LG's Excellent PC Adventure

While it's difficult to get back to something you haven't really begun, the new year has started off well. After spending a typical week of searching the internet for stories about the sports teams I follow, sending countless emails to all and sundry, and trying to dream up creative ways to kill time, I was sent to Sofia on business! Last Friday I was asked to go up to Sofia to plunder and pillage the PC Library and the American Center reference library for "reference books". The American Center is in the new American Embassy compound which is completely across the city from the PC office. I have now become even more expert at getting around in the big city. Unfortunately, most of the reference type materials that we can use here at the Agency are no longer printed. So much information is available online, that all I could gather for us were one copy of last year's almanac and a list of relevant url's. The Embassy is every bit as accessible and welcoming as the vault at Fort Knox. While it's completely understandable in this day and age, it is a daunting experience to gain access to the premises. Long gone are the days when you could walk up, ring a bell, flash your American passport and ask somebody for a list of cheap hotels. The Marines are out in force and they aren't wearing dress blues anymore! The American Center has a very handsome new facility in the Embassy building but it doesn't have any books on the shelves or computers on the desks. I suppose it doesn't really matter because it's practically impossible to get in anyway. Even after visiting them, I'm still not certain what purpose they serve. The PC office has a very nice small library for the volunteers to use. Reference books are signed out just like in any other library but they also have a room full of books that volunteers can just take. These are books that have been donated by volunteers for volunteers. The system works pretty well, after you've read your paperback books, you drop them off at the PC library and you're welcome to take home anything that interests you. On your next trip to Sofia, you just swap them out again. For me, a trip to Sofia usually means about an 18 hour day including the seven or so hours on the bus. So for my 18 hours on Friday I proudly produced one 2004 American Almanac and one dog-eared copy of a David Baldacci paperback.

I met with my program manager when I was in Sofia to express my concern that I wasn't being very useful to my organization. He is coming to SZ next week to see if he can give me any assistance in integrating more quickly into the flow of the actual work here. It occurred to me that, while I spoke to him about it, I never have sat down with Darina and Petya and talked to them about my concerns. So, Monday I sat down with them and told them that I didn't feel as though I was pulling my weight. They are always extremely busy and I am now an expert on surfing the internet! They explained to me that they were told that the volunteers would need three months to "acclimate" themselves to their new surroundings and they shouldn't ask too much of us prior to that time. They pointed out that, technically, my three months wouldn't be up until Jan 22. However, they were willing to begin early if I was. So, we began to review all the work I'd done and no one had looked at and now I seem to have a couple of real projects to get involved in. I've had a couple of other false starts so I'm waiting to see what happens before I begin to celebrate, but it does look promising.

We've been blessed with a relatively mild winter so far this year. That's fortunate because my apartment, like 90% of the other dwellings in Bulgaria, doesn't have any form of central heat. I use a portable radiator that I roll from room to room to heat up one area at a time. Volunteers in small towns tend to use wood burning stoves, but in the city we use small radiators. The practice is to heat one room and just live in it. We are asked to be conservative in our use of utilities so my plan to keep my apartment hot enough to be picked up by thermal imagers from space went down the drain. All in all though, I'm comfortable enough.

Next week, on Thursday and Friday, the PC will send a language instructor to SZ to give four or five of us a two day refresher course. Then in February, our group will spend a week in Bankya (a town just west of Sofia) in a meeting to improve our Project Design and Management skills. As a part of that week, we'll be tested again on our language skills. Off and on over the next two years we'll be given the LPI test and we'll receive a certificate after our final shot just before we leave.

So, the new year is off and rolling and I intend to roll right along with it. My only resolutions are to improve my language skills and to meet more Bulgarians. That shouldn't be difficult, they are all over the place!