn field in the foreground.