LG's Excellent PC Adventure

All Good Things...

2006-08-29T10:14:00.000-07:00

It's been two years since I joined the Peace Corps and began serving as a Community and Organizational Development volunteer in Stara Zagora. I've just completed all my COS paperwork during a three day marathon in Sofia and have just one more half-day scheduled at the office on September 15th to tidy up my finances, hand in my identification cards and shake hands with friends I may not see again. Peace Corps took this most recent opportunity to poke, probe and prod me during my final exit medical exam. I received a dental check-up complete with tooth cleaning and an eye exam complete with a new pair of spectacles. I participated in an 'exit' interview with the Assistant Country Director and rode the bus back to Stara Zagora.

My time in country is now measured in days and my plans are centered on getting around to seeing all the people to whom I want to say 'good-bye'. This coming weekend I'll go to Saedinenie on Saturday and stay for the night. I'm bringing Veneta a Bulgarian-English dictionary so we can write letters back and forth. Plans are in the works for the girls from the film club to get together for a night of roasting marshmallows and making s'mores and I'll leave one of the two remaining video cameras with them. My sitemates in Stara Zagora and I will see each other off and on until I leave and have a final beer at Drums the night before I slink out of town. Brian and Kate and Sara will come to Sofia on my last night in the country and we'll have dinner together. Then, the next day, I'll catch a flight back to the States and my "excellent PC adventure" will officially have come to an end.

I'll return to a place where appliances and elevators tend to be unremarkable things that function as they are meant to and rarely develop personalities of their own. I'll drive or fly everywhere I want to go rather than catching an express bus or the 'fast' train. I'll eat fruits and vegetables that look physically perfect and taste like paper and buy eggs in cartons in the supermarket instead of from my 'egg guy' in the pazar. On the other hand, I won't have to put up an umbrella when I use the toilet and I won't have to choose which room to heat during the winter. I'll be home in time for the baseball playoffs and the football season.

I've sent in a couple of applications to the Peace Corps for jobs here and there. While I'm waiting to hear back from them, I'm preparing for the Foreign Service Oral Assessment. I'm scheduled to take it on October 16th in Chicago and I have a long way to go to get ready. I also plan to wander a little and meander a bit here and there, visiting old friends and fellow returned volunteers. Mooching off friends and sleeping on couches could become a new way of life for me. The Peace Corps' third goal is to introduce people back in America to the culture and ways of your host country. This is accomplished by giving talks in schools and other organizations and by just sitting around telling your stories to friends and family. I'll try to bring some domashna rakiya home with me to help the story-telling along.

So, that's it. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in the Peace Corps and my time in Bulgaria. I hope I've accomplished something useful for the people with whom I work, but I know that I've received a great deal from them. I'll leave here on September 16th and it won't be very long before the countdown begins until I can return to Bulgaria for a proper Na Ghosti.

So long, Bulgaria. Ciao za cega.

Countdown

2006-08-03T00:04:00.000-07:00

Snake Eagle

Sometimes it really doesn't pay to be a 'creature of habit'. When I first arrived in Stara Zagora, I needed to find all the usual things, a dry cleaner, the grocery store, a pizza place, a barbershop and so on. With a little help from my colleagues I soon located all the shops and services that allow you to carry on in a new city. The "freeziyorkata" or hair stylist I've been going to for two years has her shop on a side street about five blocks from my apartment building. She is a dour woman of indeterminate age, but probably older than rocks, who cavalierly runs an electric clipper around my head just above the ears, chops away at the top with a pair of scissors, whacks my neck two or three times with an old towel and says, "zapovyaditay", there it is. When she's done my hair is shorter and, because I will never be a viable candidate for modelling in GQ anyway, I pay her and leave without requesting that she even out the rough spots or tidy up my sideburns. Although my level of satisfaction is low I keep going there because she knows me and the whole experience is familiar and therefore comfortable.

For the first time in two years, I went to get my hair cut and the shop was closed. She's old, she's grouchy and she doesn't cut hair very well, but she's always there. I just stood at the door and stared into the darkened shop. I knocked in case she was in the back and had hung the "Closed" sign in the window just to discourage less determined customers. Eventually, however, I had to accept the fact that she was indeed closed for the day and I wouldn't be getting my hair cut. As I walked the five blocks back to my apartment I passed two or three other hair salons. Through each doorway I could see people getting their hair cut and I wished that my freeziyorkata had chosen that day to work. A block away from my building I passed by a modern well-lit clean shop and noticed that the two women in it were sitting watching tv. Because I am the wildly impulsive adventurer that I am, I walked in and asked for a haircut.

A very attractive young woman sat me down and actually asked me how I'd like it cut. She then took me to a sink, washed my hair, gave me a fifteen minute scalp massage and a haircut that was exactly like we'd discussed. She was pleasant and talked to me the whole time, once even laughing at a joke she was telling. Including her tip, it came to exactly one lev more than the other place. My time here is running out but I'm scheduling at least two more haircuts before I go!

As many of you are aware, I'm not 'handy'. That is to say, I cannot repair things that break around the house. I cannot fix electrical stuff, plumbing stuff or appliances. Most of my friends and every Bulgarian over the age of five can repair almost anything that breaks, but I cannot. I firmly believe that this is why God created landlords. It's Hristo's apartment and it's his responsibility to ensure that it remains in working condition. I pay rent, he is obliged to provide me with a rentable premises. Lately, I haven't felt like running down to ask Hristo to repair every little thing that's broken so many little things are no longer in tip top shape. For example, the toilet in the small bathroom has two or three leaks from the tank and the ceiling. I once tried to repair the floating arm thing in the tank myself, but ended up snapping it off and creating a waterfall that required shutting off all water to our half of the eighth floor. Now I'm not allowed to attempt further repairs to this particular toilet. The tank is located up by the ceiling about ten feet above the toilet. When you're sitting on the john, it feels like it's raining. My solution has been to hang a small umbrella by the toilet which guests are welcome to use.

The plastic faucets on all three sinks are also slowly disintegrating. Through a program of swapping, I have managed to keep the hot and cold faucets on the kitchen sink and in my main bathroom functioning. I only have five weeks remaining and my goal was to make it to the end without having to ask Hristo to come up and fix anything for me before I depart. Then the cold water faucet in my bathroom began to spin around like a top without actually turning the water on or off. I discovered that if I put a bit of pressure on it, it would engage enough to give me cold water and I could continue to brush my teeth or keep from being scalded by the hot water. I can live with such hardships because I'm a PCV. Unfortunately, over time the amount of pressure required to activate the cold water faucet increased slowly but insidiously until I was bracing against the wall opposite the sink with my feet to get a bit of cold water. It began to appear as though I'd have to call Hristo one last time. Before doing so, however, I decided to take a shot at fixing the thing myself in spite of my track record of thoroughly destroying anything I've ever tried to repair.

I broke out my Leatherman tool which had heretofore only been used to clip the ends from my cigars and began to bang on the front of the faucet with the heavy pliers. Using a pair of pliers like a hammer seemed like a good idea at the time. While I was whacking away at the recalcitrant cold water tap, I would try to spin it periodically to see if it had decided to be fixed yet. I noticed during one such trial period that a piece of chrome on the very front seemed to be coming loose. I managed to stick the Leatherman beer-can-opener tool under the edge of this loose bit and pried it away from the faucet. There, to my surprise, I found a brass screw hanging onto its screwhole by a single thread. I carefully extended the screwdriver tool and drove that wanderer right back into place. Then I reinserted the frontpiece and turned the cold water on. Then I turned the cold water off. I did this several times and felt very pleased with myself. I admit it's not on the same level of repair as taking a spacewalk and replacing solar panels on the Hubble Telescope, but I feel I might be able to manage even that very soon.

This week I took my counterpart Darina's daughter Nadia out to visit Matt at the Raptor Rehabilitation Center. Nadia is sixteen, loves birds and wants to be a veterinarian. Matt is one of my sitemates here in Stara Zagora and he's done a terrific job for the past two years working at the Green Balkan center dedicated to Bulgaria's birds of prey. The Center heals and releases injured birds, protects endangered birds and their nests and establishes breeding programs for rare birds. They have a brand new facility and Matt has been instrumental in developing their volunteer programs. They depend on a network of volunteers to help them and work closely with the local school systems and with conservation groups from across Europe to solicit assistance. While I sit at a desk writing grant applications, Matt monitors the nests of Imperial Eagles and feeds kestrels that are mending in cages at the Center. I think it's important to understand that there are a wide range of experiences available in the Peace Corps and a wide range of opportunities to bring your own skills to bear. Nadia was really delighted to be allowed to enter one of the cages with Matt to handle a Honey Buzzard. I took pictures and stood ready to club the savage beast to death with my camera if it turned on its handlers. Honey Buzzard might taste good if roasted slowly over a mesquite fire although if it's endangered Matt probably wouldn't let us eat it. He's conscientious that way. By the way, this particular bird is one that Matt has 'gentled' for use in his visits to the local schools.

I'll be leaving Bulgaria a little sooner than I had planned. My original COS date was scheduled for October 10th, but I'm going to head home on September 16th instead. We are allowed to schedule our actual departures within a thirty day window around our 'official' COS date and I need to be back in Chicago for a Foreign Service Oral Assessment on October 16th. The Oral Assessment is the second step in the process of getting a job with the State Department and it promises to be a very 'interesting' (in the long, stressful and draining sense of the word) day. Part of the required preparation for the day is to fill in government form number SF-86 which will allow the State Department to begin conducting a security clearance for me if I pass the Oral Assessment. This form is almost thirty pages long and asks for information on you from the day of your birth to the present. Candidates are given their results at the end of the Oral Assessment and, if they are successful, they submit their SF-86 forms and begin the third and final step in becoming Foreign Service Officers. After the written exam and oral assessment, there remains only receiving the medical, security and suitability clearances to be placed on the list of eligible hires. The State Department then draws from this list as their needs dictate and you can remain on it for a maximum of eighteen months, after which, if you haven't been offered a job, you are deleted (from the list) and have the option to begin the whole process over from step one.

So now I'm spending my time getting ready to leave Bulgaria and undertaking a quest to be gainfully employed at some unspecified point in the future. As always, I'm searching for challenging work in interesting places surrounded by beautiful women. I'm willing to negotiate on the 'challenging' work part. But wherever I end up, please stop by if you're in the neighborhood and if you need to use the toilet, please put the umbrella back on the hook when you've finished.

This is the Saedinenie Study Group, the only study group from the B-16's to make it all the way without losing a single member. Lindsay, Kate, Brian, Sara and I are all still here!! I'm the 'short-timer' with only five weeks to go before I get a wake-up call and a flight home. Let the countdown begin.

Skills Transfers

2006-07-14T07:23:00.000-07:00

The PC has three overriding goals:

	1.		Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their needs for trained men and women.

	2.		Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.

	3.		Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of all Americans.

As volunteers, we are expected to serve these goals. In my opinion, the goals are direct, concise, realistic and achievable. Of the three, however, the first presents volunteers with the most direct challenges during their service. Helping our host nations meet their needs for trained men and women requires us to transfer skills. Some of us aren't entirely certain that we have any skills to transfer; some of us labor along under a false sense of confidence, happily passing along non-existant skills; and some of us have skills but lack the ability to pass them on. Fortunately, none of us works in a vacuum and we spend much of our time helping each other out.

A volunteer working in a small mountain town in the Rhodopes contacted me not too long ago to ask if I'd be able to come down and talk to the people in his agency. He works for an NGO in Borino, a town with a Turkish population, and felt they needed some help in establishing a direction for the agency and in applying for grants. My agency, REDA, has a wealth of experience in identifying community needs, locating appropriate funding, making intelligent applications and then implementing the development projects. I am also a member of the PC SPA committee and, as such, spend a great deal of time evaluating PCV funding requests. I assumed that Nick, the volunteer in Borino, had heard of me and my work because...well, because I have a very inflated idea of my own importance.

I said that I'd be happy to come down and help in any way I could and asked if he wanted me to prepare a presentation or would we be participating in a round-table discussion? He said that I shouldn't worry about a presentation and that he knew exactly what he wanted his agency to hear and that he would give them the message. Okay. What, exactly, did he want me to do? He said, "Well, you're older and if you wear a tie, it'll look like you have some authority and they might take this more seriously." Yes, indeed. You don't get to be my age without becoming older and that is a set of skills that I will happily transfer.

So I went to Borino prepared to wear a tie and look 'authoritative' and arrived at Nick's after a seven hour bus trip ready to nail down the details for the meeting the following day. Nick had some friends visiting him and had cooked a great Mexican dinner for everyone. Another volunteer had baked some superb chocolate chip cookies and by the time we ate and cleaned up it was too late to begin discussing business. We woke early and Nick's other guests left, so he and I took a hike up through the mountains behind his house and he began to tell me about his agency. As is often the case, I was a bit confused and a little unclear on what was expected of me but I thought that I could still be helpful once the panel discussion started. I can usually follow whatever is going on in a meeting and begin to participate once I sense the track. After the hike, I put on my shirt and tie and we went down to his NGO to kick off the meeting.

We walked into a room set up like a university lecture hall. We stood at the podium and Nick looked at the group that had assembled for the meeting, told them I was going to start the seminar and walked off to the side leaving me standing center stage. It's difficult to look authoritative when your mouth is hanging open and sounds are coming out of it that only a monkey might ever understand. Actually, after the initial panic attack passed, it wasn't too bad. Nick had prepared a complete set of notes covering the points he wanted to raise and slid them across the podium to me. He had also arranged for a translator who turned out to be quite a character in his own right. Mahkmoud is the best English speaker in Borino and he is a very enthusiastic translator. So enthusiastic, in fact, that he often stops translating and just engages in long discussions with the group on subjects in which he has suspiciously little relevant first hand information. I was asked, for example, to talk about "in-kind contributions". I started to give the group a basic definition of "in-kind contributions" as they are seen by PC and EU funding organizations. Mahkmoud held up his hand after I'd said one or two sentences to indicate that he would translate that much. He then spoke for ten minutes without stopping, answered three or four questions and engaged in a brief but heated argument with a woman from the Chitalishte. It will be fascinating to see what the town of Borino offers up as in-kind contributions in the future.

The meeting lasted three hours and a lot of good information flowed back and forth and I felt that it had been a very useful exercise. Nick seemed pleased too, so the trip looked as though it was worthwhile and maybe on some small level, some skills transfer had taken place. Bilgun, one of the men who runs Nick's NGO, asked us to join a couple of them later that evening in the local cafe for a rakiya. We went off, had dinner, changed into less 'authoritative' clothing and got to the cafe around 8:00pm. Bilgun ordered everyone a big salad, because you don't drink rakiya in Bulgaria without eating salad, and we began to talk. My ability to speak Bulgarian improves in direct correlation to the amount of rakiya I've consummed and I was speaking quite fluently by the end of the evening.

It was during this impromptu meeting that the most significant skills transfers took place. After we'd beaten 'applying for community development grants' to death, we began to explore a topic of real value to all of us. What do you do if you come across a bear while you're hiking in the woods? Mahkmoud got up from the table, squatted down on his haunches and stated that you had to convince the bear that you were smaller, weaker and not a threat. Then he fell over. Bilgun disagreed and argued strongly that you must run away. Nick believed that he'd heard that you couldn't outrun a bear because they, apparently, are very fast. Yes, Bilgun agreed, but if you run downhill they can't catch you because they don't have thumbs and when they begin to run downhill, they tumble. It was agreed by one and all that this made a lot of sense and Nick suggested that you'd have to run downhill at an angle or the bear might tumble down on top of you. I said that I had thumbs but that I might tumble anyway if I tried to run downhill. My own belief was that all I had to do was outrun the slowest member of the group which led to an accusation that I might not be a team player. So it was agreed that if we saw a bear we would run downhill at an angle but I mentioned, quietly, to Mahkmoud that I thought it would be worth his while to try the squatting thing while we all ran away.

This wasn't the only skills transfer of value that took place over rakiya that evening. I learned the longest word in the Bulgarian language. I'll spell it out phonetically but in Cyrillic it has 39 letters: neprotivokonstitutsionctvuvatelstvuvaite. Six of us chanted that puppy out in cadence for several minutes before I asked what it meant. If I understood Bilgun correctly, it means "do not stand up against the constitution". There you have it.

So I'm back in Stara Zagora now, wiser by far than when I left. I have to begin working on my COS paperwork and getting ready to go home. I've tried to transfer what little skill I have during my time here, I've tried to leave Bulgarians with a positive impression of myself and Americans in general and I've tried to impart the very positive feelings I hold towards this country and its people in this journal. I also hope to mooch my way around the country when I get back, visiting friends and family and telling my stories in person. After a rakiya or two, we can plot strategies for racing camels or design the first working elevator to the moon. As a friend of mine once said, "The world is a brighter place when viewed through rakiya goggles."

This is our official COS photo. Our group of 59 has whittled away to the few and the proud.

To Hizha Rai and Beyond

2006-06-26T07:12:00.000-07:00

Me on Botev Vruk

The two major mountain ranges in Bulgaria are the Rhodopes which run along the southern border with Greece and the Balkans which run down the center of the country and separate the Danube Plain from the Thracian Plain. The mountains are inextricably woven through Bulgarian culture, history, myth and lore and they form a very tangible presence in modern Bulgaria's national soul. Rebellions were bred in the mountains and rebels sheltered there. Monasteries survived centuries of oppression tucked away in mountain valleys. Folk music and dancing are identified first and foremost by the mountain region they represent. Therefore, when it comes time to relax, chill out, or just recharge their emotional batteries, most Bulgarians head for the mountains.

An extensive network of hiking trails exists throughout the mountains with a wide range of hizhas or inns built along them to accommodate hikers. A hizha can be anything from a rough lean-to open on three sides to a small hotel with private bathrooms and cable tv. The hiking trails range from buccolic walks in the woods to strenuous climbs up to various peaks. Hardy souls use them all year long and, while I'm not generally thought of as a hardy soul, I use them every so often myself.

As a rule I stick to paths that fall into the 'walks in the woods' category and avoid any contact with anything that might be considered a trail or involve the dreaded "C" word (climbing). However, mountains being what they are some climbing is inevitable if you want to see the majestic beauty of the country or a waterfall or two. I'd been hearing about Hizha Rai for a couple of years and thought that it might be nice to hike up to it. 'Rai' is the Bulgarian word for paradise and this particular hizha is located in the Stara Planina (Stara Planina literally means Old Mountains, but the world knows them as the Balkans) and involves a very long hike with what us hikers refer to as a "significant elevation change". The hizha sits at the base of a high narrow waterfall and the hike to it passes through some of the most beautiful mountain scenery you can find anywhere. In order to get to the trailhead to Hizha Rai, you have to go to the lovely little town of Kalofer which sits in the Valley of the Roses at the foot of the Stara Planina. I serve on a PC committee with a woman who lives in Kalofer and during one of our meetings, I mentioned that I wanted to make the hike up to Hizha Rai before I left Bulgaria. Two weeks later she contacted me to say that she was going to do the hike for the third time and I was welcome to join the group. In poker when someone calls your bluff, you lose your money; in mountain climbing significantly more is at stake.

I met up with Sarah and her group in Kalofer and we began the long march out of town to the trailhead. As the PC, in its infinite wisdom, has failed to provide me with a helicopter, four-wheel drive vehicle or sherpa and I am prohibited, by PC regulation, from riding a donkey, I had no alternative but to shoulder my heavy pack and trudge along with the group. We marched out of town on a pleasant enough road that ran beside a pleasant enough river for most of its length. My pack was a bit heavy because I was carrying two cameras, extra clothing, water, a jacket and an umbrella. I also had a guidebook describing Hizha Rai, apparently on the offchance that I didn't quite understand what I was seeing when I got there!? Well, it seemed like a good idea when I put it in the pack. It took us an hour to reach the trailhead but the weather was fine and I was feeling pretty good about the whole adventure.

From the trailhead, Sarah and her Bulgarian friend, Koko, pointed out the waterfall we'd be hiking to and I stopped feeling pretty good about the damn adventure. Nonetheless, off we went and within five or six hours we'd arrived at Hizha Rai. There were five of us in our group and Hizha Rai happened to have a room for five, so I climbed onto the top bunk of one bed and swore that I wouldn't come down until the PC arranged to heli-vac me off the mountain. Andy, a twenty-something volunteer, shook me out of the bunk and said that we were all hiking to the base of the waterfall before dinner. Oh yeah!! Well, you can take your waterfall and shov....So, the waterfall was actually quite beautiful and I'm glad that I joined the party hiking up to it. One woman elected to stay behind and as a result she doesn't limp as badly as I do, but I got to stand beneath the waterfall, so there.

Sarah kept saying that we were hiking to Hizha Rai and Botev Vruk which I assumed was just the formal name for Hizha Rai. Hristo Botev is one of Bulgaria's national heroes who, like so many of Bulgaria's national heroes, led a foolhardy failed attempt to overthrow the Turkish Yoke and died a heroic and early death. Many streets are named after him. So, it turns out, is the highest peak in the Stara Planina. All along, the group had been planning to hike to Botev Vruk or Peak and the overnight at the Hizha was just to rest us up for the real climb the following day. I said that I would decide in the morning whether I was able to assault the mountain any further or whether I'd wait for them back at the hizha sampling the cold beer. The hizha was filled with nearly a hundred high school kids on an outing and the noise level would have drowned out jackhammers breaking concrete. In spite of that, I got several minutes sleep and woke feeling like I'd been beaten on the feet with sticks.

