Last Friday we had an English teaching/dance class in Pudriya for whoever wanted to come. A lot more people came than I had expected—at least 25 kids and a couple adults were crammed into our training room. Right away we ran into some difficulties: people being too embarrassed to participate, not being able to hear each other, and not having clear roles for the teaching. I’m not sure anyone learned English, but we did successfully teach the electric slide! It was a great exercise because as we debriefed, we took away a lot of strategies for problems that we had not anticipated.
The next morning (Saturday) we were blessed with sunny weather for our “clean-up the park” project. We sanded, picked up trash, cut the grass/weeded, and painted the playground equipment. We had a lot of kids helping out and they really took ownership of the painting. They added some personal touches by mixing colors and using “creative” painting techniques! The finished product is great!

Sunday, the 4th of July, we hosted a party in the town center. We had a rough start. At least 50 people had gathered around and were waiting to try our American food (chili, cheddar cheese, potato chips, pasta salad, peach cobbler, and chocolate chip cookies). We were embarrassingly late to start, we had no plates, and only 20 forks! But, as with all of our projects, despite our lack of planning and our mistakes, everything came together in the end. Swain gave a little explanation about the 4th of July to start us off. We served food in plastic cups and people brought us more silverware. It became a party when we started the music! We started with the electric slide, but people really got involved when we switched to Horo music (the Bulgarian dancing). Everyone joined the circle! At the end of the night we also had an impressive fireworks display. We left the town center around 10pm and headed to Swain’s house where the party continued with Kucheck dancing in his kitchen. We had 15 people crammed into a very small (and hot) space dancing as wildly as possible! Self-consciousness and fear of dancing is just not an option here! Best 4th of July I’ve ever experienced! :)
So, after three intense days of watching our projects take shape, we now have less than three weeks of training left. All that’s left is our final language proficiency exam and swearing in to become actual Peace Corps volunteers.