LG's Excellent PC Adventure

This will have to be brief, but I'm in Bulgaria and have been sent off to live with a Homestay family for the next couple of months. My family is Veneta & Stoil and they're a retired couple who live in a farm town in the valley. I won't be able to post pictures for a while yet, but I'm taking them and I'll get them online asap. I don't have much time now but I wanted to update a little bit. This is an amazing experience!! We began with a week in Strelcha with some orientation and a crash course in the language. They fed us magnificently and we were very comfortable in an older hotel/retreat. Some of us went for hikes into the mountains while others chose to locate the local bars and establish roots in the community. Our group (BG16) consists of 59 hardy souls of whom 29 are men and about 10 are in my age group. So far the group is intact, no one has quit early. We're all in good health and high spirits. On Friday Aug. 13th we were given brief introductions to our Host families and turned over to them. We've been split into small groups of four or five volunteers per town and scattered into villages surrounding Pazardjik. I can't name any of the people I'm with for security reasons but they are all very nice. I haven't seen them since we got to town but I'll find them sooner or later, it's a very small town. I have a floor of my own in the house here in Saedinenie and a color tv with cable. The phone situation is still something of a mystery to me, but I'll work on it next week. We have a pig in the backyard and I'm trying not to become too attached to him because the poor fellow is destined for a bad end I'm afraid. There's a grape arbor in the courtyard with a table and chairs and I find it very comfortable to take my morning coffee there, thank you very much. Language training is coming down the track like a Euro fast train. My Host Mom Veneta takes her mission to heart to have me speaking fluently within a week or so. She begins every sentence by shouting at me, "LARI" and then teaches me all about whatever is happening. It's great!! They are warm and generous people who've taken me in and made me feel like family. As you might imagine Veneta keeps the house spotlessly clean so I'm the dirtiest thing in it. I have to work on my picking things up skills. My Bulgarian seems to work just fine when I ask for food but not so well when I explain that I really can't eat another bite. "Da, da, da" and then another plate is filled and shoved in front of me. Last night Stoil poured some scotch from a bottle he keeps under the table into our glasses. Okay, a toast. Here I know what to do, clink glasses, maintain eye contact, shout "Nazdravay!!" and down the hatch. On the way 'down the hatch' I realized that it wasn't actually scotch after all. Imagine my surprise. Eventually, I'm told, they revived me. Actually, I'm not certain what it is that I drank. I know it's made right there in our very own shed, next to the pig and that Stoil keeps the cap on the bottle to preserve the safety of the paint in the room. Isn't it funny that he keeps it in a scotch bottle, the little old rascal?

I have to register with the police in Plovdiv on Monday and then I'll come back to my town to begin formal training on Tuesday. Our language trainer is a young woman who speaks several languages and has a masters degree in language teaching. Between her and Veneta & Stoil I'll do just fine. I've been told that I'll probably end up being assigned to a government business center to help small businesses. I mentioned to the local PC staff that it sounded like our SCORE (service corps of retired execs) and they just laughed. "We haven't had a free market long enough for us to have any retired execs," they explained. So, here I am, the first bona fide retired exec in town. I wonder if it gives them any sense of confidence that I can't even find the toilet by myself?