The same (intelligent) woman who'd declined the hike to the waterfall opted to remain behind again but I said I'd tag along. The hike to Botev Vruk was uphill all the way and it took almost three hours to reach a point where we could see the peak we were struggling towards. About two-thirds of the way up I began to seriously consider just lying down and dying rather than moving another foot. Sarah said to just keep putting one foot in front of the other and if I'd had the strength, I'd have hit her with a rock. She and Andy were climbing ahead of me and they had to keep stopping until I caught up. At one point I suggested bravely that they should just go on without me and they both said, "okay" and took off. This is why PCVs aren't issued rocket propelled grenades. I can remember sitting at home watching National Geographic specials on tv while smoking a cigar or eating a bowl of icecream and thinking, "how tough can that really be? Surely it's a matter of willing yourself to just keep going and to ignore the discomfort." When the camera would focus on one exhausted climber or another who had gotten to within a few meters of the top and just couldn't go any further I would think, "just suck it up and keep going you loser!" I have now learned that I cannot climb Mr. Everest. However, I finally made it to the Botev Vruk scant minutes behind Sarah and Andy and we sat on the stoop of a building and ate our sandwiches in silence. There was a second building on the peak and other hikers kept coming out of it carrying plastic cups of tea. We walked over and discovered that tea was being sold on the third floor. Why they didn't sell tea on the first floor is beyond my comprehension, but we wanted tea and honey quite badly at that point, so we climbed to the third floor. You could smell the tea brewing in a big pot on the stove as we entered the room. "Three teas with honey, please" I said as I entered the room. The woman looked right through me and said, "Are you Sarah?" Sarah 'fessed up and we were told that we couldn't have tea there, that we had to back to the building we'd started in because, "they're waiting for you there." No one could tell us who 'they' were, but we definitely weren't getting any tea in this building. So we went back down the three flights of stairs, over to the other building and entered the only door we could find.

Suddenly we were Na Ghosti. We were part of a gathering of Bulgarian men about my age who were eating shopska salad and drinking homemade rakiya and wine. Never let anyone convince you that rakiya and wine don't mix well with mountain climbing, they actually improve one's ability to sing Bulgarian folk songs which has always been an integral part of climbing as everyone knows. So we felt obliged to stay and drink to everyone's health and tell stories and have a great Na Ghosti before falling back down the mountain. Going down was definitely easier and we actually only stopped at Hizha Rai for a bowl of soup and to pick up the slacker before continuing on down to Kalofer. We got back to Sarah's place well after dark which meant that except for the hour and a half Na Ghosti on Botev Vruk and the forty-five minute soup break at Hizha Rai, we'd hiked for just over fourteen hours. But I stood on the top of the monument on Botev Vruk and I have the picture to prove it.

On the trail to Botev Vruk we had to hike through this herd of free roaming horses. They were savage as you can see.

Last week I participated in my group's COS conference. Close of Service is the terminology for leaving the PC and it appears to be as complicated and time-consuming as entering was. There are appointments to be made with medical, dental and vision doctors, forms to fill in and reports to fill out. Decisions on when to fly home and where to fly to have to be cast in stone. PC property such as fire extinguishers, smoke detectors, water purifiers, tamiflu and first aid kits have to be returned to Sofia. Host families have to be visited one last time and kissed good-bye. Stuff has to be sorted into piles to ship, pack, give away and burn. Final exit interviews with Program Managers and Country Director have to be scheduled and all the checklists have to be checked. Suddenly, quitting early (ETing) begins to have a bright side to it. I'll decide in the next day or so which day I'll actually leave Bulgaria and which city I'll fly into. I'll book my flight and begin counting down the days.

I still have twenty-two vacation days on the books, but I won't get to use most of them because I have a lot of things coming up in the next three months. I'm going to Borino, in the Rhodope Mountains, to help another volunteer out by showing his organization how to write a grant application. I'll be in Sofia the end of July to work in another Day Camp. My agency is getting busier with paying clients and I have a ton of work to do here. August and September are also beginning to fill up, so the time will fly by. I'm anxious to see my family and friends in the States again, but I don't really want this experience to be over. Slowly I'm completing my personal checklist and now the next mountain I climb will be my second.

I'll leave you with the words of my friend Jessica. I called her when I finally reached the summit to say that I wasn't sure I could survive the climb back down and that I was worried that I'd bitten off more than I could chew and might just be left to die there by the others and she said, "You think you have problems, my washing machine is acting up and I have a full load in!" That's what PC is all about, selfless devotion to the problems of others and obsessive fascination with Bulgarian appliances.

Man Down!

2006-06-11T07:32:00.000-07:00

This much I know is true: YDs have more fun than the rest of us. There are three groups of volunteers, defined by the type of work they do, CODs or Community Organizational Development volunteers, TEFLs or Teachers of English as a Foreign Language and YDs or Youth Development volunteers. I was lucky enough to be invited to help out at Kate's YD Summer Camp in Plovdiv last week. This was a weeklong day camp held at a school in the Roma Mahala where Kate works. The kids were all fourth and fifth graders from the neighborhood and came armed with enough energy and high spirits to power an aircraft carrier for a day. Unless you happened to be Kate, it really wasn't much like work at all. The ten or so volunteers who came to help out got to run around and play just as much as the ten year old kids. Kate had already done all the planning and the rest of us just did what we were told. In case you're interested, there seem to be about one hundred variations to the game of Tag and we played them all.

Years ago, while legging out a triple in a highly competitive game of co-ed softball, I had the unfortunate experience of tearing my hamstring. With my completely unsympathetic teammates screaming at me to "crawl faster!", I dragged myself along the ground to third base and was immediately pulled from the game for a pinch runner. A torn hamstring hurts like the devil. It feels exactly like someone has snuck up behind you and cut through that large heavy muscle with a pair of dull scissors. At first the muscle just flops around under your skin like a snake in a bag but then the pain message reaches your brain and you really don't care much at all for people who want you to "crawl faster". Anyway, ever since that day I have taken great care to a) preferably not run at all or b) if running was to be absolutely required, to warm up my legs for at least a week before said running was to occur.

Have you ever tried to play any of the myriad variations of Tag without actually running? The kids screamed and yelled and charged around the schoolyard like inmates escaped from the asylum. The volunteers screamed and yelled and ran for their lives. We played Partner Tag, Blob Tag, and a game called Sharks & Minnows that sounds a lot cooler in Bulgarian - Akula!! It became quickly apparent that the true purpose of each and every one of those games was to cause Larry a serious injury. As one swift little bast.. child came up and tagged me from behind, I knew it was only a matter of time before I would be found lying in a pool of my own tears with a group of completely unsympathetic ten year olds hovering over me yelling "crawl faster!". Then I had a vision of the PC medically separating me with less than six months to go because I tore a hamstring playing Blob Tag!

I faked a limp and left the field of battle to take up a position behind the camera. Hiding behind the "they also serve who sit and do nothing" theory of participation, I filmed and photographed away for two days. The kids had a ball. The volunteers had a ball. Kate was exhausted from all the work she put into the camp as well as having two or three volunteers staying at her apartment the whole week and I finished the camp with both hamstrings intact. We're all winners in this game.

By the way, each of the two big bullies shown in the picture on the left tagged me really hard and then laughed at me. Actually, these were two of the younger kids and the older kids tried to be very careful not to hurt them. In Bulgaria, the girls seem to pair off at birth and you almost never see a girl without her mate. During a particularly competitive round of Steal The Bacon a girl and her best friend found themselves on opposite teams. Worse yet, they were the same number which meant that when their number was called they would have to go against each other. Their number was called and both of them charged out for the Bacon. One girl swooped it up and began running back to her line but her friend was hot on her heels and leveled her with a whacking strong tag. The tagged girl went down like a shot duck and stayed down. Her friend began to cry and both girls had to leave the field of play, arm in arm, to compose themselves. No one ever said Steal The Bacon was a game for softies. Eventually the two girls returned, but they declined further combat and restricted themselves to an afternoon of crafts.

The strain of the week proved to be too much for Kate and, in what can only be described as a moment of insanity, she actually gave the kids ammunition for a game of Egg Toss and then provided them with water balloons for a game of Soak the Volunteers! We filled several buckets with multi-colored water balloons and brought them down to the playground for the last outdoor activity of the camp. I carried one bucket out and tried to hold it up high enough so none of the kids could begin grabbing the balloons. Within seconds I resembled a tree decorated with colorful Roma children as ornaments. Ten seconds after I hit the playground, all my balloons were in the hands of the enemy and I was limping for cover. It took half a dozen volunteers the better part of an hour to fill the balloons, it took the kids twenty-eight seconds (by the clock) to fire them all at friends and foe alike.

In addition to the outdoor mayhem, there were indoor activities every day. The kids made necklaces, painted their faces, made masks, played bingo and had a discoteque on the last afternoon. The thing that impressed me the most was that none of the kids acted bored or decided that they were too cool to take part in any of the activities. Boys who acted like little thugs when they were playing the Tag games outside, became fully engrossed in decorating their masks when it was time for crafts.

I think that they all just enjoyed having people pay attention to them and that they appreciated the effort that Kate put into making their weeklong camp special. They live in a neighborhood where many of the things that happen are pretty negative so this camp gave them a week of safe, supervised activities where they could scream and yell and run around like crazy and no one would punish them for it. Apart from the very fine level of behavior shown by the kids, something else was equally apparent. The kids were very open in showing their affection for the Volunteers who worked at the camp. Volunteers were constantly being hugged by two or three small people whenever the opportunity presented itself. Lincoln, Jennifer, Jessica, Matt, Dave and Apryl generally had a couple of small admirers clinging to them whenever we were between games. The hugging was spontaneous and affectionate with each Volunteer having his or her own little fan club.The camp actually followed close on the heels of a few weeks of insanity of another stripe as I had visits from my sons and then my parents run end to end. Andy and Ian finally made it to Bulgaria after almost two years of promising to come. My foks made their second trip here in two years and would surely come again if I were staying. Both sons and parents made the pilgrimage to Saedinenie to visit my host family and both left laden with bottles of domashna (homemade) wine and rakiya.

The boys and I rented a car and Andy drove us down through the Rhodopi Mountains to Chepelare, Trigrad and Yagodina. We hiked and climbed around and over the Miraculous Bridges and wandered around the mountain in the rain. Later we found a small hotel and the boys stayed up and drank beer with the owner in his bar while I got some sleep. While still in Chepelare, we went through the Cave Museum which is proudly billed as the finest of its kind in Europe. In small print it is noted that it is the 'only' cave museum in Europe. It's a couple of rooms on the ground floor of a hotel that have been painted black and decorated with pictures of stalactites and stalagmites. Oh, and it has the skull of a cave bear in a glass case. We did manage to visit some 'actual' caves and rode through some truly spectacular gorges. During our stay in Trigrad, the hotel owner broke open a bottle of rakiya and the boys felt obligated to drink to his health, then to their own health and finally to the general health of the world at large not excluding ficticious characters and possible visiting aliens. As Ian later explained, "It was really weak stuff, Dad. With Stoil's homemade rakiya you can't even breathe after you drink, with this stuff we could still talk!!" They have become true fans of Veneta and Stoil after spending one very pleasant afternoon and evening visiting with them.

I told Veneta that we'd get there after lunch and stay for dinner and overnight. I knew that we'd be having lunch with Brian in Plovdiv on the way to Saedinenie and didn't want Veneta to make food we wouldn't eat. However, I warned the boys to eat lightly because Veneta would probably fix something anyway. She was standing on the curb watching for us as we pulled up and began handing us plates of food on our way into the house! Ten hours later we were all in food-induced comas and begging for mercy. It's good to go home!

My folks arrived during the boys' last three days and we all spent some time together in Sofia. We rented the hotel owner's car and Andy drove us down to Rila Monastery. Surprisingly, lightening didn't strike Andy or Ian down in that holy place. I guess the Saints weren't paying attention that day. On Friday morning the boys left for home and on Saturday The Visit: Chapter Two began with a bus ride with my folks to Stara Zagora.

Don is still recovering from his illness of a year ago and Mom is recovering from a broken pelvis so this visit was conducted at a more leisurely pace than their previous trip to Bulgaria. We still managed to see Sofia, the Rila Monastery, Varna, Saedinenie (required) and Assenovgrad. By the time they left for the States, they both seemed to be a lot stronger and were getting around much more easily. While neither of them are big rakiya fans, they do love Stoil's red wine and he gave them a ten liter bottle of it to take back home. Sadly, there was no way for them to transport such a large amount of vino on the plane and I am going to have to find a way to dispose of it myself. I'll have a few friends over and ask for suggestions.

So now for me it's back to the grind. I really have to do some work at the agency, if only to justify the use of my desk. I also have to begin preparing myself psychologically to re-enter a world where people don't sit over a cup of coffee for a couple of hours at the cafe or visit their friends for ten or twelve hours at a crack, a world where people move as efficiently as possible when going from A to B and rarely find the time to stop on the sidewalk to discuss matters of small importance. Of course, I have a plan. I've come to prefer the more leisurely pace and therefore, when I feel pressured to hurry or hustle along, I'll pull up with a brave limp and explain that I can't move any faster because, "when I was working with some kids at a summer camp, I was severly injured when a game of Egg Toss spiraled badly out of control. Let's stop here for a coffee and I'll tell you all about it."

We Start Work At 8:30!

2006-05-11T23:53:00.000-07:00

I tend to be fairly punctual. I show up on time and appreciate it when others do the same. Yesterday, however, I was late for work. In fact, I was over an hour late for work. But I have an excuse.

I was walking to work in a great mood. The weather was gorgeous and I was actually whistling as I went along. It was one of those beautiful Spring days when the sun was out and the morning air was crisp and clean. I was wearing a light jacket and jeans and, as I walked, I was thinking about my sons' upcoming visit. Then something hit my head.

It wasn't a thought because a thought wouldn't have been so viscuous and gooey. A thought would have been less tangible than the very tangible thing that hit my head and oozed down into my hair. No, the thing that hit my head was more on the order of very tangible birdshit. I can't swear that it was from a bird, judging from the size of the mess, it might have been from a small winged hippopotamus.

When I felt the 'thing' hit my hair, my reaction was to put my hand up to feel around to identify the 'thing'. I suspect you might have reacted similarly and now I understand how a wolverine can be induced to chew off its own paw. All I'll say on the subject is that when I saw the mess on my hand and realized what was spread like a beanie across my head, I stopped whistling and the day lost a lot of its luster. I ran back home, jumped into the shower and began to shampoo the real poo out of my hair. For almost an hour, I had to fight off the urge to shave my head. Then I very calmly got dressed and went to work.

My colleagues were in a great mood when I arrived at the office because we have finally acquired our first paying client! This was a banner occasion and called for an out-of-office celebration. We are contacted by many foreign companies seeking information or assistance regarding moving to Bulgaria in general and Stara Zagora in particular. We do the research and send back our replies, we set up contacts, agendas, hotel reservations and meetings. We escort visitors around and translate for them during their meetings. We negotiate on their behalf. We do all this without any compensation from anyone. REDA lives off of its ability to acquire EU funding for specific projects and when we don't acquire projects during a cycle, we don't receive any income. We are not supported by the government on any level, local, regional or national. Our objective is to become self-sustainable and wean ourselves from our dependence on grant money.

As a first step towards achieving this independence, we have developed list of services that we are uniquely qualified to offer and a modest fee schedule to go along with them. Now, when we're contacted by foreign companies seeking information, we send back a complimentary first general reply and then offer to represent them locally and send along our standard fee schedule. My colleagues were, initially, concerned when most of the companies receiving the fee schedule didn't contact us again. I kept trying to explain that these companies were only interested in having us do an enormous amount of work for them if they didn't have to pay for it. The world is filled with 'customers' like that and you only stay in business if you avoid them. We offer a genuine value to companies through our network of contacts and our top to bottom knowledge of the region. We have the ability to provide in-depth research on any issue of interest to a foreign investor more accurately and in far less time than they can do for themselves. I have been convincing my colleagues that we should only expend our efforts on behalf of companies who recognize our worth.

A British firm has decided to build a Health Spa in our Region and to surround it with a development of new single family houses. They have paid us for all the work we've done on their behalf to date and asked us to represent them throughout the entire project. It's hard to describe how excited we are about this. I even began to whistle again.

I began this entry over two weeks ago and then my sons arrived and then my parents arrived and then my sons left and now I'm showing my folks around. And then the dog ate my homework.

One final observation. When Andy and Ian were here we noticed that we walk differently than most Bulgarians. We tend to walk quickly to wherever we're going. We talk along the way, but we don't waste time or steps. The purpose of walking out to TechnoMarket, for example, is to get to TechnoMarket. Bulgarians stroll. They amble, wander and mosey. Young women walk arm in arm and speak to each other in whispers. Old men also walk along arm in arm and re-live old battles won or lost. Periodically, all Bulgarian walkers stop and have conversations that require the participants to be stationary. We hammer along from A to B with the objective of arriving as soon as possible. For Bulgarians, the getting there is half the fun. I've noticed this as I've rushed past most of the population of Stara Zagora on my very important missions to get to one place or another. There are roses in full bloom on every vine in the city and I haven't bothered to appreciate a one of them. So, I have made a promise to myself to slow it down and to be more Bulgarian in my getting from A to B. I intend to literally stop and smell a few roses along the way.

The only apparent drawback to this is that is makes me a much easier target...say, are those large birds flying this way?!

Building Bloks

2006-05-04T02:14:00.000-07:00

The color of communism wasn't red, it was gray. Everything from the landscape to the mood of the people became a uniform washed-out shade of gray. Career paths were decided by central planning committees and assigned with rigid observance to political priorities. People who probably would have made excellent chefs or bus drivers or astronomers were given work as architects and told to be creative with the huge surplus of concrete that, apparently, existed throughout Eastern Europe. So they created the "Blok", a solid gray rectangle of an apartment building that is unsurpassed in ugliness. Bloks have all the splendor but none of the warmth of caves. They can be anywhere from seven or eight stories tall to well over twenty and contain from six to twenty apartments on each floor depending on the length of the building. Each apartment will usually have a balcony or a terrace and that is the only feature that gives the building the appearance of a habitat for people rather than a concrete bunker for storing large pieces of machinery.

Concrete is remarkably durable and will be crumbling down and decaying throughout Eastern Europe for centuries to come. Most of the major buildings in Stara Zagora are made of concrete and were designed by men and women with excellent political backgrounds and a presumed talent in some field other than architecture. They are truly ugly, cheerless and totally lacking in inspiration or art. But they are functional. And the homes inside these buildings are just like homes anywhere else. People here have the same appliances, electronics, fixtures, plumbing, rugs and tiles that people acquire wherever they live. People own the interiors of their apartments but haven't quite formed the co-ops necessary to keep the exteriors and public areas (elevators, hallways, entryways, etc.) in a livable condition. Perhaps they don't yet understand the relationship between the value of their own apartment and the appearance of the common areas of the building.

I pay three leva a month towards the cleaning of the common areas of my building. We recently had our entryway repainted and locks installed on the exterior doors. Grass was planted on a small island in the parking lot that had previously been used as an ad hoc trash bin. Every so often, a collection is taken up to pay for one or another improvement and signs are always posted on the elevator doors tattling on the apartment owners who refused to chip in. Discussions are held in hallways and on the benchs by the fountain outside and little by little the building is improved and a stubborn few skulk along for the free ride. I am usually exempted from contributing because I am a 'renter', not an owner. However, my next door neighbor is in charge of collecting for our floor and I can usually convince her to let me put in my share. Before you become all teary-eyed over my generosity, a share is never more than five leva or about three bucks.

Stara Zagora is changing. New buildings are being built all over town. Roads, sidewalks, parks and plazas are being improved and upgraded. Gray concrete pillboxes and bunkers are being replaced by buildings with curves and colors. Older pre-communist architecture is being rediscovered and renovated and the town is starting to assume an identity of its own. Or maybe it's just Spring.

From my balcony I look down on a building that was an eyesore and was torn down to make way for new construction. My street, Metropolit Metodii Kucev, is a beautiful divided two lane road with a tree-lined path containing half a dozen ornate fountains running down the center. It begins up at Ayazmoto Park and runs past my building down into the center of town. Property values on Metodii Kucev are understandably high. Buying property is sometimes difficult because of the title disputes arising from ownership claims from the times before, during and after communism. However, on this particular building title was proven and the developer tore it down and began to prepare the site for his new building. Just as a property developer in the States, he cleaned off the old rubble and dug an excavation for a new foundation.

Unfortunately, that's when he ran into the Roman ruins. So now, all work has been temporarily halted while the site is excavated with whisk brooms and dental picks. These aren't as efficient as backhoes and steamshovels, but they do less damage to priceless antiquities.

You've probably figured out by now that the whole reason I'm writing this piece about architecture and building sites is that I just learned how to put pictures on my journal! My little digital camera had stopped working and I assumed that the battery was worn out. I hiked all over town looking for a replacement, couldn't find one and asked my sons to buy me one and bring it with them when they visit. Then, the old battery took a full charge and has been working perfectly ever since. Go figure! I have no idea how or why any of this stuff works and that's why it's taken me two years to figure out how to put pictures on this page.

REDA, my agency, is thinking of requesting another volunteer. This is a great place to work and my colleagues will see to it that the new person is kept busy. We are transitioning from a purely grant supported operation to a self-sustained consulting agency and there will be plenty of work for another volunteer for the next couple of years. REDA has to find its niche because much of what we do is covered by the Chamber of Commerce and some of what we do is now done by the brand new Tourist Office that opened next door to the Gallery. In my opinion, our niche is pursuing and attracting foreign investment and then assisting those investors in making contacts and working through the labyrinth of laws and regulations necessary to begin doing business in Stara Zagora. Information and contacts, in this day and age, are very saleable commodities and REDA has both in abundance. However, change is difficult and even though we have taught courses in Change Management, we are having a bit of difficulty in facing the future ourselves.

