Site Announcement!

We are officially half way through training and today we received our long-anticipated permanent site information! I found out that I am headed to the Rhodope Mountains in the Devin Municipality (which is pretty close to the Greek border).My site is a Muslim Turkish community of around 1,000 people and I will be working for the cultural center. For the next two days we are in Vratsa getting to know our counterparts (the people who are planning to work closely with us at our sites). After that, we will have three days of visiting our permanent sites! My counterpart is very outgoing and relaxed. He doesn't speak English, so we spoke primarily in Bulgarian and threw in a few Turkish phrases occasionally. He is excited to help me work on my Turkish, but since I've been studying only Bulgarian it's hard for me to switch gears. There is a peace corps volunteer currently serving in this community and she'll be there until October (but unfortunately I won't get to meet her this weekend because she's using some vacation time).

The needs expressed by this community are not overly specific. They include organizing cultural events, working with youth, beautification of the village, and developing tourism opportunities (e.g., helping create a village web site, networking with other villages, and opening guest-houses). So far, this all seems to be a good fit for me. I think I'll be able to write more about my first impressions and feelings after I've actually visited the site.