Village Life

I'll try to let pictures do most of the talking for this post. I don't have regular access to the internet, so I'm sorry I haven't been able to stay in touch very well :(

This is a picture of some people who came to sing and greet us on our first day of language class!

Language training is sink or swim. We really are in a place where no English is spoken so we get by with the tiny bit of Bulgaring we've learned so far, hand gestures, and lots of smiles!



This is a picture of Zoya and Vitko, my host parents sitting at our front gate. They are extremely kind and hospitable (which also means they try to make me eat a lot of food at every meal)! The house is typical for the area--it has a large garden, a courtyard where we eat and cook when the weather is good, an outhouse for the toilet, and an all-purpose living room/kitchen/bedroom where we can sit when it's too cold to be outside. I have my own room and a shower to use as well. Zoya makes almost all of our meals with ingredients straight from the garden. Yesterday we spent an hour together chopping onions and dill that had just been harvested.

The whole area around Pudriya is incredibly beautiful. Here is the river that runs next to the village.

Three local boys took Ryan and me on a hike up a nearby hill...















And here's a view of the entire town!

Adjusting to life here has been pretty smooth so far. I'm motivated to work hard on the language, even though it seems like I have to hear everything 100 times before I finally get it. I also really enjoy hanging out with the kids. They seem to like us too, at least as a novelty! We play soccer, volleyball, and uno for hours! We have 3-4 hours of language class each day and usually other meetings/training as well. At the end of our time here we will need to complete a project as a team to help prepare us for our permanent site. Thanks to all who have taken time to write--I love hearing from you, even though I'm not able to repond much.

Orientation

Orientation has flown by! Everything went smoothly with arrival in Bulgaria. The Peace Corps is really efficient at training and I've been very impressed will all of the staff. We have been staying at a resort in the mountains since Wednesday. Bulgaria is incredibly beautiful!!! I got my site placement yesterday and I'm so happy about how it worked out...I'm in a village of 700 people called Pudria that is about 20 km from Vratsa. Our language trainer's name is Momchil and he's the one that I've had for all of our sessions here at orientation. He's young, very enthusiastic, and it's his first time to work for the peace corps. I think that he is going to be really great about spending time with us and he will definitely give his best. And it's fun to be someone's first group. There are 4 other Peace Corps volunteers who will be in the same village and we have a solid group! I travel to my training site today and get to meet my host family for the first time! I'm nervous, but also really excited.

California and Staging

California was amazing! Lots of driving, but no accidents or car trouble. I got to eat a lot of interesting food (Ethopian, Korean BBQ, Mexican food on Cinco de Mayo, and In and Out burgers with animal style fries...yum!). Here's our group (minus Kelty and Nathan)

We went to the Getty, did some hiking in San Diego, and the guys tried surfing! One of my favorite moments of the trip was having coffee with Kayla one morning in LA. We sat with a 72 year old Hungarian man who had been in the film industry for a long time. He shared stories about celebrities and talked with us about art, literature, and music. He described a local library as a "20 course meal for the soul." Beautiful.

I'm in St. Louis tonight and I leave tomorrow for staging in Philadelphia. This part of the trip doesn't worry me because I will just be part of a flock of people, going through the training and absorbing as much as I can. I will be meeting a lot of new people all at once (80 new volunteers all going to Bulgaria!), but I imagine they all have interesting stories so I look forward to getting to know them.