It's Friday and we're shutting down for the weekend. We're closing before six o'clock because Darina's daughter Nadia just turned seventeen and is having a party at their apartment that requires Darina and her husband to vacate the premises. Petya and I spent most of the day telling her horror stories of our own children's unsupervised parties (because that's what teammates are for) and Darina left looking as happy as a soldier on a suicide mission.

Next week should be relatively slow here and then my sons arrive. They'll come in on Saturday and stay for two weeks with my folks arriving during the boys' last three days. Then my folks will stay until the first week or so of June and then I'll have a couple of weeks before my COS conference in July. Time's flying!!

The cafes are open and I'm going to go find a chair and a cup of coffee and watch the sights stroll by. Have a great weekend, everyone.

The Incredible Shrinking Group

2006-04-19T05:07:00.000-07:00

The Peace Corps asks for a commitment from volunteers to serve in a host country for twenty-seven months, three months as Trainees and then two full years as Volunteers. This timeframe is made abundantly clear to each applicant at every step of the joining process. It can take up to a year to complete all the required steps and receive an invitation to join a group being sent to one country or another to begin training. There are lengthy online forms to complete, thick packets of paper forms to fill in, personal interviews to take, medical, dental and vision exams to pass, background checks to undergo, fingerprints, references and resume..all thoroughly checked. Then, from the day you receive your invitation to join, your timetable is very clearly laid out before you. Prior to your arrival in your country, your COS date is set. My group, the B-16s, arrived in Bulgaria on August 9, 2004 and on the calendars we were given on our first day, listing all the significant waypoints of our time here, was our Completion Of Service date, October 10, 2006.

Many volunteers do not stay until their COS date. People leave for a variety of individual and personal reasons. Some people find that they miss home, family and friends more than they ever could have anticipated and they leave. Some people discover that they don't like living in a 'foreign' country as much as they thought they would, especially when the electricity goes out, the water stops and the neighbors don't understand them. Sometimes their jobs don't make a lot of sense or aren't particularly rewarding and people begin to envy their friends at home who are starting 'real' careers or have gone on to grad school. Trainees and volunteers alike become disillusioned, fed up or just plain unhappy and they leave. There are also family emergencies and personal situations at home that force people to leave early. The reasons for leaving, and the decisions to do so, are always personal and people begin leaving at a more or less steady pace almost from day one. Volunteers who leave prior to their COS date are said to ET, or Early Terminate. This decision is voluntary and PC doesn't put pressure on people to stay if they want to go home. Then there are some who want to stay but aren't able to do so. There are people who become either too ill or injured to continue to serve and are medically separated from the PC. The PC term for this situation is MedSep, a tidy bureaucratic label for an unfortunate group. Finally, there are the few volunteers who just don't get it. A very small number of volunteers have to be Administratively Separated, generally for behavior issues related to running afoul of either PC policy, common sense or good judgment. If we weren't volunteers this would be called 'being fired' but we'll just call it ASing.

So, if you don't ET, MS or AS, you COS and get your DOS. Your DOS is your official Description of Service and proclaims to one and all that you served your full two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer with honor. For some people, that's enough to keep them here.

Most volunteers start out with a little trepidation and a lot of enthusiasm and most fully expect to COS. Fifty-nine B-16s got on the plane to fly to Bulgaria on August 8, 2004. There were supposed to be sixty of us but one woman was unable to join us. If I had been asked, at that time, to bet on how many would COS I would have bet that we'd lose no more than six people. This is why I don't gamble!

The B-16s are now officially on the endangered list. At last count there were more California Condors than B-16s! We are down to thirty-one hardy souls but the grapevine is humming and that number will certainly shrink (we could be talking Spotted Owl territory here). All of the people from my training group in Saedinenie are still here and both Lindsay and Sara have extended to stay a third year. Brian & Kate will stay for an additional month or so to help train the new arrivals and I will COS on October 10th and become the first of the Saedinenie's to leave.

There is no easy way to categorize the people who have left early or to categorize those who have stayed for that matter. Age, gender, race and creed are equally represented in both groups, as are intelligence, humor, and character. Most of those who have left have probably done the right thing for themselves; while those of us who are staying have found ways to make this a meaningful experience in our lives. It is, however, apparent that the Peace Corps is not for everyone. If you're considering joining, it might be worthwhile to try to talk to a couple of people who left early just to get their perspective. Personally, I think this has been a terrific experience and I fully intend to take advantage of every minute of it.

Among the advantages offered is private language tutoring, however, PC policy dictates that my language lessons must end on July 10th. I suppose that after two years of lessons, they feel that there's no point in throwing good money after bad and that I won't learn enough in my last three months to make the expenditure worth while. I can only hope that my tutor, Darina Murteva, can maintain her perfect record of 'never saying a single thing the same way twice' until July. While this isn't necessarily helpful when you're trying to learn a language, it is a very impressive feat when extended to twenty-four consecutive months. It's a bit like Joe Dimaggio's fifty-six game hitting streak, no tutor to come will ever approach Darina's capacity as a Bulgarian thesaurus. I've become very comfortable with our routine. Twice a week she comes to my apartment and, while I drink my coffee, she talks to me in very formal and proper (some might say ancient and archaic) Bulgarian. Periodically I'll try to get a word in, but usually it's easier on both of us if she does all the talking. I nod and make "umm, uh-huh and oh" noises until the hour is up. I truly believe that her Bulgarian is improving as a result of our sessions and I feel really good about that. Yesterday she was talking about something or other and switched to English halfway through. For a minute I thought I had finally begun to understand Bulgarian because I knew what she was saying!

The grapevine or rumor mill among volunteers is well oiled and running with its usual efficient lack of accuracy. It's interesting to note that the rumors have evolved over time from "who is sleeping with whom" to "who is leaving this week" to "PC is going to put a whole new set of rules in place to make us unhappy". Rumors have high entertainment value especially when they take on an air of bombast and outrage. Currently, people are dithering over an announcement of probable policy changes within PC Bulgaria. So far, no specific changes have been made but rumors of draconian new rules have created pockets of mumbled rebellion. In my opinion, PC policy in Bulgaria is designed to keep us safe, assist us in our work and our communities and support us during our stay here. My guess is that the new policies will be designed to improve on that level of support. If not, I suppose I'll take to the barricades and shout down the Man (shout the Man down?).

My apartment reminds me of a big leafy tree. When I arrived in October 2004, it was in the full blush of its Summer with healthy green leaves and strong solid roots. Time, however, has been unkind to my apartment and it has now entered the Fall of its existence. Like leaves turning brown and falling, bits and pieces of my apartment have begun to disintegrate little by little. I have one shower, two toilets and three sinks, none of which can be turned completely off at this time. It's like living in a rainforest. Above my entryway door is a panel of "bushoni" or fuses. These burn out with methodical precision and need to be replaced about once a month. My landlord Hristo simply takes them apart, braids some new wire into them and screws them back into the panel. Lately, they've been popping with even greater frequency and Hristo has now given me a little chart showing me which appliances cannot be operated simultaneously. The water heater can't be used when anything else is on. The radiator can't be used if the tv or stove are being used. The washing machine can only be run when all the lights are turned off and the refrigerator is unplugged. The stove has three hotplate burners and an oven, but only two of any combination can be on at a given time. Ahhh, now I get it, no wonder I've been blowing all those fuses. I have this nasty American habit of keeping my fridge plugged in when the lights are on.

So, if I'm the last B-16 left in Bulgaria, I'll turn out the lights when I leave...or just plug in the refrigerator and turn on the tv.

Put Your Pencils Down!

2006-04-10T01:08:00.000-07:00

The Foreign Service Written Exam was held at the American Embassy in Sofia on Saturday. I was registered to take the exam so I went up to the city on Friday to take care of some admin stuff at the PC office. 'Admin stuff' is sort of a code phrase for 'play with my fantasy baseball team' on the PC internet. I ran into a PCV I knew and we had lunch together. He was in Sofia to take the exam too so it was the natural topic of conversation during lunch. Although he had registered, he wasn't entirely certain that he wanted to take the test this year. We discussed the numbers and the odds for actually making it into the FS. Approximately 30,000 people register for the test and somewhere around 125 end up being offered jobs. Daunting odds by any definition. We split up after lunch but agreed to meet later for dinner. When I got in touch with him at about 7:00pm, he said that he was on his way home and had decided to wait until next year to take the test. Okay...only 29,999 people left in the competition. The odds are getting better all the time.

Bright and early Saturday morning I got up, showered, had breakfast and caught a cab to the Embassy. I clearly remember the days when you could wander into any US Embassy in the world by waving your passport and saying you were looking for information, directions, a cheap place to stay or help. There were usually a couple of very smart looking Marines in full dress uniforms at the door who would direct you to one office or another. The Marines may still be there, but now they're in full battle dress with kevlar body armor and automatic weapons. You don't see much of them because they're tucked away in highly impenetrable defensive positions. It's just a reflection of the realities of the time that the US Embassy is now Fort America and is as welcoming as a maximum security prison.

I had a letter from the FS directing me to report no later than 8:00am to the Embassy and when I arrived at about 7:30am I found a few other PCVs milling around in front of the entry/security point. They explained that we wouldn't be allowed in until 8:00am. It was cold and even though it wasn't raining, it was damp. A nice gesture would have been for the Ambassador to send out coffee and doughnuts to us, but because it was Saturday he was probably home in bed. Hey, he could have left someone a note. "A bunch of cold Peace Corps Volunteers will be milling aimlessly around in front of the entry/security point. Send out some coffee and doughnuts to them, will you? Oh, and I have a feeling that at least one of them prefers Boston Creams." See, that's what successful diplomacy is all about.

Promptly at 8:00am they began to process us through security five at a time. Large men in black uniforms guided us through bulletproof rooms, metal detectors and heavy fortress-like doors. We were told to surrender our cell phones and any other electronic devices. Our names were checked and double-checked against a list and we were, finally, escorted into the Embassy itself. It took about half an hour for us to clear security, and they were expecting us. I don't think you'd stand much of a chance if you just wanted to drop by and see the place. Your tax dollars at work in a highly secure environment.

The room to be used for the exam was set up and ready for us. Each of us was assigned a table and each table faced a set of windows with a magnificent view of Mt. Vitosha. Vitosha is still covered with snow and, with a bright blue sky behind it, was a very pleasant distraction. From the empty tables, I'd guess that almost half the people who registered decided to sleep in that morning. The two proctors said, "no talking", read the rules, distributed the first test booklets and we were off to the races.

Six hours later we were through. Well, it wasn't a straight six hours, there was a fifteen minute break. On the front of each test booklet, there was a Non-disclosure Agreement that had to be signed. This basically states that if I reveal any of the questions I will be prosecuted, denied employment in the FS, called several naughty names and made to wait outside without doughnuts or coffee for some indeterminate amount of time. I can, however, tell you that I spent several months brushing up on various topics such as history, economics, management theory, geography, the US political system, the US legal system and the US Constitution complete with all 27 amendments. I bought a study guide that gave me a course of action and I took it. I don't think that what I did could ever be confused with actually studying, but I did spend time reviewing these areas in a helter-skelter fashion. I can say with complete confidence that out of a total of 400 odd questions (some were very odd) I feel really good about my answers on four or five. By 'really good' I, of course, mean that there is a 50% chance that I guessed correctly on them. The other 395 questions are a crapshoot. I spent a great deal of time both looking over the US Constitution and taking some online geography quizzes. The single geography question on the exam referred to an area of the globe that was inadvertently omitted from the set of quizzes. I did, however, nail the Constitution question. There was also an essay which had to be written by hand. I was assured that handwriting doesn't add to or detract from your score. My handwriting started out at illegible and ended up being a series of squiggly lines that represent really insightful words and sentences.

The test results will not be available until the end of July. I think I've done fairly well, but whether that's well enough to move on to the next step won't be known until then. All in all it was a very interesting experience and I rode the bus home to Stara Zagora feeling very confident that I was the only one on board who could pick the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution out of a lineup. For the short period of time that I actually remember all this stuff, I intend to impress friends and acquaintances alike at every gathering and when I forget the facts...I'll just make stuff up.

Tagged?

2006-04-04T04:50:00.000-07:00

Many of the volunteers in Bulgaria keep online journals (journals, blogs, xangas, call them what you will) and I make it a practice to read about half a dozen of these on a regular basis. I read two because they're written by friends, one because it's written by an ex-PCV who is certifiably insane, one for the pictures and two others because they are so well written. I like good writing and I particularly enjoy stumbling across good writing in unexpected places. I've never seen any statistics on the subject, but I'd guess that the percentage of online journals that are witty, interesting and well written is a one digit number, a low one digit number. Many journals are simply used by their authors as whine racks and contain little more than an annoying recitation of whatever is making that person unhappy at that moment. Be assured, there is always something making these people unhappy. Life is a conspiracy against them. Given the opportunity, these folks would suck the pleasure out of a Spring day. Their message is dreary, their syntax is awful and their spelling is atrocious. They do, however, make finding the good ones all the more rewarding.

Now, in one of the good ones, I've been tagged. Tagging, it turns out, is the practice of defining a category, then making a personal list of specifics on your own journal and, finally, challenging, commanding, directing or asking a specific person or group of people to create their own lists on their journals. As in, "Tag, you're it!". I had to look it up.

So, Lucia thought about guilty pleasures and came up with seven that she was willing to share online. Now she's tagged me, and some of her friends, to list seven of our own guilty pleasures. Most of you who read this journal know me very well and, therefore, can appreciate my problem. While having an abundance of pleasures, I very rarely have guilt. But, as I've been tagged, I'll give it a shot.

The Peace Corps. I suppose that quitting work and going off to satisfy a dream I've had since I was in college should qualify as a guilty pleasure. I know I've enjoyed this so much it probably should be illegal, fattening or contagious.

Cigars. Since my Uncle Bill threw away my White Owls and gave me a box of Upmanns way back when, I've always loved a good cigar. I smoked them before they were the rage, during and since. I still limit myself to one or two a week, not from a sense of guilt but rather because I seem to enjoy them more when they're rationed.

The OverPaidPrimaDonnas. This is my fantasy baseball team and I spend many many many productive hours managing them. In our league the 'Donnas are known for the quality of their (my) complaining and the fact that they usually come in second. Until I get a real life, this will have to do.

The Sheraton Balkan. Okay, I admit it, I prefer the Sheraton in Sofia to the Hostel Mostel. So shoot me.

The two-hour Bulgarian cup of coffee. Sitting with friends at one of the outdoor cafes in Stara Zagora on a Spring or Summer day and making a cup of coffee last a couple of hours while we watch the parade go by and solve a universal problem or two is another thing I should probably feel guilty about, but I don't.

Weekend nap. I like to lie on my couch, with both my balcony doors propped open, and sleep during the day on a Summer Saturday or Sunday. It is essential that I have a book cracked open on my chest and music playing in the other room. Even though the breeze through the room is the dreaded tuchenie, I sleep like a baby. I guess if the weather outside is especially terrific I could feel a little guilty. I'll think about it next time and let you know.

Evening ice cream. The street vendors are back! Like snowdrops or crocuses the ice cream vendors are beginning to appear on Tsar Simeon after a long Winter. One by one they will open until there are eight or ten of them up and down the street. Raffy's, Gelati, and Mr. Sweet's all peddling ice cream cones by the gram. I make it a habit to walk to the center each evening after dinner and buy a cone or two. So much ice cream, so little time. If I buy a cone at Raffy's and then walk all the way down the street to the bottom, I can pick up another cone at Mr. Sweet's for the long haul back up the street. Hey, it's for the exercise. Walking is good for you.

Well, there you have it. I could go on but now it's your turn. Sara, Alex, Matt and Jessie...Tag.

By the way, I'll be at the PC office on Friday and the Sheraton on Friday night, I'll have a cigar with dinner at Ruini and head back to SZ on Saturday. There I'll set the lineup for the 'Donnas before having coffee with Alex, Matt & Jessie for a couple of hours. I'm hoping for a sunny day for my nap on Sunday so I'll be well rested for the long walk for ice cream after dinner. Life is good.

Play Ball!

2006-03-29T03:27:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I went to Hissar to join a group of volunteers who were planning on taking a hike. Hissar is about an hour north of Plovdiv by bus which, like Stara Zagora, puts it in the foothills of the Sredna Gora. The outing was planned and coordinated by the VSN or Volunteer Support Network, a group of volunteers who serve as peer counselors and shoulders-to-lean-on. The VSN thought it would be nice to set up a weekend for anyone who wanted to visit Hissar, go for a swim in the hot baths, see the Roman ruins and take a short walk through the surrounding countryside. It sounded good to me and my friend Kate was doing the coordinating so I decided to tag along.

We had very comfortable rooms in a sanitarium that had special rates for railroad employees. After determining that none of us had ever actually been employed by a railroad at any time, they charged us full whack. That came to almost 13 leva per person, or about nine dollars. We dumped our things in our rooms and gathered out front to wait for our guide for the walk around town. Georgi showed up right on time and was dressed in full camouflage with military hiking boots. This was a man who took his walks about town seriously.

Promptly at 11:00am we started off at a brisk clip. We barreled past ruins and hot springs without so much as a brief, "That's a Roman ruin" or "These are some of our famous hot springs", from our tour guide. We walked to the very edge of town and then took a brief rest while our guide ran off to his apartment for something he'd forgotten. Ten minutes later he returned and we were off again. This time we struck out across the fields behind Hissar towards the foothills. We marched for an hour across fields and through orchards and, as the foothills grew closer they began to seem more like footmountains. We stopped just short of the serious uphill part of the hills and the guide showed us where he intended to take us so the faint of heart could bail out then and there. I can usually faint with the best of them but I would have been the only one so I trudged on with the pack. Just before we began the climb, a friend of Georgi's joined us. He too was in full camo with military boots and he was packing heat. For reasons I never quite figured out he had a very large pistol holstered on his hip. I suppose if any of us broke a leg or something it would have been more merciful to shoot us rather than leave us to the wild squirrels and lizards.

The path began its climb into the Sredna Gora and we climbed right along with it. I was huffing and puffing like a steam engine, an old steam engine, but I was keeping up with everyone and it kept looking like we were almost there. 'There' being a nice spot the guide was taking us to for lunch. As a group we soon fell into a groove; we'd hike for ten minutes and then rest for ten minutes. It made the hike longer but seriously curtailed the coronaries. Up and up we went and I knew that I was in trouble when Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay came down the path shaking their heads and telling us to go back because it was too difficult. I had a fleeting feeling that the VSN was trying to kill me because I'm old.

Finally, without the use of ropes, pitons or an escalator we made it up to the highest point on the planned hike and stopped for lunch. It was a very pretty spot with a natural spring of cold water and a view of the entire valley. We ate and relaxed and gathered our strength for the tumble back down the hill. Some people were theorizing that going down is harder than going up, don't let them kid you, going up is all effort and muscle pain, going down is losing your balance and rolling a lot. We got back to the sanitarium at about 5:00pm, showered and headed off to dinner. After a very nice dinner in a local restaurant, we found another place that served real carrot cake and had dessert there. I was asleep like a baby by 10:00 and woke the next morning feeling great. Until I tried to move my legs and discovered that each leg weighed about twelve tons. Maybe I shouldn't have had that extra piece of carrot cake. In a month or so, when my legs begin to recover their strength, I might try this hiking thing again.

March 30

It's that time of the year again. Baseball season begins this weekend and my fantasy team, The OverPaidPrimaDonnas, is poised to defend its role as the perennial bridesmaid in our league. Our draft was held yesterday and this year's team has some promise which is a serious handicap considering that our major strength has always been the quality of my whining. Nonetheless, in spite of a bizarre set of draft rules that once again conspired to prevent me from acquiring even one frontline pitching ace, second place is well within our expectations. We're No. 2, we're no. 2!!

March 31

Several months ago I had dinner with a group of friends in Pazardjik and ended up sitting across from Lori at the table. Lori told us all that she was leaving the PC because she'd joined the Foreign Service and had to terminate her PC service to begin training. It all sounded pretty interesting to me so I asked her how she went about joining the Foreign Service. It seems that there is a rigorously competitive process for obtaining one of these State Department jobs. Lacking a presidential appointment (ie. Condaleeza Rice) you first must pass a Foreign Service Written Exam (FSWE), then a Foreign Service Oral Assessment (FSOA) and finally, be high enough up on the list of qualifiers to be called for the one and only group training class each year. Here's a rough approximation of how the numbers work out; 30,000 people sign up for the free FSWE, about 5,000 of these don't even show up on test day; of the 25,000 who actually take the exam, approximately 10% achieve high enough scores to be offered a shot at the FSOA; some of these 2,500 then reconsider and drop out but about 2,000 will go through the day-long ordeal of the FSOA; less than 10% will be put on the list for potential entry into the Foreign Service. Then you just wait to see if there are openings in your cone (State Department talk for Field). You can stay on the list for 18 months at which time, if you haven't been offered a job, you can begin the whole procedure again or go find a day job. Lori was too modest to go into all these numbers, I dug them out of online State Department statistics.

The FSWE is a five part exam. Prior to taking it you have to declare which of the five FS cones you want to specialize in, the choices are Political, Public Diplomacy, Economics, Consular and Management. The SD site has a wealth of information on each and an online interactive test to help you decide. Part one of the exam is the job knowledge section. Multiple choice questions testing your knowledge in a wide range of subjects such as economics, history, geography, math, cultural events, political science, US legal system, management theory, etc. Upon finishing this section, you proceed immediately to a multiple choice section specifically designed for your cone. There is a 50 minute essay and then a multiple choice test on English and another that assesses your general life skills. A minimum score will be determined by the SD and only exams scoring above that number on the multiple choice sections will have their essays graded. Two out of three of the exams that qualify to have their essays graded are then rejected because of essay deficiencies.

Daunting to say the least. However, as it seems that my dream of being appointed a Senator will never come to fruition, I've signed up for the FSWE being held this Saturday in Sofia. I must be clear here, I don't want to campaign, run or engage in any political process to become a Senator, I just think it would be nice to have the job and I'd accept it if someone decided to give it to me. I probably stand a better chance of that happening than I do of passing the FSWE, but I'm going to give the test a shot anyway. After all, I have to find something to do when I grow up.

By the way, Lori, as a reward for her outstanding achievement, has been sent to Sudan for her first assignment which, of course, leaves the French Riviera wide open for the next group!

Sportin' Ladies

2006-03-09T07:55:00.000-08:00

A Bulgarian newspaper reported today that there is a high level of concern in Germany, host nation to the soccer World Cup, over the probability of a mass influx of 'sex industry' workers drawn by the huge crowds of, predominantly, young male fans. Fans of soccer, that is. Anyway, this sudden increase in Germany's already prodigious population of hookers, sportin' ladies and working girls will come primarily from 'Eastern European' countries and Number One on the hit list is (drumroll, please)...Bulgaria. WoooHooo! We're No. 1! We're No. 1!

I have spent most of my time here helping to develop mechanisms to assist Bulgarian businesses in recognizing, understanding and implementing European Union requirements, regulations and standards to prepare them for eventual accession into the club. Not once have I had the opportunity to consult with 'sex industry' workers or, sadly, to conduct any research into the requirements, regulations and standards set for these entrepreneurs in Germany or any other EU country. Then again, I'm not a big fan of soccer either.

The opera is back in town! After missing most of the season because the company was touring America, of all places, the Stara Zagora opera is back in business right here in Stara Zagora. Three weeks ago there was a false start to the new season when the lead soprano (a real soprano, not a New Jersey mobster) came down with an ailment, real or imaginary. The whole shebang was postponed until tomorrow night. As of today she's in fine fettle, so there are hopes that the curtain will rise on Puccini's "Madame Butterfly" and the show will go on. We have a large modern opera house in town that was partially destroyed in a fire a dozen years or so ago. It is still under repair and, from time to time, there are brief flusters of activity and the sound of hammers and saws can be heard in the building. Then a long period will go by without any progress at all. In the meantime, the operas are held in the local theater, which is fine with me. It is a small but very pretty building just a five minute walk from my apartment. There isn't a bad seat in the place and the acoustics are just fine. The stage isn't very large and requires some creative set design, but that's just part of the fun.

I was invited to the prom today! One of the seniors from the film club stopped by to ask me if I'd go to their prom on May 24th. I won't need to rent a tux or buy a corsage, however, as I'm being asked to stand by the wall and film the dance. I haven't seen any of the Film Club kids in a couple of months as they seem to all have developed new interests or become too busy with school. I had to explain to her that my 'good' camera was stolen and that I'd have to use the old, smaller cameras. She gave me a "now what should I do" sort of look and told me she'd think it over and let me know. Oh well, at least I won't have to polish my dancing shoes.

Apparently, we're having an intercom and buzzer system installed in my apartment building. Neither of the two lobby doors lock, so this will be a radical change. There is a telephone mounted just inside my apartment door which doesn't do anything at the moment. I guess they'll hook it up and I'll buzz in visitors, guests, delivery people, thieves and miscellaneous others. In a building that can't agree to chip in to pay to get the elevators fixed properly, this is a very interesting development. The lobby was just painted and part of the stairwell has also been cleaned up. By the time I move out the place could become downright respectable. I have been very comfortable in my apartment these past two years and I'll miss it in a masochistic sort of way. The appliances still conspire to do me in and the radiator is on its last legs, but I suppose it will all last until I leave. The view from the two balconies is great and my neighbors are all very nice to "the English guy". Matt was coming up in the elevator recently and was asked by a building resident if he was going 'na ghosti' to the English guy's apartment. That, I guess, would be me. Since our primary mission as PCVs is to foster a better understanding of Americans amongst our host country nationals, I'm pleased to say that I've tarnished the reputation of Englishmen and left our own unscathed.

At work I seem to have accidentally stepped through the looking glass. We've been working on an application for a grant from the EU agency Phare. A requirement of Phare applications is that they must be submitted in English and my role on past applications has been to polish the final draft. Generally, the application is written by Petya and Darina, always at the eleventh hour, with a great deal of heated discussion and enthusiastic waving of this or that set of guidelines or regulations. Then, five or ten minutes before it has to be sent off, I'm asked to re-do the English. This time was different. I was asked to actually write up the application to begin with and then we'd all sit around and edit my efforts together and send it off. This, after all, was the most important application we would file this year and to prove it, we were starting to work on it a month in advance! So I spent a couple of weeks working my way through the application and then sat down with my colleagues to discuss it and make any necessary changes. Imagine my surprise when I learned that I hadn't written a single acceptable word, not one. In my innocence I had mistakenly read the instructions for completing the application and followed them, unaware that my colleagues simply use those instructions as a sort of code for creating their own interpretation of the 'secret' meanings of the various terms. I actually took part in a very bizarre conversation explaining why the terms "target group" didn't actually apply to the group being targeted by the project but to a group that hadn't even been mentioned up to this point. However, when it came time to define the benefits to be received by the target group I was to describe the benefits to my original group of targets. So, it seems, I've been relegated back to polishing their English on the final draft. There's a lesson here somewhere.

March 17

Last night my neighbor came and rang my bell. She and her husband are about my age and, during the week, their granddaughter Hristina lives with them and attends the primary school next door. Hristina is in the fourth grade and is taking an English class, her grandparents don't speak any English and my Bulgarian is limited to saying hello to them in the elevator or hall. At her grandmother's (baba's) prompting, Hristina drew herself up to her full 3'10", pulled a ruled sheet of paper from her pocket, looked me in the eye and then began to read aloud, "On Saturday morning the door in the downstairs will be locked for always. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? I have for you one key. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? Here is your key, it will make the door to unlock. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?" I told her, in Bulgarian, that I did understand and that she spoke English very well, which made her baba very very happy. Then I asked how my infrequent visitors would be let in and was told that they would have to call me and I would have to go down and let them in. So much for the high-tech intercom system that I thought we were getting in lieu of elevator repair. Oh, and the elevators still won't be repaired.

One final more serious note to my sophomoric attempt at humor in the opening paragraph; many, if not most, of the Eastern European sex industry workers who will be in Germany will not be there voluntarily or from any spirit of free enterprise. They will be victims of human trafficking who will be there through force, coercion and/or deception. Bulgaria is, unfortunately, a primary source of young women forced into prostitution in other countries. The PC is very active in raising the awareness levels of the prevalence of these trafficking activities (known as TIP or trafficking in people) among high risk groups of young people across the country. Young women are lured by the promise of employment or educational opportunities to leave the country with 'sponsors' who then take their passports, documents and money and virtually sell them into truly horrific situations. Hopefully, as we shine more and more light on this practice, these cockroaches will be forced back into the sewers and their prospective victims will be safer. Our role as PCVs is to shine those lights.

Lastly, I went to "Madame Butterfly" on Tuesday night and it was terrific, even if it was a bit surreal to watch an Italian opera set in 19th century Japan about an American sea captain and a Japanese courtesan sung by Bulgarians. To aid the audience in understanding the plot, subtitles were flashed on a screen above the set in very blurred Bulgarian script. Well, thank goodness for that or I wouldn't have had a clue what was going on. As it's an Italian opera, the heroine dies in the end (it's the German operas where the fat lady sings) and she did so with panache and a level of histrionics suitable to a prima donna. Next time you're in Stara Zagora, catch the opera.

Say, That Looks Like A Sheep's Stomach

2006-03-06T06:03:00.000-08:00

Kukeri is a celebration of Spring that is unique to Bulgaria. It traces its origins back to Thracian times and is meant to drive away the ghosts that come out in the Winter and to ensure a successful agricultural season. Traditionally, the celebration or festival takes place in the early Spring in mountain villages throughout the country. The participants are men from the village who dress in traditional Kukeri costumes and slowly parade up and down the town to the accompaniment of horns, bells and drums. For the most part Kukeri costumes consist of sheepskin pants, belts hung with cowbells and ornate masks or headpieces that can resemble anything from animals to mythical monsters. Each costume is custom made and uniquely individual. Kukeri is also an excellent time for the folk dancing troop of the village to perform and if any neighboring towns care to send their dancers, they're always welcome. So the men perform this ancient ritual and the ghosts of Winter are chased away and the crops are assured. There are three big Kukeri festivals held here, one in Pernik just outside of Sofia, another in Shiroka Luka way down south in the Rhodope Mountains and the third in Koprevshtitsa in the Sredna Gora.

I had a dentist appointment and was actually in Sofia the weekend the Pernik festival was being held. I was aware of it and knew of several PCVs who were going, but I missed it anyway. It wasn't for a lack of interest. One of the things I want to see the most here is a Kukeri festival. I just sort of ran out of steam that weekend and never made it to Pernik. So that left Shiroka Luka and Koprevshtitsa. Unfortunately, Koprevshtitsa came and went without raising a blip on my radar and I missed that one too. Shiroka Luka is the good one anyway. If you're only going to see one Kukeri festival, by all means make it the one in Shiroka Luka. It couldn't have been more perfect because the festival was being held on the national three day weekend in March.

Actually, it would have been a bit more perfect if I hadn't had the flu for two weeks. Matt and Jessie were planning to go from Stara Zagora and asked me to tag along with them. I just didn't feel like taking the four different buses that the trip to Shiroka Luka required and decided to stay home. I was finally beginning to feel better and I thought a quiet weekend at home would get me back on my feet. Then on Friday I got a call from Sara, who was visiting Brian and Kate, letting me know that they were all going to Kukeri on Sunday morning. All I had to do was catch a bus to Plovdiv and then a friend of Kate's would drive us there in her car. We'd be back in Plovdiv in time for me to catch an early bus back to SZ. It was perfect. So Saturday morning I slept late and made myself an excellent breakfast of bacon and eggs. Then I wandered down to the bus station to catch the bus to Plovdiv. I had a bit of difficulty crossing the main street here in town because there was a huge parade of men wearing sheepskin pants and cowbells. There were troops of folk dancers in wonderful costumes and traditional Bulgarian folk music echoed throughout the town. I had a bus to catch and didn't get to see much more than that. I cut in front of a large man in sheepskin pants wearing an enormous deer's head with antlers at least ten feet tall. The whole thing looked suspiciously like a Kukeri Festival, but that couldn't be because no one had mentioned that we had a really big celebration right here whenever I said that I really wanted to see one! Ten minutes later I was at the bus station and on my way to Plovdiv. I was sorry to miss the Kukeri parade in SZ but my consolation was that I was going to one of the three most famous festivals in the country.

On Sunday it turned out that we were not going to Shiroka Luka after all. Shiroka Luka is some 200 kilometers from Plovdiv and we were going to a festival that was much closer, in Pervanets. In a way this was even better because the festival in Shiroka Luka would be packed with tourists and half the Peace Corp and this smaller festival would be easier to manage and a lot closer to home. After one false start (we stopped in a town very similar to Pervanets but not actually Pervanets) we found the town, parked and took up positions on the sidewalk. We could hear the parade farther along up the street and could see the beginnings of it coming towards us. We got our cameras out and began to shoot.

Down the street they came but instead of the traditional Kukeri parade, this was a group of villagers dressed in Halloween costumes carrying enormous wooden replicas of Turkish swords. Many of them did have on the belts with cowbells and there were drums and horns, but for the most part there were small boys dressed as small girls who ran around whapping you on the back with inflated sheeps' stomachs. Everyone got whapped to some degree or another with large men, cute girls and friends seemingly taking the brunt of the whapping. This may have been to drive out evil spirits, to cleanse all and sundry of assorted sins or merely because the small boys really enjoyed having an opportunity to go around hitting strangers with inflated sheeps' stomachs. In traditional Kukeri only the men take part. The folk dance groups have women participants but Kukeri is a 'guy' thing. Pervanets, however, is much more politically correct than tradition demands and women were well represented in the rolling insanity. I exclude the group of four young men dressed a nuns, who whapped away with a somewhat religious fervor, from the ranks of women. There were real women taking part in the parade, most of whom were dressed in some form of harem attire and were shaking it to beat the band. The 'band' was one guy with a clarinet and two guys with drums. All in all the word that comes most readily to mind is 'bizarre'.

After brushing off each others coats, we bid farewell to Pervanets and the inflated inner organs of domesticated livestock. We drove a way up into the mountains and stopped at a terrific bakery out in the middle of nowhere to buy some of the best bread I've had here. That says a lot because the bread here is uniformly excellent. Then we drove back into Plovdiv and I caught the bus to Stara Zagora. I suppose in the back of my mind I was hoping that the Kukeri festival would still be going on in town when I arrived. It wasn't.

I'm hard at work now preparing a grant proposal that will help turn my agency into a ROSIO, that's a Regional One Stop Investment Office. The idea is to create one central location for collecting databases of information to assist potential foreign investors in making the decision to move here. This is basically what we do now, but on a less formal basis and we'd like to have the ability to improve our data collection capacity and to better represent the entire region. It's an important grant for us and we're putting a lot of work into it. A measure of the seriousness with which we are taking this application is the fact that it isn't due until the end of March and we've begun working on it now. Typically, we would go to panic stations a couple of days out and frantically hammer away at our keyboards until the last minute. Frantic hammering is the watchword of the day now and we'll be at it until the package is in the mail.

I have quite a number of vacation days stored up and I'm not allowed to use them after July 10th because the PC has a rule that no vacation may be taken within the last three months of service. I'm not sure why this rule exists, but it does. So, I'll begin taking my vacation time in April and won't be at work much between then and July. Then, I'll literally be on the homestretch. I COS on October 10th and will probably head for home a day or so later. Between now and then, I have to decide more or less where 'home' is. Maine, New York, Chicago, or maybe someplace sunny. I still have time to figure it all out. Right now I have to hammer away frantically or risk getting whapped with the sheep's stomach that Petya is inflating at her desk.

A Mayonnaise Tragedy

2006-02-01T06:50:00.000-08:00

I'm quite certain that my nephew Philip is returned to the woods every summer to run free with his own kind, large bears. Last summer, however, he was forced by his parents to miss that seminal experience because they needed him to carry a jar of mayonnaise to Bulgaria. By 'jar' I, of course, mean 'drum'. Philip lugged a drum o'mayo across the Atlantic and into Bulgaria so his Uncle Larry could eat his tunafish sandwiches made with his preferred Hellman's mayo. I should be eternally grateful, his parents didn't seem to object too strenuously to his presence on the trip and the bears in the woods got more food for themselves. Unfortunately, my level of gratitude has been diminishing along with the mayo and, I'm distraught to announce, both have reached the very last drop of their existence. It may be time now to consider shipping young Philip back to Bulgaria on a mission of mercy.

When I was home visiting family and friends at Christmas I bought myself a gift. As I've become more and more interested in filmmaking, I realized that I wanted a better video camera. I have two small Canon digital camcorders but I've always planned on donating them to the Film Club when I leave Stara Zagora. So, eventually, I was going to buy a new camera anyway and if I bought it when I was home for Christmas, I could use it during my last few months in Bulgaria. It took a considerable amount of jumping through various hoops to get the camera ordered and delivered during the ten days I was home. Just to add to the hassle factor, they sent the wrong size lens filters which had to be exchanged. The company I dealt with online was Beach Camera and I would recommend them if you're looking for any type of photographic or video equipment. Anyway, before I left the States, I had the new camera with all the proper accessories. I used it a bit here in SZ and the difference in quality was noticeable.

As I've mentioned, I'm in the process of filming a documentary on the Decade of Roma Inclusion. In February 2005 Bulgaria, along with seven other eastern European nations, signed an agreement to create and implement action plans to integrate their Roma (Gypsy) populations into the mainstream societies. I've begun interviewing people across a broad spectrum of Bulgaria's population to try to determine their level of awareness about the action plan and their feelings towards it. Last Friday I went to Plovdiv because my friend Kate had arranged for me to interview a group of Roma heroin addicts. Kate works in an outreach program that provides counseling and clean needles to these people. We met in the 'clinic' and found several men who were willing to talk to us. Some of them preferred to be interviewed with their backs to the camera, some were too far gone to really understand our questions and some were willing and able to offer some very interesting opinions and insights. They felt that things will never improve for them because of their addiction but that things might improve for Roma children if they can find jobs when they leave school. One of our questions asks, "Do you think things will be better for you in five years, in ten years?" Not one of them could imagine himself being alive in five years.

From the film's point of view, the interviews were very successful. Kate had also arranged for us to interview a group of prostitutes later that evening. We would have to buy packs of cigarettes for them because while they talked to us they would be 'on the clock' so to speak. It was still early so we decided to have dinner in a local restaurant while we waited.

Between volunteers, friends and counterparts, there were five of us at the table in Restaurant Diana. We had a table back in a corner against a wall and settled in to have a light meal, a beer and some conversation. There wasn't room on the table or chair for my camera bag so I put it on the floor by my foot. The new camera and bag were fairly large and there was a wall behind me but I was still uncomfortable about leaving it on the floor so I kept glancing down to check on it. At one point I looked down and it was gone. Someone had managed to pull it away from my foot without any of the five of us noticing! We called the police and the inspector didn't seem to believe it either. Fortunately, Kate and her Bulgarian friend Dobi were there to convince the inspector that someone had somehow taken the bag right from under the big dumb guy's feet and that instead of yelling at me, he might want to look for the thief. The thief, of course, wasn't hanging around in front of the restaurant playing with his new camera, this isn't the way of thieves. He was long gone. Dobi went with me to the Police Station to file a report and our meeting with the prostitutes was cancelled. The camera had the piece of film we'd shot with the addicts in it, so that was gone too.

Brian suggested that I contact the credit card company to see if they had any sort of coverage for this situation so on Monday I did. As you might imagine I was referred from pillar to post and back again before I finally got to talk to the buyer's security unit. They have opened a claim file and are sending me a volume of paperwork to complete. I also have to send the police report, a notarized letter explaining the situation and all receipts and statements. After they receive all of this, they'll decide if I have any coverage. At least they didn't say "no" right off the bat. So, for now, the film project is on hold and I haven't decided whether or not to replace the camera right now.

On Saturday I went to visit Veneta & Stoil in Saedinenie and had a really wonderful afternoon. Veneta met me at the door with food and kept feeding me for the four hours I was there. Stoil and I drank domashna rakiya and domashno vino and watched the Winter Olympics. I reminded him that we got to know each other while watching the Summer Olympics in 2004 and that called for another round of rakiyas. They heat their house with a wood burning stove (pechka) which does an adequate job downstairs but leaves the upstairs as cold as a polar wind. They were very understanding when I explained that I'd be returning to Plovdiv to sleep on Brian & Kate's couch. When it was time to go, they loaded me up with food, rakiya and wine for the trip home. You never know when a party might break out on the bus and heaven forbid I should be without a couple of litres of rakiya!

I'll be spending the balance of this week in Sofia working with the SPA Committee on reviewing the latest round of project funding requests. Brian is also on the committee and we've made a practice of having dinner together at a local restaurant that serves a very nice steak smothered in a dijon mustard sauce. We smoke cigars, drink rakiya and solve many of the world's more difficult issues. All in all, it's an evening I'm looking forward to.

Everything has gone really well for me here and I've been enjoying my PC experience immensely, thoroughly and without reservation, at least right up until now. Now, as you may suspect, I'm a bit depressed. I didn't realize just how important mayonnaise is to me. So, Philip, wherever you are, tell the bears you can't see them again this Summer because I'm out of mayo!!

It May Be Your Teapot, But It's My Tempest!

2006-01-26T01:27:00.000-08:00

When we celebrated the completion of the renovation of the Knitting Room in the Home for the Handicapped last November, among those present for the party was a youngish woman living, temporarily, in the Home. In addition to unspecified handicaps that kept her confined to her wheelchair, she also had a drinking problem and was in the Home in an effort to regain some control of her life. During this brief period she befriended the women of HandKnitCrafts.com and often found time to join them as they worked. She didn't knit but sat with them and talked and gossiped and listened as they talked and gossiped and as they complained about life in general. Then the youngish (30's) woman left the Home, thought about her experiences there and wrote a letter to a penpal in England. The penpal was a vicar in a small town parish and Evgenia (the youngish woman) took great pains in her letter to him to: 1) reconfirm her overpowering love for Christianity in general and God in particular, 2) confess the personal burden she bears as a result of being overwhelmingly beautiful, 3) admit to backsliding ever so slightly on the whole alcohol thing and, 4) accuse me of the 'brutal exploitation' of the handicapped women of Stara Zagora.

How do I know this?, you ask. The Vicar, bless his well-intentioned soul, turned out to be married to the sister of the wife of the British Ambassador to Bulgaria. Small world, no? Through chain-of-command the letter wound up on His Excellency's wife's desk; who, by the way, is the Chairperson of Traditzia - the shop in Sofia where almost all of our knitted products are sold. One of the women in the shop faxed us a copy of the letter and we were, initially, somewhat at a loss for words. Then I began to find some words but, fortunately for you, I seem to have lost them again. Evgenia described the person doing the brutal exploitation as being 'the artist man' and my colleagues and I all agreed that, as I'm the only man involved in the project, she must have been referring to me. I've been accused of many things in my life, including the brutal exploitation of handicapped women, but I've never been called an artist! The nerve!

Our primary concern was to learn how Evgenia had developed this opinion. Was it a reflection of feelings held by the women with whom we'd been working for over a year? We arranged a meeting with the ladies and met them at the Home in the Knitting Room. After the usual banter and small talk, we began to ask them how they felt about the work we were doing for them. They assured us that they appreciated all we were doing but that A) we should sell more of their shawls so they can have more money and B) they don't want to work very hard anymore. This was not new, 'more money - less work' has been their theme song from day one. We, again, explained that start-up businesses don't quite work that way and had a fine old animated and boisterous conversation. With the four of us and the eight of them and their wheelchairs in a 15x20 room animated conversations are something to behold. This is pretty typical of our meetings and during the shouting and arm waving someone or another will be sure to begin passing out cookies or chocolates for their birthday or name day. Then we wrap it up and everyone says it's been fun and we leave.

So Petya mentioned the letter and the 'brutal exploitation' and the room went silent. Now that is different. The room is many things but one of those things is not quiet. The women knew about the letter, having been told of it by Evgenia. There was a bit of sheepish to-ing and fro-ing of wheelchairs and then they said that Evgenia had listened to them while they worked and misunderstood their general complaining about work, money and life and had written the letter without telling them. Then they stated emphatically that they want to do very little work and have someone give them a great deal of money. So, they have arrived at the place in capitalism where we all aspire to be; my work here is done!

The final bit of sweeping up was for Petya to make a daylong trip up to Traditzia to assure the Ambassador's wife that we were not brutally exploiting the women (and that I'm not really much of an artist) and that we were continuing to put a great deal of uncompensated time into helping them. It should be noted that, while I am a Peace Corp Volunteer, my colleagues are not compensated in any way for the many hours they spend each week trying to help the women form a sustainable business. The Ambassador's wife understood and during their meeting made the universal sign of putting your thumb to your lips and tilting your head back to indicate that she knew Evgenia. So all is well and our escutcheon is unbesmirched.

We are currently drafting a proposal to an EU funding organization for a grant to enable us to develop our Agency into a one-stop shopping center for foreign investors seeking to relocate all or part of their businesses to Stara Zagora. We want to build a set of web tools that will offer a vast amount of information to prospective investors, market our ability to hand walk them through the governmental processes involved in relocation and offer a menu of specific fee-based services. The most remarkable thing about this proposal is that it isn't due until the end of March and we're actually working on it now! This project seems tailor made for us and we seem determined to put some time into writing this proposal.

I traveled to a nearby village with some of the girls from the Film Club to begin filming Stancho's movie. The group has found a very good actress to play the part of the girl and Stancho's baba to play the part of the baba. The story revolves around the reasons the two don't like each other and calls for them to be fairly rude and mean to each other. Desi, the girl, has some acting experience and can be rude and mean on command, but Stancho's baba keeps looking at the camera and breaking into an ear to ear grin. She is one of the happiest people in Bulgaria and Stancho has to keep yelling at her to, "be a witch!" They've gotten off to a very good start and only need to keep at it to end up with a pretty good film. Nikoleta's movie is also moving along. She's doing the film with the animated ghosts and the cast of thousands and the magically appearing hotel. So far, she's still working with her cast on tightening up the script and hasn't begun filming. Mila & Eva are in the middle of shooting their really short film about a boy who decides not to run away from home and are waiting for the weather to improve before filming the last scene. I've shot about an hour's worth of film for the Roma project and have been trying to make contact with various people who are involved with that community. Jennifer, the PCV working with me on the project, and I want to have some film taken from the back of one of the many horse-drawn carts that are on every street. Our plan is to stand behind the driver and shoot over his shoulder which, admittedly, will fill the screen with the southern end of a north-bound horse, but will be a nice clip for the movie anyway. Unfortunately, the PC has just issued a directive prohibiting riding on horse or donkey carts. Oh well, they don't prohibit high school girls from riding on the carts so I'll have to ask Stancho to risk her life and limb for the sake of my movie. Now that's brutal exploitation!

Well, it's time for me, the artist man, to grab some crayons and begin to doodle on napkins. Hey, those things could be worth some real money some day! More money - Less Work!!

Baby, It's Cold Outside!

2006-01-10T02:20:00.000-08:00

I got off the plane in Sofia on December 27th after having spent ten days visiting family and friends in New York City. Sofia is much like NY, only smaller. Oh, and colder. Ah, and a little more worn down. But, the public transportation does actually work in Sofia. The transit workers were on strike in NYC which seemed to be their way of saying "Merry Christmas" to the cabbies in the city. Not a single meter was turned on during the entire strike and the cabbies needed to hire cabs to carry home their take. The cab ride from the Sofia airport to the Centralna Bus Station runs about 7.50 leva if you don't get ripped off. It also helps, in Sofia and anywhere else, to know where you're going and which roads are acceptable. No, I do not want to just jog by the Rila Monastery on the way to the bus station!

It was snowing in cold wind-driven flurries when I arrived and I queued up in a short line for a cab . I threw my baggage in and asked the cabbie to take me to the bus station. Then I did the inexcusable in cab riding etiquette in any city in the world, I nodded off. I'd been traveling for over 20 hours at that point and the cab was warm and the radio was playing classical music and I'd just eaten a big meal on the plane and....I nodded off! When the cabbie woke me up at the bus station, it took me a moment to remember where and who I was. Oh yeah, I'm the guy who couldn't manage to fall asleep in a British Airways fully horizontal sleeper seat across the Atlantic but immediately dozed off in the back seat of a Bulgarian taxi with only one out of four serviceable shocks and an odor emanating from under my seat that could easily peel paint. Now I remember. More annoyed at myself than the driver I snapped, "Kolko?" to find out how much of his retirement I was about to fund. He said, "Sedem e pet decet". 7.50 leva, right on the button. And a very Merry Christmas to you, Tiny Dimitar! I gave him ten and wished him all the best for the Holidays. I've heard horror stories from friends and colleagues of cab rip-offs in Sofia, but, touch wood, I've always been lucky.

Back at home several hours later I was in the process of unpacking and unwinding when my phone rang. My sitemates were ringing to let me know that it was Matt's birthday. As I've mentioned previously, one is obligated to treat on one's birthday and this was my chance for a free dinner, so I hopped down to the Unigato Restaurant for pizza ala Matt. It was a fine way to get back into the swing of things here. I was really enjoying the evening when, apparently, I dozed off again. During some lapse in my attention my sitemates all agreed to have a New Year's Eve party at my place.

My original, if boring, plan for New Year's Eve was to make myself dinner, have a glass of Stoil's homemade red wine, then have a glass of his homemade rakiya with a good cigar while standing on my balcony watching the fireworks. I had no intention of going out to any New Year's Eve parties. However, the party came to me and it was a great night. Alex brought dinner and Jennifer, Jessie brought champagne and cards for two card games she wanted to play and Matt brought his famous 'blackies'. Those are brownies that he scorches while baking them until they are almost impossible to dent with human teeth. Proving that PCVs will eat anything as long as it's free, we even finished off the crumbs which resembled chocolate flavored gravel much more than food. Alex cooked a delicious chicken curry dinner in my kitchen, we all drank Stoil's wine and rakiya, we played two card games whose rules seemed to change each time I drew anything that might win and, finally, at midnight we went onto the balcony to watch the fireworks.

During the eighteen months I've lived here, the Municipality has set off fireworks displays from the roof of their building to celebrate various public holidays. My balcony affords an unsurpassed view of these displays and I was certain that the New Year's Eve show would be truly memorable. Well, it was a memorable show all right. The Municipality's fireworks were okay. They only lasted about ten minutes and lacked a grand finale. They came and went, however, lost in the firestorm of the Mother of All Private Fireworks displays! I'm not sure whether the national sport of Bulgaria is soccer or rakiya making but next in line is outdoing your neighbor in the home explosives department. From balconies, terraces, yards, street corners and parking lots across Stara Zagora they began. Following an initial salvo of small Chinese firecrackers on a string, the volume and frequency of explosions increased and grew until the night skies over SZ reminded me of the tv pictures of the night bombing of Baghdad. New Year's Eve in Stara Zagora was indeed like Baghdad in the Balkans. The period of heaviest intensity lasted almost an hour and the gunpowder and cordite were so thick in the air that you could still taste them the next day. Interspersed amongst the explosions were the sounds of ambulances racing here and there to put someone out who had accidentally set fire to himself or to recover one minor body part or another that had accidentally been separated from its owner. I would seriously suggest amending the Bill of Rights to allow the possession of weapons grade fireworks by anyone with enough rakiya in them to light the damn things! By the way, the two card games were Asshole and Bullshit and if you know what the rules are, please tell me because my sitemates have the scruples and principles of cab drivers when it comes to cheating at cards.

Now we're well into the new year and for the B16s (I am a B16) we're on the homestretch. We have until October to complete our two years and three months in Bulgaria and then we'll become RPCVs. I was talking with some other volunteers about project ideas that might take me up to my COS date and was asked by the volunteer in Kazanluk if I'd be interested in doing a documentary film. We are beginning to explore the idea of creating a documentary about the Decade of Roma Inclusion in Bulgaria. Eight European countries have begun to implement an action plan to very deliberately ensure the integration of their Roma minorities into their mainstream societies. Because this will deal with discrimination, segregation and prejudices, we have to determine whether we can frame it in a positive light. I think it will work if we focus on the good intentions of the national plan and the very positive benefits to all involved if it succeeds. So this might be my sayonara project.

SZ is in the lee of the Sredna Goras and is, therefore, spared the very worst of the Winter weather in Bulgaria. I guess I've gotten spoiled because it's gotten cold this month and I find myself complaining. I complain to my colleagues, to my sitemates, to waitresses and checkout girls at the market, to cab drivers and unfortunate strangers who happen to be stopped at the same traffic light as me and now, I complain to you. It's cold outside. It's also cold inside. My little radiator is like the small engine that could, only it can't! It heats one room in my apartment but 'heats' is a relative term used only in comparison with the other completely unheated rooms. In the morning I often find ice on the floor of my bathroom, but it melts under the hot water of my shower. I get dressed in the morning in unheated rooms by putting on clothing that is stiff with cold. Try leaving your clothing in your freezer overnight someday to get a feel for the meaning of the word "refreshing" in the morning. But the cold doesn't last for long here in SZ and I want to take advantage of every possible opportunity to whine.

Now I've got to bundle up and take my camera out to film, uh, people and, uh, things about, uh, you know, like Roma and stuff. Michael Moore, step aside.

Puhtoovaneh

2005-12-28T03:47:00.000-08:00

Puhtoovaneh is travel in Bulgarian. I did some of that recently when I went back to New York for ten days to spend Christmas with my family. Because my flight didn't leave Sofia Airport until 2:30 in the afternoon, I planned to take a bus to Sofia that morning rather than go up the night before and stay at a hotel in town. I was chatting with my colleagues, Petya and Darina, about my plans and mentioned that I was planning on catching the 9:00am bus which would get me to the airport stop at about 12:00 noon. I could take a cab from there and be at the check-in counter by 12:30pm. They both began to explain the flaws in my reasoning to me, which consisted mainly of "you have to leave earlier in case 'something' happens". I've ridden the buses here for the past eighteen months and 'nothing' has ever happened but I bowed to their persistent and well-intentioned advice and decided to catch the 8:00am bus. The extra hour at the airport wouldn't really bother me and I planned to relax there with my book and a cup of coffee.

So I awoke early on Saturday morning, showered, picked up my bags and headed for the aftogara (bus station). I got there just in time to catch the 7:30am bus to Sofia, took my seat, accepted a cup of coffee from the attendant (stewardess?) and settled back to enjoy the movie (Lords of War). I mentally thanked my colleagues for their advice because the extra hour and a half relieved me of all time related stress in the beginning of my long journey to New York. Between Stara Zagora and Sofia the express bus makes only one stop, in Chirpan. After stopping in Chirpan it's a straight shot to the city and most of that distance is covered on a very modern divided highway. Just as we accelerated our way onto that highway, however, the dreaded 'something' did happen, there was a loud bang from underneath the bus as some part of the suspension chose that moment to die. The driver slowed the bus down to a crawl and for the next few miles we were tossed around in our seats like popcorn while the undercarriage crashed and shuddered its way over every bump in the road. We finally reached a filling station and pulled off the highway and the attendant announced that there would be a short pochivka (rest stop). Soon three men in blue work smocks began to poke and pry under the bus and eventually one of them came onto the bus to crawl down into the underneath through some removable panels in the floor. There was a great deal of banging and rattling going on as the 9:00am bus from Stara Zagora drove past us towards Sofia. From where I sat, the 9:00am seemed to be mechanically intact.

The three men in blue had our bus back on the road within an hour and we made very good time from the filling station to the tunnel. Sofia sits in a bowl surrounded by mountains and the highway from the east climbs partially up the elevation then cuts through the last bit with a short tunnel. We exited the tunnel into a heavy snowstorm and a pea soup fog. The road was slick with snow and visibility was non-existent so we were back to a slow crawl. An hour later we were at the stop closest to the airport and I quickly grabbed a cab and set off. The driver was a grizzled old fellow with one tooth and a ready grin to show it off. He was obviously proud of his single remaining tooth because he had framed it in gold. We chatted a little on the way to the airport and I mentioned that it was a shame that it was snowing because I was supposed to fly out later that afternoon. "Oh, the planes won't be bothered by the snow", I was assured by the cab driver. That was a relief. "No, it's this fog that will cause all the accidents." In Bulgaria you must always wait for the other shoe to drop.

I made it to the airport with time to spare, flew to London, changed terminals and caught the flight to JFK. My bag stayed on in London for a couple of extra days but it, eventually, made it to New York too. To celebrate my homecoming, the transit workers in NYC walked out on strike the day after I arrived. That didn't matter in the least because all I wanted to do was visit with my family and friends. My sons brought our baseball gloves with them from Illinois and we spent three days when the weather was absolutely beautiful playing catch in Central Park. I had a double bacon cheeseburger at Big Nick's and hot dogs at Papaya King. We went to see King Kong and I discovered that there is a price difference between New York and Stara Zagora ($10.75 vs. $2.00). Most of all, I just visited. It was Na Ghosti (long visit) time in New York.

My ten days seemed to go by in a heartbeat and the next thing I knew I was standing at the airline counter checking in for my flights back to Bulgaria. I had specifically requested an aisle seat and was surprised when the agent told me that they'd had to change my seat because the flight was so full. I began to whine that I'd had that seat reserved since August and I have long legs and I need to get some rest on this flight and.....when she interrupted me to explain that they were upgrading me to business class. Oh. Well, thank you very much. I had a very relaxing flight to London, changed terminals, caught the flight to Sofia, a cab to the bus station, the bus to SZ and was back home in an effortless 23 hours. I guess my bag had seen enough of London because it made the entire trip with me this time.

My trip back to the States was wonderful but it also felt good to get back here to Bulgaria. For now, this is home and it was good to get back home. It's the nature of this Peace Corps business that when you're well and truly settled into your life in your host country, it's time to leave. My COS (completion of service) date is October 10, 2006 and the time between now and then will pass very quickly. I've decided that in January I'll start figuring out what it is I want to do after my time here is up. I've got ten months to come up with a plan.

Well, New Year is right around the corner and I plan to spend mine with a glass of Stoil's domashna rakiya, a hand rolled cigar and my iTunes. I'll be on my balcony watching the SZ fireworks and, if you're in the neighborhood, you're welcome to join me.

Happy Holidays

2005-12-13T01:08:00.000-08:00

On Saturday I'll take the early bus to Sofia and get off at the first stop on the outskirts of the city. There I'll grab a cab and take it to the airport. In the early afternoon I'll fly to London where I'll transfer to a flight to New York. All in all the trip will take about 20 hours but getting to see my family and friends at the end of it will make it all worth while. Besides, I didn't have any other plans for Saturday.

Things have been reasonably quiet here for the past month. There is only one group working on a film at this time. Nikoleta is determined to make her movie which will include animated ghosts and a spontaneously appearing hotel. During the first round of film projects I advised all the kids to keep their movies simple, to keep the stories short, to keep the casts small, to keep the dialogue to a bare minimum and to work in a group of four or five students. Nikoleta wrote a script about a spaceboy who performs a couple of 'special effects' miracles and then beams back up to his own planet, complete with flashing lights and sound effects. She had a cast made up of half the tenth grade and filmed in three different locations. One of her lead characters dialogue sheets were eight pages long. She never formed a group to help her and she was also the only one who actually finished her movie.

This time around I've said that anything goes except animation, we just can't do animation. Nikoleta is pushing the frontier ever farther by combining animation with live action and a cast that includes six individual speaking parts and three ghosts. I'm helping her develop a more coherent story than she started with and I'll help her with the cameras and editing when the time comes. She's on her own for the rest of it. We had a cast meeting this week to read through all the speaking parts (three girls and three boys) in order to begin to work on the dialogue. The meeting began with Nikoleta and her production team (she has succumbed to my nagging) and the three actresses but no boys. Finally, one brave kid showed up and was immediately assigned a part. After waiting about fifteen minutes, he was sent out to recruit or shanghai two other boys. He returned to the room about ten minutes later with a couple of his friends and received a standing ovation from the girls. The kids only had time to read about three of the twenty pages of the script before the bell rang calling them to class. Nikoleta is very very very persistent and we're going to run through the script again on Friday.

Handknitcrafts.com started out well but has since fizzled somewhat. We received a few orders and the website gets a lot of hits, but we haven't done much in the way of business lately. That is mildly disappointing but not disastrous because we still need to do a lot of work on setting up our procedures for processing orders. I am supposed to be interviewed by a couple of reporters from the States in the next few days and if I can get a plug into some papers back home it should help. The women aren't using the room to knit in unless I go out to see them, then they all come rolling down to the room and we sit and chat for a while and they knit. As soon as I leave, however, they all return to their own rooms to knit. It turns out that they are just used to knitting by themselves in their rooms and, more importantly, they sit and watch their soap operas while they work. Now I'm working with them to try to convince them to use the room to knit at times when the soaps aren't running. Putting a TV into the knitting room isn't the solution we're looking for, because a) we don't have the funds b) it would require installing cable and the monthly subscription fee and c) the staff would soon take it over.

It's become colder lately in SZ. We really can't complain though because it's milder here than anywhere else in Bulgaria. We're protected from the bitter weather that comes down from the north by two mountain ranges. It certainly isn't as cold as either Chicago or New York have been this past week! On the other hand, I'm out in it a lot more here. I don't have a car and my apartment doesn't have heat. I use a single electric heater to heat up one room and the bill for doing that can run as high as 300 leva a month. It's just the way things are here and spring is only three months away!

Further to my adventures with appliances, my refrigerator fell down last week. Actually, it didn't make it completely to the floor because a kitchen wall got in the way. Apparently, two little foot type things on one side felt that after 40 years of holding up the refrigerator (a Minsk 16) they'd had enough. I'm not sure how they fell off, but I came home to find the fridge slumped over against a wall like a man feeling the effects of too much rakiya. My best guess is that the feet simply vibrated off after years of supporting a cooling unit that turns on and off with the quiet smoothness of a cement mixer. I was surprised to see that even on its side, the fridge did its job and the inside was still cool. At its best, the inside is still warmer than the rest of the kitchen during the winter. So I propped it back up and jammed the feet back in. It never missed a beat!

The Christmas lights are up in town and it looks really wonderful. The double rows of trees are strung with small white lights and the Obshtina is festooned with all sorts of decorations done in lights. There is a big Christmas tree in the main plaza and a row of temporary shops set up on Tsar Simeon Blvd. to sell all sorts of Christmas junk. SZ is a pretty town anyway, but the Municipality does a really nice job of lighting the place up for the Holidays. I'll be back here for New Years Eve and I'll have a ringside seat from my balcony for the fireworks display. Then I'll have to round up another project or two for the next few months. I'm considering something devoted to appliance repair.

Happy Holidays to all of you, and I'll see you next year!

The Turkey and Its Day

2005-11-21T01:29:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is traditionally held on the last Thursday of November except in Bulgaria where we hold it whenever some of us can gather in one spot at the same time on a given weekend close enough to that actual day. This year Thanksgiving was this past weekend. My apartment is the largest amongst those of all my friends so, by default, I am the host. I wouldn't have it any other way. This year there were to be twelve of us and people were traveling from every corner of Bulgaria to attend. Different people came with different expectations and different visions of the perfect Thanksgiving dinner as remembered from their own homes and families. However, one expectation held in common by them all was that there would be a turkey cooked to a soft golden brown and dinner would begin when the turkey was ready. Everyone planned to bring a dish or a bottle of wine or a dessert, everyone planned to come with a hardy appetite and everyone, without exception (even the vegetarians) expected to see a turkey on the table. I was responsible for the turkey.

Please understand, there are turkeys in Bulgaria, lots of them. Turkeys gang up in packs in every village and make it their business to strut about and to gobble around in the wee small hours of the mornings waking up honest citizens from their well-deserved rest. 'Pyweeka' is Bulgarian for turkey and you can find them everywhere. Except in stores at Thanksgiving. I went out to Billa (a big store), I went out to Metro (the other big store), I searched high and low and found not a single solitary pyweeka, frozen or otherwise. Here it's more of a Christmas sort of meal so there may be turkeys available in the stores around that time, which will be small consolation to a group of turkey-deprived American Thanksgiving feasters.

Last year my colleague Rumiana helped me get a turkey. It was a turkey raised in Brazil by a French company who then sold it to a German food distributor who in turn shipped it to Bulgaria. This United Nations of turkeys looked suspiciously like a duck but it served its purpose. However, with twelve of us planning to dig in, the UN bird would never do. We needed a real pyweeka with some meat on its bones.

Once again, Rumiana came to my rescue. She and her husband own a house in a small village nearby and she offered to get me a pyweeka from her neighbor who had a flock of them. I said that I would gladly buy any turkey available that weighed between five and eight kilos. Rumiana said that she thought the birds were in that range now but that they would probably weigh less after I killed them and removed the parts that you don't eat. Oh. Well, the neighbor would actually kill the bird so that it wouldn't make a mess in Rumiana's car but I'd get the feathered remains to do with as I pleased. Oh.

Plan B involved me going back to Metro and Billa and looking for two or three of the biggest frozen chickens I could find. I was in the process of convincing myself that I could tie three chickens together and no one would know the difference when Rumiana said she'd located a place that had honest-to-God frozen turkeys...just like at home! She ordered one for me over the phone, hung up and told me I'd have to pick it up the next day at Neego. Wonderful! Excellent! Superb! We have a turkey I can understand and deal with, a frozen turkey with all the inedible bits already removed.

What's Neego? Unfortunately, I waited until the next day to ask this question and Darina (another colleague) said, "it's the Beef & Pork Institute". In a weird Bulgarian sort of way it makes perfect sense that you can only get a turkey at Thanksgiving from the Beef & Pork Institute. Okay, but can I walk there? No. Oh, can I catch a bus? No. Well where is it? Now, you can go anywhere in Stara Zagora by cab for one lev and you can get to any of the outlying parts of the city for one lev fifty stotinki but you can't get to Neego for less than nine leva. We rode so far and so long that I do believe we crossed two international borders on the way. Neego may actually be somewhere in the Middle East. Toni (the colleague who always gets stuck "helping Larry do simple things he's incapable of doing by himself") came with me and when we finally got there she suggested that we ask the cab to wait or risk having to walk back.

There was a line with approximately twenty people on it waiting for turkeys. There was a closed door and one by one people would be invited in to get their turkeys. I was the only one there with a cab waiting with its meter ticking. At the rate the line was moving it was going to be a very long and costly wait. I badgered Toni into going up to the head of the line and I knocked on the closed door. This caused audible grumbling up and down the line. I walked into the turkey distribution room as soon as they opened the door and said very loudly in English, "Hello, I ordered a turkey and I just want to pick it up. Do you have my turkey?" A few people in the line spoke up sharply and I turned and said loudly and in nearly perfect English, "Yes, I'm here for a turkey. I'll only be a minute and then you can all do whatever it is you are doing." Toni was hiding behind a pile of frozen turkeys.

The woman in the distribution room understood that the quickest way to get rid of me would be to give me my turkey, so she did. As I was walking out and everyone on the line was giving me the death stare, I said, "Thank you for understanding, it means so much to a Canadian like me." But I had acquired what was possibly the world's most costly five kilo turkey and I was happy. Toni ran to the cab with her coat pulled over her head just like those people being pulled into and out of police stations on the news.

My friends arrived and we all really got into the spirit of the Holiday. We had pumpkin cooked with butter and brown sugar, a green bean casserole with crunchy onion rings on top, garlic mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, a shopska salad, gravy, stuffing and a turkey large enough to feed twelve with leftovers. For dessert we had an apple crisp, banana bread with chocolate chips, chocolate chip cookies, ice cream and fudge brownies. We took time during the meal to go around the table to give each person an opportunity to say what he or she was thankful for and everyone remembered family and friends. Wine and rakiya flowed throughout the evening and Brian and I repaired to the terrace to smoke cigars while everyone sat around groaning and rubbing their stomachs. It was a great evening.

On Sunday, after everyone left I puttered around tidying up and then pulled some turkey out of the fridge to make a sandwich. It was quiet and peaceful and I put my sandwich on the table and went to switch on my iTunes. Just then a hose that supplies water to the toilet tank in my bathroom corroded completely through, separated from the tank and began to shoot water around the bathroom as if it were a fire hose. I ran to shut off the water and the faucet handle broke off in my hand. Everything I tried to stuff into the hose shot across the bathroom like a shell from a howitzer. I was forced to run, soaking wet, eight floors down to get Hristo my landlord. He came up, found the main water shutoff valve (under the sink in the guest bathroom), stuck a ten stotinki coin and a piece of inner tube into the butt end of the hose and said he'd be back tonight with a new hose. I mopped up the mess, changed into dry clothes and ate my sandwich. Nothing spoils the taste of a turkey sandwich the day after Thanksgiving. Nothing.

I have quite a bit to do during the next two weeks. I'm trying to complete a video for Habitat for Humanity by December 1st, I have a powerpoint presentation due by November 30th for my colleagues here at REDA, there is a committee meeting I have to prepare for and attend also on December 1st and I have to find ways to get the knitting business kick started. Our web address is: www.handknitcrafts.com so please take a look at it and tell others about it if you like it.

Then I'll be going to New York for Christmas to see my family. So, in case I don't get another chance to write before the end of the year, Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Holidays to you all. And remember, it makes all Canadians look bad when one of us crashes the line for frozen turkeys.

Halloween

2005-11-01T08:00:00.000-08:00

There is a party held by tradition in Veliko Turnovo each Halloween. Many PCVs attend this party and use the occasion to blow off steam, drink, dance, drink some more, form piles of bodies on the floor and elsewhere, drink a bit more, grope and fondle, slap and tickle, drink just for the hell of it, sing offkey, and finally, drink to amuse themselves while playing drinking games. We're in Bulgaria for only two Halloweens and I missed the Blue House Party in Veliko both times. However, Greg the PCV in Nikolaevo, a nearby town, invited the three PCVs from Stara Zagora and another three or four volunteers from the Valley of the Roses (our basic region) to join him for dinner and a bonfire on Saturday night. We all met up at Greg's place and spent the afternoon walking around his small town. He took us down through the mahala section or Roma quarter and introduced us to many of the people with whom he works. I didn't realize that we'd be going through this part of town so when the rest of the group went off for coffee, I ran back to Greg's to get my cameras and then went back into the mahala. Mahala is just a nice sounding word for ghetto. There is a marked economic difference between the Bulgarian part of a town and its mahala. I've been warned by colleagues and coworkers to never venture into that part of a town because a) they'll steal everything you have on you, or b) they'll kill you and then steal everything you have on you. It was a bright beautiful day and I didn't feel any sense of impending danger so I went back to see if I could take a few pictures.

From the first quick glance, the section looked like any impoverished shantytown in any underdeveloped part of the world or Illinois. Walking through the streets, however, I began to notice two things. First, the neighborhood was clean without trash or litter lying about. Houses were small and poor but for the most part, freshly painted and tidy. Laundry hung on lines and gardens were well tended. Second, like the Pied Piper, I attracted an ever growing entourage of children. One little guy in a Tom & Jerry (cartoon characters not ice cream vendors) sweatshirt appointed himself my guide and insisted that I see all the important sights in the neighborhood. That sounded good to me so I let him lead me to all the important sights, which consisted of his Baba. I then had to abandon any hope of getting interesting pictures of mahala life in favor of taking photos of as many people as I could in the shortest possible time. This was a lot of fun and it gave me an opportunity to talk with some very friendly people. After I'd take a picture or two on my digital camera, the kids would rush up and pull it out of my hands so they could see the picture. They'd pass it around and everyone had a comment, then they'd run back to find a new spot to pose and demand more pictures. They called me Chicho or Uncle (at least I choose to believe that's what they were calling me) and like a good uncle, I promised them that Greg would give them copies of the pictures. Way to go, Greg!

I've posted some of the pictures and I have a bit of video that I'll put online later. Although it doesn't show in the few shots I have online, every second house in the mahala had a satellite dish on the roof and a horse and wagon in the front yard. By the way, although I was tugged on, pulled at and handled quite shockingly in some cases, not a stotinki was missing when I headed back to the cafe to meet the others. In fact, the toughest negotiation I had was to convince Mihailov (?), my pint sized guide with four gold earrings, to accept fifty stotinki for his fee instead of the twenty he'd suggested.

I recognize that we have volunteers who work regularly in the Roma sections of towns but this was my first experience there. The differences between Bulgarian and American cultures are subtle and ones of degree for the most part, the differences between American and Roma cultures are huge and worth learning.

I made it back to Greg's just in time to help buy the groceries and rakiya for dinner. We all pitched in and made a Uruguayan dish that Greg had learned to cook when he lived there. Lentils, tomatoes, sausages, rice and anything that was lying around went into the pot which was then cooked in the oven, casserole style. After wishing each other a Chestit Halloween!, we dug in and ate every scrap of the dish. Then we got into the important business of the night, carving the tikvichi. Again, a group effort seemed the most efficient use of manpower so one person drew, another cut an eye, someone else hacked out a nose, etc. When the pumpkin was carved we carried it and a large bag of supplies up the mountain to the ruins of an old Roman fort. Greg had gone up the day before and hidden a store of firewood there so we lit a bonfire and toasted marshmallows. Rakiya, in case you've been wondering, is what the arson squad would refer to as an "accelerant". It also goes quite nicely with s'mores! Thank you.

The next morning, after a breakfast of cheese omelets, we all headed back to our respective sites. Apparently, the time had changed that night and I stood out in the freezing wind for an hour and a half waiting for a bus I was convinced was an hour late. I had actually been told about the time change, but chose to question the accuracy of the information. Yep, they were right.

On Monday I had to go to Sofia to have a biopsy on my left hand. I have a skin 'event' on my hand. It isn't fungus or a rash or parasitic, it's an event. The dermatologist says its a granuloma something or other and no one knows how you get it or how you get rid of it. It doesn't itch or burn and it isn't contagious but it just slowly moves around on the back of my hand. Sometimes it goes away of its own accord. But they took a chunk of it out to send to the lab in the States because that's PC procedure. The doctor put a single stitch in to close up the cut and the stitch will have to come out in a week. My choice is to go back to Sofia to have a stitch pulled or to pull it myself. The PC doctor has agreed to let me try to pull my own stitch out but insists that I be on the phone with her while I'm doing it. How tough can it be? Cut the stitch above (or is it below?) the knot, grab the knot with the tweezers and pull until a) the stitch comes out or b) I faint dead away. So take that all you PCVs living in Africa bragging about how tough you have it. I will be performing a surgical procedure on myself next week. Gimme a mirror, I'm sure I can remove that tumor from my brain with my Swiss army knife and this sewing kit.

Okay, I was hit by a car today. Well, 'hit' is a dramatic word that, in this case, stands for 'nudged'. It was my own fault really, I wasn't paying any attention as I was walking to work and the car had clearly established right of way on my part of the sidewalk. She was trying to pass a line of cars that had foolishly stopped for a red light and, as is fairly common practice here, pulled briefly onto the sidewalk to do so. As a pedestrian I was obviously more agile and should have leapt out of her way. She was forced to brake and lost her place as the light changed and the other cars (her competitors in the daily Bulgarian "How fast can your car go?" drive to work) pulled away from the light in a miasma of burning rubber. She accepted my apology pretty ungraciously, clumped her way over the curb back onto the road and roared off in hot pursuit. I'm considering mounting a horn and flashers on my jacket.

Meetings, Peace Corps Style

2005-10-20T01:25:00.000-07:00

Our group, the B-16's, is the 16th group of volunteers to serve in Bulgaria. We come in two flavors, the COD's (Community Organizational Developers) and YD's (Youth Developers). Any of the even numbered groups (B-14's, B-18's, etc) are COD/YD groups and the odd numbered groups are all TEFL's (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). The TEFL's are also divided into two groups based on whether they will be assigned to teach in primary or secondary schools.

There are some advantages and disadvantages inherent in belonging to either group. The Teachers arrive in Bulgaria in April, complete training around the end of June and are at their sites a month or so before school begins. They spend the very pleasant Bulgarian summer integrating into their communities and adjusting to life in a new country. The Business volunteers (COD/YD) arrive in August, compete training around the end of October and arrive at their sites just as the local population is preparing to hibernate through the gruesome Bulgarian winter.

The Teachers have a very structured program and a clear understanding of their job description and responsibilities. The Business people often are left to their own devices to create a niche for themselves because the organizations that request us, often do not have a clear understanding of our skills or their own requirements. "Creating your job" is often the most frustrating part of being a Business Volunteer.

The Teachers tour of duty ends in June, which allows those volunteers hoping to go on to grad school ample time to finish their full two year service in the Peace Corps, return home to the States, find jobs, travel and still get set for school in September. The Business volunteers tour of duty ends in October which means, for those hoping to go on to grad school, they must either leave PC early or delay entering school for a semester or even another year. For many of my colleagues this is definitely choosing the lesser of two evils. They want to stay their full two years but they don't want to further delay entry into grad school.

Business volunteers, however, do have some advantages over Teachers. We can opt for vacation any time we like, as opposed to the 'summer only' rule for Teachers. We also have the ability to proactively search out niches for ourselves that are personally rewarding and fulfilling. If you don't like what you're doing, you have some flexibility to change it. If you find that you don't like teaching, however, you're pretty much stuck.

All in all the differences are small and the two sections mix and mingle into one large Peace Corps Bulgaria community. Teachers complain about the kids and the school administrations and Business people complain about almost everything under the sun. Just like back at home. The significant difference here is that we do a lot of this complaining in Bulgarian!

Beginning with Staging, the PC is really strong on group meetings. They gather us together in a US city to give us a bit of orientation before sending us, as a group, to our country. Upon arrival, we're kept together as a group for about a week before being split into smaller groups for three months of training. During training, however, we're often pulled back together for one or two day whole-group meetings. Then after training, we're gathered together for various trainings, conferences and seminars throughout our first year. Then it ends. Now the B-16's only have one last meeting on our schedule..the COS conference. Close Of Service. That takes place several months before we actually leave.

The meetings provide us with an opportunity to see people we haven't seen in awhile and to take a break from our jobs. The conference I just attended was called the MidService Conference and it is set up to coincide with the end of training for the incoming group. We are given some training too, but we're there primarily to pass our experiences on to the new guys. It seemed a little strange to be the people with the experience because it feels like we just got here. The new group is ready to be through with training and out in their sites and we tried to give them the same advice we were given, take it easy, sit back and observe, don't try to do too much too quickly. They won't listen any more than we did and some of them will quit when the frustration becomes overwhelming. Some of us are still quitting. My group has dwindled down to about 47 from the original 60 and one more went home last week.

By and large people leave for a variety of reasons, but very very few leave because of Bulgaria. They miss boyfriends and girlfriends, they get job offers, they have family commitments, or medical problems or they just decide that a PC life isn't for them. Of the many volunteers who have chosen to et (early termination), and I believe that figure will generally approach 30%, I haven't heard of any who left because they just didn't like Bulgaria or Bulgarians. We kid about the hardships here because the PC culture places a premium on how much you suffer. Living in unheated shacks without electricity or running water, having to take your malaria pills every day and being infested with hordes of parasites becomes a badge of honor among volunteers. Our complaints here in Bulgaria center around having our cable internet go out in our apartments or the elevator didn't work today. Sometimes I can't get avocados. In many PC countries we'd be digging pit latrines or working in impoverished native villages teaching basic sanitation. In Bulgaria we work in offices, schools and municipalities helping Bulgaria prepare for admittance to the European Union.

This is a vibrant modern country that is pressing enthusiastically ahead. There are still some hurdles to overcome but progress is being made everywhere. The biggest complaint about Bulgaria these days is the level of corruption that exists in every level of government. It is a cloud that affects the volunteers as well as their counterparts. I try to explain that Bulgaria didn't invent corruption (I think Chicago did and if it didn't then it certainly raised it to artform status) and throwing some light on the situation is the first step towards eradicating it. Today in Bulgaria, lights are shining everywhere and the corruption roaches are scurrying for cover. All in all Bulgaria may not be Paradise but it sure isn't Bangladesh either.

Until a visitor pointed it out to me recently, I didn't notice that there aren't any lightbulbs in my elevators (It turns out I'm not incredibly observant...who knew?). The only lightbulb is mounted outside on the roof of the car, but the ceiling is a two inch thick section of laminated wood which is as translucent as a coal seam. Someone's solution was to drill six holes about the diameter of quarters into the ceiling right over the panel with the floor buttons. Weak lines of light come down and if you peer very closely you can find the button for your floor. Apparently, years ago all the buttons fell off and some numbers-challenged soul put them back on. I doubt if there is one single button that corresponds correctly with the floor it serves. I live on the eighth floor and the button that sends the elevator to the eighth floor is marked 11, if you push the button marked 8 you end up on the sixth floor. Counting buttons doesn't really work either, because there are two or three that don't seem to have a floor attached to them at all. So the eighth floor button is the first button on the top row to the left. The lobby level is the second button on the bottom row also on the left. Come see me some time.

The Road to Balchik

2005-09-26T01:14:00.000-07:00

Right after I started the Film Club, I saw an article about an International Students Film Festival and told the kids about it. As I've mentioned, the Film Club takes place in the Roman Rolen School in Stara Zagora. This, it turns out, is one of the elite high schools in Bulgaria. Kids from all over the region compete to enter the school and only the brightest and most motivated are accepted. When they learned that there was a competition for student films, they immediately decided to produce an entry. Their plan is to get a film ready for the entry deadline in June 2006 and win the Festival in September 2006. As one of the girls said, "Of course we'll win! What is the point of entering if we don't win?" Never mind that to date they have made exactly zero films and have never seen any of the films that students have made, they will enter and win.

The Film Club, which began in January, melted down during the year and over the Summer became a group of a dozen girls who wrote scripts and began burning up video tape. From this group of twelve, there are three eleventh class girls and two tenth class girls who have become the core of the team that is working on next year's Festival film. They've come up with a terrific story line and are struggling to put it into a working script.

It seemed like a good idea to see if I could take a trip out to Balchik to check out the Festival and get an idea of the quality of the films being entered by students from all over the world. All of the entries were from students enrolled in film programs in universities, none were made by high school students. All of the entries were made using professional level equipment, none were shot with handheld digital camcorders. Most were the result of years of study and experience, none were a first effort. I wanted to help set the girls' expectations to a more realistic level, so I planned my trip out to Balchik. Balchik is a resort town on the Black Sea, about 20 minutes north of Varna. I planned to stay at Sara's place and commute back and forth to Balchik for a couple of days and then return to Stara Zagora armed with intelligence about the state of the competition which I'd then share with the girls.

The girls decided that they would rather see the competition themselves so we hired a minivan and driver and left Stara Zagora at 5:30am for the five hour drive to Balchik. We would go up and come back the same day but we'd be able to see about 20 films while we were there. The seven girls all piled into the two back rows of seats leaving the driver and me the three front seats to ourselves. After an hour or so of riding, I asked the driver to stop so I could get a cup of coffee. Steffi (our team's Producer) was becoming carsick, so she moved up front and sat by the window which moved me to the middle with the gearshift between my knees. She rolled the window down to get some air but the driver, a cheerless soul, kept insisting that she roll it back up or the tuhchenie (see previous post on the Dreaded Tuhchenie) would kill us all. I didn't want to be vomited on so I worked out a compromise position which allowed Steffi to lower the window enough for a stream of fresh air and she rode along like a puppy with its face in the wind.

The driver never said a word and spent the ride listening to the Bulgarian version of the Crop Reports on the radio. From time to time the reception would fade and he'd have to search the dial for another Crop Report. As he'd go by music, the girls would perk up and ask to leave it there so they could listen. He'd just ignore them and go on until he found the droning monotone voice that seemed to make him less miserable than usual. I finally asked him to put some music on for the girls and reminded him that I was paying him for the trip. He promptly turned the radio off. 'I'm paying the bill' doesn't seem to carry the weight over here that it does elsewhere. However, the girls were happy and excited and managed to attract the attention of a car full of boys traveling right behind us, so the radio was forgotten.

We got lost in Varna. This will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the quirky manner of road signage in Bulgaria. The signs lead you, with remarkable efficiency, into the most desolate and remote areas of a city and then they disappear. Being lost in the slums of Varna did nothing to improve the driver's toxic disposition but he was a professional so he began to ask directions of passersby. Unfortunately, he would only stop to ask men and only men well into their eighties and then only if they were visibly drooling on themselves or conversing with their own shadows. After an hour or so of wandering, we stumbled onto the road to Balchik and twenty minutes later we all got out of the van at the wrong site. The van immediately drove away.

On its own website, the Festival proudly announces that the venue is the "Palace Complex" in Balchik. There is indeed a Palace Complex in Balchik but if you ever go to the Festival (and I recommend it) pay no attention to this claim because the Festival is actually in the Chitalishte, a building located as far from the Palace Complex as it is possible to be and still be in Bulgaria. I was forced to call the driver and have him come back to take us to the Chitalishte, which did not improve his mood in the least. So, we finally arrived at the Festival just as the morning session ended.

That gave us time to wander around the town and to get some lunch. Then, finally, we went to the Festival and saw some films. The films were in three broad categories; fiction, documentaries and animation. We watched movies from 2:00pm until 6:30pm, met the Festival's organizers and talked with a few of the filmmakers. I quickly realized that these films were way out of our league. They were excellent and we don't have the skill or equipment to compete with them, but the girls were having a ball and were discussing every film like professional critics so who was I to rain on their parade?

Then it was time to herd 'em up and head 'em out. As we were leaving to find the van, Nikki noticed that a party was to begin at 11:30pm and go until dawn. Most of the participants would be there and it was to be hosted by a DJ known as "Porno BPM". They all assured me that their parents wouldn't mind if they stayed for the party. In fact, if their parents had only known about the party to begin with they would have likely insisted that the girls attend. I expressed a measure of skepticism. They earnestly assured me it would be okay. I pictured myself talking to their fathers the next day, "Well, Mr. Ruskov et al, Nikki said you wouldn't mind if I let her stay in Balchik overnight to go to a party hosted by the notorious Porno BPM".

"Get in the van", I said.

"But we want to stay for the party. Why do we have to leave?", they asked.

I used the most famous argument in adulthood, "Because I said so!" and we left.

The ride home was great. They quickly forgot about the party and began to discuss movies and all the other things of interest to seventeen year old girls. Then they began to sing. They sang songs in English and Bulgarian. Did you know that "My Darling Clementine" has 25 verses? Neither did I. At one point I looked back to find that all seven girls were sitting on the rearmost three seats with their arms around each other singing away like drunks in a bar, but happy drunks. This, of course, bothered Mr. Sunshine to no end so he kept putting the volume up on the radio. The girls just sang louder. His picture is in the dictionary next to the word 'curmudgeon'. I turned off the radio and he just glared at me but left it off.

As we pulled back into Stara Zagora I asked the girls how they felt about next year's Festival after seeing the films. Stancho said, "We are more certain than ever that we'll win next year's competition!" That's funny, I thought she saw the same films I saw. All the girls immediately agreed and are determined to finish their script this month so we can get going on their film. They do have a great idea for a short film...at least as good as any we saw in Balchik.

"Oh", Steffi added, "and next year we'll be eighteen, so we can definitely stay for the party."

"Uh, well, you see, Mr. Ruskov, it's like this....."

One down, one to go!

2005-08-24T01:25:00.000-07:00

It's been a fairly busy Summer. I am still working on my two basic projects, helping the women in the Home for the Handicapped start a knitting business and working with a group of high school students who are interested in filmmaking. Somehow I've decided that I am eminently qualified to offer assistance in both areas even though my experience with hand knit clothing is limited to wearing sweaters my mom made for me and my experience in movie making is limited to adding pirated audio tracks to blurry moving images shot with my Canon digital camcorder. Still, I'm having fun and, with any luck at all, I'm not doing too much damage.

My sister Lisa, her husband Chris and their son Philip apparently bought a map, discovered Bulgaria's location, realized it was not in the middle of South America and came for a visit. Many have threatened, they showed up! I met them at the airport in Sofia and while I was waiting for their plane to arrive I struck up a conversation with the woman at the Avis car rental booth. Chris had reserved a car and I thought I'd check to make sure everything was okay. I explained to the woman that these were very important people and shouldn't be given any old car. She believed me and we went outside and together we selected the newest car in the lot. When my family arrived, the woman looked somewhat skeptical about their VIP status until my very large nephew produced the world's biggest jar of Hellman's mayonnaise from his backpack and presented it to me. That sealed the deal, anyone carrying that much mayonnaise in his carry-on luggage was either very important or very crazy and she wanted to get us going as soon as possible either way. We were on the road in half an hour and back in Stara Zagora two hours after that. By PC rules I'm not allowed to drive while I'm a volunteer, so I became the navigator on most of our trips to visit other areas of the country. Navigating was an interesting experience because many of the roads on the map didn't actually exist on the ground. Often it seemed as though a road should be in a particular place, possibly connecting to a bigger road just across a field, and I suppose the mapmakers felt that way too because they drew one in even though no one had gotten around to actually building it yet. However, many of the roads that were on the map were also on the ground so we eventually got from here to there and back again. Oh, and the mayo...the mayo that's readily available here is used indifferently on sandwiches and Lada axles. When they said there might be hardships in the PC, I didn't imagine they meant a lack of good mayonnaise!

I went out to the sea with my family and left them in Nessebur (a resort town) because I had to get back to work for a couple of days. The Bulgarian Black Sea coast during the height of the season is like any other tourist destination, crowded, noisy, bustling, fun and frustrating. It all seemed to be summed up by a sign on the door of a shop selling souvenirs that read: Sorry, We're Open! Lisa & Chris came back to Stara Zagora and together we took day trips to Veliko Turnovo, Plovdiv and Saedinenie. Once when cruising back and forth looking for a road that turned out to be a figment of the mapmakers imagination, we spotted an old MIG-15 or 16 which proved to be the highlight of Philip's trip. Finally, we headed out for the Rila Monastery and Sofia. Rila is the largest and most beautiful of the many monasteries in Bulgaria and was well worth the trip, even across a road that appeared on the ground but not on the map. If you walk out the back of the Monastery and proceed up a gently sloping road for about three kilometers, you come to a trail. If you then climb up the trail for approximately another kilometer, you come to the cave of St. John. He was the holy man for whom the Monastery is named. He lived as a hermit in this small cave for many years. The cave has a main entrance and a smaller hole exiting up the slope towards the back. Legend has it that if you are worthy you can crawl out of the cave through this small exit. Apparently, this frees you of all sin. I say with pride, we all made it out without lightening striking any of us. It was a tight squeeze for Philip, but he's a teenager! I was chagrined to learn that the crawl from the cave does not imbue any protective powers against sin, so I'll probably have to do it all over again in a while.

My family left on a Friday and I spent the weekend in Sofia, working on the Habitat for Humanity, eating in good restaurants and meeting up with friends. Then it was back to work with a push to get the HandKnitCrafts.com website up and running. It's coming along. We're waiting for some technical advice on pricing (Mom, we're waiting!) and a couple of other minor glitches to be ironed out and then we'll go live. The renovation of the room is almost finished and the ladies are spending a lot of time in it because it's nicer than anywhere else they can go. We're all pretty enthusiastic about the way things are going and everyone hopes that we can make it fly. We will be offering hand knit coats, ponchos, scarves, skirts, tops and bags. Each item will be custom made upon receipt of the order. The customer will be told which woman is making the item and will be able to read her biography on the website. Every item will ship within 14-21 days from receipt of the order. Every item is fully guaranteed. We won't equivocate, if you want to badger or bully a poor old handicapped Baba by sending back a product that she painstakingly knitted with her one good hand, very well we'll refund your money, you pathetic loser.

The filmmaking is also proceeding. We're shooting a movie now that I have a role in. I play a gangster-looking guy, but a Bulgarian gangster-looking guy. I wanted a movie with me speaking Bulgarian to take back home with me. The Film Club is made up of 15-17 year old girls, we're filming in the park and sometimes the whining becomes deafening. "It's too far! It's too hot! It's too uphill! Why don't we have cokes? There's a bug! My nail polish is scratched! Why don't we have cute guys in this movie? and so on. After two full days of shooting, the girls decided we had enough and announced that it had been a very successful experience. I need to get them together again for one more afternoon and it will be easier to put toothpaste back into the tube than to round them all up.

I have two terraces in my apartment. Each terrace has a doorway with two glass doors. I leave the doors open during the day to get a nice breeze through the place. One day a strong wind blew through and slammed shut one of the doors to the dining room terrace. I came home to find shattered glass all over the place. My landlord, Hristo, pulled the door out, re-glazed it, and stuck it back up. I learned my lesson and from then on I put a chair in front of the open doors. This past week, while I was at work, another strong wind blew through Stara Zagora but I wasn't concerned because I had a chair in front of the doors. When I got home, the chair had been thrown across the room by the force of the wind that had slammed the doors shut and the terrace was an inch deep in shattered glass. This time both doors were shattered. Hristo just shakes his head when he sees me at his door. Now I have placed heavy stools in front of the doors. Wouldn't it be safer to just close the doors, you ask. Probably, and your point is....?

On August 9th I celebrated the anniversary of my arrival in Bulgaria. It's been a great year and a wonderful experience and from this end seems to be going by very quickly. I'll see you all at home soon.

They Call Me Mr. Lawrence!

2005-07-07T00:35:00.000-07:00

My primary project is to help the women from the Home for the Handicapped form a self-supporting and self-sustainable business. 'Self-sustainable' is the catchword in all areas of developmental work, especially in the Peace Corps. It's the old concept of 'teach a man to fish'...and so on. Unfortunately, my ladies aren't the least bit interested in learning to fish, no matter how often I suggest it. "But you'll never have to buy fish again.", I tell them. "We don't like fish!", they always reply. I suppose that there are also issues with wheelchairs on small boats, but I was willing to overlook that in order to teach them to fish. So, we're learning to turn our knitting crafts skills into a self-sustainable business instead. There are days when it becomes so frustrating that I think it really would be easier to teach them to fish.

We are moving towards sustainability at a speed measured in geological time. Glaciers advance and recede more rapidly than we measure our progress. The first task is to write a Business Plan. The ladies all agree that a Business Plan is an excellent idea and promptly asked me when I thought I'd have it finished for them. I explained that it would be much better for them if they wrote the Business Plan with my assistance, so they'd have more input into the creation of the business and more awareness of the goals. I gave them an outline of a basic Business Plan and went over all our objectives very slowly and very carefully. Then, in order to reduce the level of whining in the room, I told them to just work on the first item on the list. Have a meeting and decide on approximately twelve items to make up our intial catalog. They immediately began to shout out all the items they are capable of producing. Shawls, scarves, tops, bags, rugs, skirts, hats, mittens, blankets..... Robert's Rules of Order aside, I had to bang on a table to recover the chair.

Yes, but we need to pick a manageable number of items to get the business started and then we can add items to our list later. More shouting and lots of disagreement. I explained that we will be designing a website to enable us to market our products globally and that we have to focus on a few items that we make particularly well so we can build a reputation. So, please, have a meeting and give me a list of the items you'll start off making. After a lengthy discussion they finally agreed that it made sense to start the company up with four categories of items and three or so models in each category. Perfect! When you factor in different sizes and colors, the number of possible variations is quite sobering but still manageable. However, the more they considered it, the more they liked the idea of reducing the items to one. Sort of a Henry Ford approach to hand knit crafts..You can have anything you want as long as you want a beige shawl.

After a great deal of heated debate (they love to debate heatedly), it was agreed that we would begin the company by offering four categories of products and have three or four models in each category. Now they were all tired and didn't want to decide any more about the categories or models, we'd have another meeting soon. Oh, and by the way, could I please just write up the first part of the Business Plan as long as they had done all this work? So I did.

Next I got together with the designer to explain the business concept to her. The concept is simple, we'll offer four categories of hand knitted products for sale on the internet. The categories were determined during a brief meeting with my colleagues at the Agency and will consist of Women's Knitted Suits, Women's Tops & Sweaters, Women's Winter Wraps & Coats, and Women's Bags. Now we just needed the designer (Leonora) to design three of each and make them all sort of coordinated to encourage customers to purchase a bag with that shawl or a top with that skirt. In some strange way I think of this as Marketing.

Leonora thought of it as totally insane and wouldn't even consider it. She, it seemed, had already chosen and designed quite a few arbitrary and mismatched pieces and wasn't at all pleased when I said that they were nice but we couldn't use them. For one thing many of her designs followed the current fashion in the country of dressing like hookers and that might not appeal strongly to the international market. And this is where things became truly bizarre. I have now become the fashion designer consultant. I found myself in an hour-long discussion over whether long fringe on skirts was attractive or not. My position is that it is okay only for cowgirls and really tall women with terrific legs and we're seeking a broader market. This, I know, will come as something of a surprise to those of you who know that I can rarely pick out the right tie for myself, but I'm giving an enormous amount of advice on women's clothes these days. Hey, I might have a talent, who knows?

So it was decided that the next step would be to gather all the combatants into one room and see what kind of progress we'd made. Leonora vs The 8 Ladies vs My Colleagues was a fight worth seeing. The meeting had all the gentle ambiance of a bag of marbles being dropped from a great height onto a cement floor. Leonora is a very very stubborn artist and my colleagues are very very stubborn business women. The 8 Ladies enjoy being obstinate just for a welcome break in their day to day routine. Leonora doesn't shout but she doesn't agree to anything either. My colleagues shout (mostly to be heard above the chaos) and are the only ones making any sense. The 8 Ladies wave the thirteen or so arms they have amongst them and wheel violently back and forth while shouting. I stand out of the way. After a while, the meeting ended and everyone agreed that we'd had a really good time and that we were making terrific progress.

I tried to ask my colleagues what had been decided and was told that nothing was decided in its final form, but everyone was thinking about how to resolve the problem. So there we are. We have a designer who won't design for knitters who won't knit and a web designer who is waiting patiently for a list of products that we can't make to be put online. My skills in designing women's clothing are improving rapidly and it's only a matter of time before I open my own Hair Saloon, you know, a place where a woman can go to get her hair and nails done while she enjoys a beer and a shot of whiskey, but only if she's wearing a skirt with long fringe!

Patladjan Parmigiana

2005-06-14T07:59:00.000-07:00

I woke up on Sunday with a craving for a big tray of Italian food. My options, in this case, were to either fly to Italy or to make it myself. Some weeks ago I traveled out to the Black Sea to visit Sara and we made an awesome eggplant parmigiana together, so I decided to go solo and have the benefit of keeping all the leftovers for myself. I began to plan the shopping list and then determined when I'd need to begin to coax the oven into cooperating, I rehearsed every step of the operation and made a damn near perfect eggplant parmigiana in my mind, I plotted out which stores I'd need to hit to pick up which ingredients and then, because I had no alternative and it was almost noon, I got out of bed.

The first fly in the Bulgarian ointment was a familiar one. It was Sunday and the 'ascensiors' weren't ascending, nor were they descending. So I skipped down the eight flights of stairs and walked across the center to the market to pick up a dozen eggs from the 'egg lady'. I could probably get them elsewhere, but she knows me and I think she looks forward to giving me eleven sound eggs out of every dozen I buy. I had to buy the eggs first because the egg people don't tend to be there all day and it was getting late. Then, because they were eggs and I didn't want to lug them all over town, I took them home, hiked up eight flights of stairs, put them in the fridge and walked back down to the street to continue shopping. Next stop was the Billa grocery store. It's about two kilometers outside the center of town and it's a nice walk on a pretty day. This was a pretty day so off I went. There were a couple of things I thought that Billa might have which my local store, Accent, probably wouldn't, parmigiana cheese for example. There was also a rumor going around that the Billa had 'angliiski bekon'. English bacon is as close as you're likely to get to real bacon and it alone was worth the hike.

Sure enough, English bacon was available at the deli counter so I picked up half a kilo. I was also able to locate, without too much trouble, the mozzarella cheese and a packet of oregano. The parmigiana cheese proved to be more difficult to find so I had to ask the woman at the deli counter if the store had any and where they kept it. Yes, they had parmigiana cheese and it was.... A long string of Bulgarian directions followed with much gesturing and I had no idea where to find the cheese. After asking her a couple of times to slow it down, she became a little frustrated and spoke to the man next to me. He took me by the hand, led me five steps down the aisle and guided my hand to a package of parmigiana cheese. He then patted the back of my hand and walked away shaking his head thinking, no doubt, that it was terrible that they let people like me go off unattended.

So I hiked back home, trudged up the eight flights of stairs and dropped off my Billa groceries. I then realized that I hadn't gotten any tomato sauce so I gritted my teeth and went back down to the street. I went over to Accent, which is only a couple of blocks away, and picked up cans of tomato sauce, chopped tomatoes,and lutenitsa (which looks like tomato sauce but is made of peppers, onions, garlic and spices) for flavor. Then I climbed Mt. Everest and collapsed on my couch!

In making eggplant parmigiana there is an essential ingredient, and I mean 'essential' in the sense that it is necessary and required in each and every instance and cannot under any circumstances be omitted. As I was lying in total exhaustion on my couch it occurred to me that I hadn't bought a single patladjan (eggplant). If you omit the eggplant from the eggplant parmigiana you have more of a tomato sauce and cheese stew than anything else. Cursing those gods responsible for elevators and memory, I dribbled like a Slinky back down the eight flights of stairs and went back to the market. The market had exactly no patladjans but I remembered seeing some at a vegetable stand across the street from Accent. So I lumbered over to that side of town again and bought two. I made my last trip up the stairs and set to cooking!

I made a sauce from chopped tomatoes, whole tomatoes, sauce, lutenitsa, garlic and oregano. I added chopped mushrooms and onions then simmered it for an hour. I sliced the patladjan, dragged the slices through egg, breaded them with flour and spices and sauteed them in sunflower oil. I grated the parmigiana cheese and crumbled the mozzarella. I preheated my oven which only has two temperature settings, off or surface of the sun. I layered the ingredients in a baking pan and pushed the whole affair into the oven for thirty minutes.

Sort of like the bell on an oven timer, the smoke alarm woke me up. It turns out you can be groggy and still move quickly. I ran into the kitchen, opened the stove and pulled the smoking pan out...with my bare hand. The pain startled me somewhat and I dropped the pan upside down onto the kitchen floor. This is where the silver lining comes into the story.

With the hard blackened crust lying down against the floor, the underside of the patladjan parmigiana could be scrapped off and put on a plate. Although the top layer of cheese had become a carbon-like substance the hardness of marble, everything underneath was virtually edible. If I hadn't flipped the pan upside down onto the floor, I probably would have just pitched the whole thing into the trash. Modesty prevents me from giving the finished meal the praise it so rightly deserves, but it was a good one.

I have since looked online and discovered that it really isn't all that expensive to fly to Italy for a meal...arrevaderci Bulgaria!!

The Dreaded 'Tuhchenie'

2005-05-28T05:14:00.000-07:00

I haven't noticed an awful lot of cultural dissimilarity between Bulgaria and the U.S. which probably means that I'm just not very observant. However, I have picked up on a few differences which bear noting. These, of course, are the terribly misleading head bob, the vastly superior rhozden den, the totally unacceptable sequential meal service in restaurants and the dreaded tuhchenie.

In all the known world nodding one's head up and down signifies a positive response or reaction. In short, it means 'yes'. In Bulgaria, however, it means 'no' and it means a quite adamant 'no' at that. The opposite is also true, turning one's head from side to side may be negative in all the world but in Bulgaria it represents an enthusiastic 'yes'. I was on a train last week and was in a cabin with just one other occupant, a young woman. The train pulled into the next station and more passengers got on. A man came down the aisle, stuck his head into our cabin and asked if the unoccupied seats were available. I looked up from my book and nodded. He looked slightly put out and walked on down the aisle. The young woman looked positively alarmed until she talked to me and realized that I wasn't Bulgarian. We each had some room to stretch out in so it wasn't a total disaster. Eventually, even PCVs begin to bob and nod in the Bulgarian fashion, which leads to confusion of a different sort. You see, Bulgarians are very aware of their uniqueness in the head gestures department and, sometimes, if they know you're a foreigner, they'll switch meanings to accommodate you. Then, the only way to determine which answer is being given is to watch the index finger on the right hand. No matter which way they move their heads, a 'no' is almost always accompanied by an abrupt shaking of the right index finger.

Rhozden dens are birthdays. In the U.S. people above a certain age tend to downplay their birthdays as though bringing attention to the event is tantamount to soliciting gifts or parties. In Bulgaria the tradition is for you to treat everyone you know to candy, cake, wine and food on your birthday. It's as if you were saying, "Hey, this is my special day and I want you to help me celebrate!!" Here there is no cultural need to ignore the day, on the contrary you are required to announce it and expected to lead in the celebrations. It's always a treat when a colleague bursts into the office carrying a tray of candy and announcing, "It's my birthday, have some candy. We'll have wine this afternoon." Birthdays and 'Name Days' are very special occasions and are never ignored. Your Name Day is the day of the Saint you were named after. It's treated just like your birthday and, again, you are expected to lead in the celebrations, not hang back modestly and hope someone else remembers it.

In restaurants, meals are served as soon as they are ready. In a party of four the first meal may come out in ten minutes and the last might not be served until forty minutes later! Even when two people order the same dish, there is no guarantee that one won't be served immediately and the other forced to wait another half an hour for his meal. This kind of service would lead to rioting in the States, but here it, apparently, isn't even recognized as odd. No one ever waits for the others to get their meals because there is no way to predict when that might happen. As soon as your meal arrives, you start to eat. Everyone expects you to start and it isn't considered impolite to do so.

My language tutor, Darina, was the first to alert me to the potentially fatal dangers of the tuchenie. We use my apartment for our lessons and she sat on the couch one hot day wearing a jacket and all but shivering. It had to have been in the eighties in my apartment, the only thing making it bearable was the cross-breeze from the two open terrace doors, so I asked her if she was feeling alright or was she ill. She said she felt fine, so far, but wasn't I aware of the tuchenie? There was a tuchenie in the room and I was oblivious to it. I looked around a bit nervously for something that might sting, bite or chew it's way through my heart. I didn't see it and Darina finally asked me if I would close either of the two doors. Apparently, with one door closed the dreaded tuchenie would be rendered harmless. Bulgaria gets hot in the Summer. Airconditioning is not as prevalent here as in the States. Rooms become stuffy and overly warm. Someone opens a window to let in some air and you, a few minutes later, go open an opposite window to let a cooling breeze waft through the room. Are you insane!! You've just let in the dreaded tuchenie. It is a well known and accepted fact that any draft or breeze through a room will result in your immediate illness and possible death. One open window is all that is necessary as long as nothing else is open to create a draft. 'Tuchenie' is the word for draft and it is malignant in meaning. There doesn't seem to be a Bulgarian word for pleasant cooling breeze. I have two terraces or balconies in my apartment. One faces east and the other south. If I open both doors, I get a very lovely cross-breeze through the living room which makes my couch a perfect place to take a nap on a hot weekend day. This, my colleagues inform me, is like playing Russian Roulette with all the chambers loaded. So, the next time you open doors or windows to create a lovely breeze through your home on a hot day, remember the tuchenie and wear your mittens!

A final small cultural difference I've noticed is the requirement to establish everyone's age and a woman's weight. Within minutes of meeting people, it is very common to begin asking, not only your age, but the ages of everyone you know. Ages of every relative you have must be announced. Weight, especially for women, is also a subject of profound interest. It's difficult to imagine meeting a woman in the States and asking her to state her age and weight to a group of people she doesn't know, but it's happened to most of my friends here. In one private home, a scale was dragged out and the women took turns weighing each other. These people, as with all Bulgarians, had a tv so they weren't just looking for a way to kill time in the evening. I don't really know why there isn't much interest in finding out how much men weigh, but we're generally exempted from the 'let's weigh each other' game.

By and large, Bulgarians are warm, generous, well-educated and very welcoming. The cultural differences between them and Americans are small and interesting rather than large and divisive. In my own experience, people in the smaller villages are easier to get to know, but people in the cities are every bit as friendly and interested in you once you do meet them. I think some of the small differences will, unfortunately, disappear as Bulgaria enters the EU and becomes more "European". I am confident, however, that Bulgaria will always be an outpost of vigilance against the dreaded tuchenie.

Further Adventures In Laundry

2005-05-25T03:49:00.000-07:00

One of the first things I managed to accomplish upon arrival in SZ was to find a dry cleaner for my shirts and suits. Locating a 'hemichesko chistene' was no mean feat and, once I found them, I wasn't about to let them go. They charged me 2 leva per shirt which is about what I paid in the States. My shirts were lightly starched, ironed and put on hangers or a hanger anyway (all five shirts neatly stacked on one hanger). The collars were beginning to look a bit grey but I just figured that the dry cleaning stuff here wasn't as effective as that at home. The other day I went in with four shirts and a new woman was behind the counter. This wasn't a problem because I knew what to ask for and how much to pay. Unfortunately, the new woman didn't know how much to charge and told me I owed the equivalent of 3.5 leva per shirt. We then had a long discussion which may or may not have involved a theory of macro-economic parameters, supply and/or demand, the influence of pre-accession into the European Union on small market post-socialist economies and why had the price of cleaning my shirts had nearly doubled! Finally, she said that the 3.50 leva price was for 'dry cleaning' and ironing with starch and hangers. The 2.50 leva price was, it seemed, for 'washing' and ironing with starch and hangers. The 2.00 leva price was nyama (non-existant). Fine, just wash them and etc. and I'll pay 2.50/shirt. When I got back to the office I told Toni about this conversation and repeated the word for 'washing' only to learn that it wasn't the word for washing, it was the word for ironing. It seems that I've been taking my shirts in and having them ironed and starched for six months now. Not cleaned, which explains the grey collars, just ironed and starched. So Toni called the 'hemichesko' people and explained that the lunatic American really did want his shirts cleaned too. They explained in return that I'd owe more money when I picked them up. Fine. I picked them up today and the woman gave me back 2 leva. Go figure. You may wonder how a purportedly intelligent person might not notice that his shirts hadn't actually been cleaned and I can tell you that there are a couple of good reasons. First, of course, I are a idiot. Also, it was Winter and the shirts didn't get all that dirty.....

I rode the trains this weekend. Whenever I've travelled in the past I've taken buses but the train schedule was more convenient so I finally got to ride a train. I took the train out to Varna on the Black Sea and rode it across the green Thracian Plain. All the crops are beginning to come up and the country is remarkably lush and beautiful. The last part of the trip skirts the foothills of the Stara Planina or Old Mountains before, finally, winding down to the sea. Varna is Bulgaria's main Black Sea city and the PC has a small contingent of volunteers lucky enough to be posted there or nearby. This, by the way, would be a good time to steal Germany because its entire population seemed to be in Varna this weekend. The city itself is quite pretty and is busily gearing up for its summer rush of tourists. There is a large pedestrian area in the center of town that begins at a magnificent cathedral and runs down to the sea. They also have a modern well-stocked supermarket. When Sara and I were in Saedinenie we began talking about how much we liked eggplant parmigiana and for months have threatened to cook one together. We were able to find all the ingredients in her supermarket and managed to make one excellent dinner on the first try. Sadly, there was no convenient way for me to bring any of the leftovers home with me, so Sara got them all. Better planning will see me making the next one at my house.

Last week it became apparent that Malcho couldn't continue on as manager of the knitting enterprise. His true aspirations seem to be along the lines of becoming a two and a half foot tall rap artist. At any rate, someone had to let him know that his services were no longer required. Rumyana works most closely with the project so I just assumed that she'd give him the bad news. When I talked to Petya and Darina about it, they both said that there was no problem with firing him and either of them would do it when he came to the office on Friday. I suggested that we say something to him like, "This isn't the right business for you. I'll help you start up something that's more suited to your skills. etc." Petya just said, "no, we'll just tell him he can't do the work and we have to find someone else." A little strong perhaps but direct, candid and honest. Well, Malcho showed up for his meeting on Friday and Rumyana was awol. As soon as Malcho walked in, Petya made a 'very important' phone call and indicated with much head bobbing that she'd be tied up for a very long time. Toni disappared into the ladies room and Darina had the look of someone who didn't move fast enough. So I fired Malcho. I was forced to rely on two memorized phrases and a lot of hand gestures. Eventually Darina came to our assistance and translated for me. It was a thoroughly unpleasant experience but it's over and we can begin looking for someone who can do the job.

A couple of the groups from the Film Club are ready to begin filming. Thanks to Chris and Lisa we have two video cameras now and can film two angles on each take. That's film talk for being able to film two angles on each take. Hopefully, we'll get started this week and have a movie or two finished by the end of summer.

A final word on Holidays. May 24th is Sts. Cyril & Metodii Day and is a national holiday in Bulgaria. Sts. Cyril & Metodii, as you may recall, were Bulgarian priests who formulated the Cyrillic alphabet and it's an important day on our calendar here. This year, the holiday fell on a Tuesday and the Monday before it was declared a day off too. It isn't exactly a holiday, but everything shuts down nonetheless. It's a bit like the Friday after Thanksgiving but here it's an official day off. Unlike the day after Thanksgiving, however, the whole country will now work on Saturday to make up for the extra day off. So we get a four day weekend followed by a one day weekend. This Saturday is the makeup day for last Monday and I, like ninety-nine percent of the rest of the country, feel some sniffles coming on..cough, cough.

Zdrasti ot Stara Zagora

2005-05-15T03:02:00.000-07:00

I suspect that you're hoping to read more of the continuing saga of my adventures in laundry but I'm afraid that I must disappoint you in that regard. For two weeks in a row now I have run the peralnia (washing machine), hung the clothing on the line, and brought it in without mishap. I did have a slight appliance malfunction when my forty year old refrigerator fell over, but that's a story for another day. This was a week for work, not domestic chores.

One of the PC requirements here is that we write up bi-annual reports on our activities, projects and progress in our communities. Our reports were due on Friday and I took advantage of the opportunity to review everything I'd done since I arrived here. My primary function here is to integrate into the community and to introduce Bulgarians to Americans and America. PCV's are, first and foremost, goodwill ambassadors. In order to help us accomplish this task, we work in schools, municipalities, ngo's and other organizations where our various life experiences can be shared with our hosts. I have an advantage over some of my PCV friends in that they have joined right out of college and I waited a little bit before volunteering. Approximately thirty-five years in fact. I was assigned to REDA because of my work background and this too offers me an advantage. REDA has a shopping list of projects and proposals and, as I've stated in the past, is run by two very professional hard-working women. A couple of my good friends have been assigned to Obshtinas (like City Hall) and literally have nothing at all to do. All day long they sit at empty desks, or in Sara's case, on a chair in the middle of the room, and try to think of things to do. This seems to be a fairly typical experience for volunteers assigned to Obshtinas. Why do Obshtinas not only apply for PCVs but actually compete to have them assigned you ask...the only answer we can come up with is "Who knows!?!?"

However, while my friends struggle to find ways to make their experience here meaningful to themselves, they have both become welcome and valued members of their communities. Both have made many Bulgarian friends and have found ways to let people see how bright and decent Americans can be. In my opinion, they are each doing far more to advance the goals of the PC than I am with my laundry list of projects.

My two primary projects are the hand-knit crafts project and the film club at the high school. I've been working for a couple of weeks now with Malcho to help him write up the business plan so we can get started, but he is proving to be more interested in being called "Boss" than in planning the business. I've tried to explain to him that if he can't write a coherent business plan, then he won't be able to manage the business and if the business doesn't have a manager, then there won't be a business and if there isn't a business, then there won't be anything for him to be "Boss" of. Unfortunately, as was said in "Cool Hand Luke", "we seem to have a failure to communicate". I'll continue to try to work with Malcho, but we are beginning to suggest alternative candidates for the job to each other. The eight ladies have lived in institutions their entire lives and are disinterested in becoming the manager of their enterprise. We are hoping to find a good qualified person to manage the business from within the disabled community here in Stara Zagora and I, personally, hope that Malcho can be persuaded to put a little more effort into his training.

My Film Club is still quite active. I've received five scripts and they all have some potential as student films go. One story in particular is quite original and will make a very good short film. I've offered to be available if the kids want to work on their movies over the summer and some of the groups indicated that they might do just that. Several groups have quit but there are still about five who continue to show up at every meeting and seem to be pretty interested in producing a movie. If any movies do actually get made, I'll post them online.

One of my responsibilities in the Agency is to respond to various emails from English speaking correspondents requesting information on businesses in the Stara Zagora region. Our website generates a fair amount of inquiry from abroad and Bulgaria is becoming a booming area for foreign investment with EU accession right around the corner in 2007. I have begun to prepare a list of the services we offer to foreign investors that we'll post on our website and I've begun urging Petya and Darina to begin thinking about charging for the work they now do for free. I'd like to set a fee schedule up for our services and post that too. Petya and Darina will spend days gathering information, setting up meetings and agendas, making reservations for visitors, etc. without ever charging a stotinki. They then sit at their desks until eight or nine o'clock at night to finish up the work they didn't have time to do during the day. They provide services that foreign investors can't get for free elsewhere and they do a better job of it than anyone else can, so they ought to be compensated for their time and talent. Hey, it's my soapbox I'll make any point I choose!

I fully intend to wander down to the center today to grab a chair at an outdoor cafe, have a cup of coffee and watch the people promenade up and down the main street. It's a sunny warm day and the trees are all fully leafed. Then I'll wander over to the market to buy some mushrooms and tomatoes to have with my dinner of beef tips with rice. Later tonight I'll begin editing some video I've shot during the past month and if it turns out to be anything interesting I'll post it. So , as we say here, "Priyatna Cedmitsa"..Have a nice week!

Easter All Over Again

2005-05-03T07:14:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was Easter as celebrated by the Eastern Orthodox Church. I had plans to visit Veneta & Stoil in Saedinenie and then go with them to Asenovgrad to celebrate Tsonka's birthday. I learned during the week that the new crop of volunteers would be going to their host families the Friday before Easter which was the day before I was scheduled to go to Veneta's. I called Veneta to find out if she had forgotten that she'd have a 'new' guy the day before I was supposed to arrive and she said that she remembered but it didn't matter because it was Easter and I had to be with the family. I was touched and assured her that I'd come. My plans were to travel by bus to Saedinenie on Saturday.

Saturday morning my phone rang and it was Veneta asking me when I planned to arrive so she could plan lunch. That was a bit unusual as it has never mattered when I showed up before. I told her what time I thought I'd get there and that I'd see her soon and I was looking forward to it. I took the bus to Plovdiv, transferred to the North Bus Station and, while I was waiting for the bus to Saedinenie, my phone rang again. It was Veneta making sure I was on my way and wanting to know when I'd arrive. This happens as frequently as fish ride bicycles so I asked her if anything was wrong. She said "no", they just wanted to make sure I was on my way.

When I walked into Veneta's front courtyard, the laundry on the line indicated that the 'new' guy was either a woman or a man with somewhat eclectic tastes in undergarments. Inside the house I found Veneta and Mickey (the new trainee) standing together with looks of relief and after saying my "hellos" I began to translate all their questions for each other. In the entire Bulgarian population, Veneta is the person I can communicate with the best. She knows which words I understand and works at using them in ways that make sense to me. She manages to make it sound as if I know what I'm saying and Mickey was visibly impressed. She said she felt a bit overwhelmed and didn't know if she could ever learn to speak as well as I do! With a perfectly straight face I advised her not to use the measure of my skills to set her expectations, after all, "I have somewhat of a gift in these matters". Later I confessed that I am the very worst in my entire group at language. It is nice to know that, until they begin their lessons, I'm better than most of the new guys.

We had a meal and I helped Mickey and Veneta get to know each other and then the four of us piled into the Lada and set off for Asenovgrad and Tsonka's party. It is the custom in Bulgaria to boil and paint the Easter eggs on the Thursday before Easter. If you can't do it then, it must be done on the Saturday. Veneta had a large basket filled with painted eggs to bring along. Tsonka and Vasil own a restaurant/cafe and the music was pumped up and the rakia was flowing when we arrived. It was a typical Na Ghosti, a party that has no predetermined time for ending. We ate and drank and sang such Bulgarian classics as 'Stari Moete Priateli' and 'Tezi Pari'. You should have been there! Then, at ten minutes before midnight, we all picked a painted hardboiled egg from a basket, took a candle and walked around the corner to one of Asenovgrad's forty churches. We joined a crowd of several hundred people there and lit our candles. At midnight the church bells rang and everyone wished everyone else a healthy and successful year. Then we squared off, two by two, and smacked our eggs together. The idea here is to break the other fellow's egg while leaving your own unscathed. You continue whapping eggs with your group until there's only one left whole. My egg surrendered on the first knock and was promptly peeled and eaten as an example to all the other eggs.

We went back to Pchela (Tsonka's cafe) and ate, drank and sang a little more. Stoil, by the way, never touches a drop when he's driving. Then at one or two in the morning we were able to leave for Saedinenie and some sleep. Easter morning we all got up and had coffee and breakfast. Then we just sat around and I did a little more translating and then we had the Easter lamb for lunch. At lunch we did the knocking eggs thing again and, this time, I picked a champion egg..but I'm not sure what it meant because in the end I just broke it and ate it anyway. At 3:30 pm I started back to SZ loaded down with food, wine and rakia from Veneta because SZ might not have food now (you never know) and got home in time for a fireworks display that seemed to be aimed at my balcony. I went to bed tired, happy and very very well fed.

On Monday I planned to have Brian and Matt (the two volunteers here in SZ) over for dinner. I intended to make moussaka and went out in the afternoon to buy some of the things I still needed, primarily yogurt and eggs. There are half a dozen little stands in our marketplace that sell eggs so I headed there first. It may interest you to learn that on the Monday after Easter, the only eggs in the country that haven't been hardboiled are those emerging from the egg-end of the chicken! The spaghetti was pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Just An Update

2005-04-27T01:20:00.000-07:00

This week has been fairly busy so far. The funding has come through for the project with the ladies at the Home for the Disabled and we've been out to see them twice. We'll begin renovating their workroom next week and I've begun taking photos and video of them and the facility so I can put either an album or a movie online soon. None of the ladies was interested in becoming the manager of their enterprise and they suggested that we give the job to Malcho. So Malcho (a wheelchair-bound, Roma, dwarf) and I are starting to write up the Business Plan for the enterprise. He is extremely positive and enthusiastic and also seems to be determined to have me do as much of the work as he can possibly offload. But this is an exercise in futility on his part because I am supposed to transfer skills here and, after raising two sons, I'm an expert at delegating. We're beginning to look at designs for new products and we're creating a website to display and sell our hand knit crafts. All in all it's quite interesting and everyone involved is determined to make the project succeed. While we were designing the project, we agreed that one measure of its success would be if additional ladies asked to join as we went along. Apart from creating a self-sustainable enterprise, we're looking to improve the living conditions and self-esteem of the participants. An indication of improvement will be to have non-participants ask to participate. Last week we welcomed our first new participant and now the Hand Knit Crafts of Stara Zagora cooperative has eight knitters and Malcho!

The kids at the Languages High School are working on their movie scripts with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Unfortunately, we missed having our meeting for three weeks in a row due to vacations, my trip home and a miscommunication between me and my tutor. In spite of that, three groups have done first drafts of their scripts and one has completed an initial revision. I suggested that the kids form themselves into groups of four or five so they'd have enough people to share the work and not too many to impede forward progress. One of the 'groups' is a young woman. In the beginning Iliana would drag one or two helpless volunteers along to give the appearance of a group. Each time we'd meet, she'd let me know that 'Ivan' was being replaced by 'Zdravka', 'Stefka' was being replaced by 'Maria' and so forth. Finally, she said, "I really want to do it all myself, I don't work well in groups!" So she is Scriptwriter, Producer, Director & Cinematographer. I remain the Executive Producer on all films and she's stuck with it...I own the camera. One of the other groups has eight or ten people and is still trying to write the first page of their script. Several members of this 'company' appear at each meeting and assure me that they are nearly ready to begin and will have an initial draft very soon. The groups that have written scripts have all produced comedies. Two of these are actually inoffensive enough, with editing, to have some promise but one would undoubtedly lead to my immediate expulsion from Bulgaria and the PC. On the other hand, it would be the funniest movie of the three.

This coming Saturday I'll go back to Saedinenie to visit Veneta & Stoil. Saturday night we'll drive to Asenovgrad to celebrate both Bulgarian Easter and Tsonka's birthday. After dinner we'll go to church (at the monastery in Bachkovo) and then drive back to Saedinenie. On Sunday we'll have a proper Easter Feast at Veneta's and then I'll be allowed to waddle back to the bus to go home to Stara Zagora where I'll fast for a week! Veneta gets her new PC trainee on Friday, so I'll meet the new guy just a day after he arrives at their house. I offered to come visit on a different weekend but Veneta wouldn't hear of it. Easter is a holiday for families so I have to be there. Hopefully, the new guy won't mind. I don't think it would have bothered me when I first arrived.

Finally, last night we had a good old fashioned thunderstorm. Lightening, pouring rain that lashed at my windows and winds that shook the town all reminded me of home in the Mid-west. Now the lime trees are beginning to blossom and soon the town will smell like tea brewing, or so I'm told. Stara Zagora keeps getting prettier every day!

Springtime in SZ

2005-04-20T04:37:00.000-07:00

In just a couple of weeks the next group of PC volunteers (B-17's) will arrive in Bulgaria. They'll spend their first week sequestered away in Strelcha and then be dispersed to their various training communities and homestay families. All of a sudden we won't be the Newbies anymore. We're making progress. We've been integrating with varying degrees of success into our permanent communities, we've been learning to speak Bulgarian..again with varying degrees of success and we've begun to tackle a community development project or two. Of our original group of 59, six have ET'd (early terminated) and we've had one medical separation. Two of our group decided to marry each other and many of our group have formed less permanent attachments. A couple of us have moved from our original sites to new communities and we've all survived our first Bulgarian winter and probably deserve some sort of patch for our jackets.

The incoming trainees/volunteers are TEFL's (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and will all be assigned to schools throughout the country. In August, the next group of COD's (Community Organizational Development) trainees/volunteers will arrive and we'll mark our one year anniversary. One of these two groups will have some of their number sent to Saedinenie for training and Veneta & Stoil will soon be introducing a new volunteer to Bulgaria. I'm happy for them but I've stressed that the new guy can't have my room!

I'll be going back to Saedinenie to visit for the weekend of April 30th - May 1st. That's Easter weekend here and it also happens to be Tsonka's (Veneta's daughter) birthday. So I'll travel to Saedinenie, hop into the Lada and ride to Asenovgrad, eat and drink at Tsonka's birthday feast, ride back to Saedinenie, sleep, then eat and drink all day Sunday for Easter. On Sunday evening I'll roll onto the bus back to SZ and not touch food for a week!

SZ has turned green and beautiful in the last two weeks. Flowers are up and trees have their new leaves. Of greater importance, however, is the fact that the Raffy Ice Cream stand is once again doing business in the Center. Progress is measured in small steps and this year it can be seen in the addition of at least four other ice cream carts set up to compete with Raffy. I firmly believe that there can never be too much ice cream, so this is a welcome example of a free market economy responding to the laws of supply and demand.

The funding for my SPA (knitting) project came through today so we'll begin kicking it off this afternoon. I'll be posting photos and videos as we go along. The Film Club has been on Spring Break and will resume meeting next Tuesday. I'm sure the kids all spent their holiday working diligently on their scripts! I'm as busy as ever at work but still can't really put my finger on exactly what it is that I do. Oh well, I'm having fun and Bulgaria is beckoning, so I'll start getting out there and seeing some of it soon. Petya is going to England in May and Darina is going to Finland. I'm thinking of Bojhentsi or Kazanluk and maybe a hike in the Rhodopi's.

The only 'hardship' I am currently suffering is that both the elevators in my apartment building are broken. No one seems to know when or if they will ever be repaired and my eight flights of stairs seem to get longer every day. I was whining about it at work and Rumyana just said that this is for 'fitness' and some people pay a lot of money to go to gyms to workout. She's right but I'm still going to whine about it until they're fixed!!

Lines In The Sand

2005-04-04T02:32:00.000-07:00

Just like in Chicago, Spring comes and goes here. One day it's warm and sunny and the next it's blustery and cold. I bought an umbrella this weekend because it dawned on me that I spend a lot more time walking here than at home. On rainy days at home, I got into my warm dry car in the garage and drove it to work. Then I parked right next to the door and ran between the raindrops to get inside. Anywhere I went during the day I traveled by car and the biggest inconvenience I ever faced was getting from the car to the building without getting soaked. Here I walk. It takes about fifteen minutes to get from my apartment to my office and about twenty minutes to get back home. It's the same distance but it's downhill to the office and uphill home. If I need to go to the market, I walk. The telephone in town is another fifteen minute hike and the big stores on the outskirts of town take almost an hour to reach on foot. There is a good public transportation system, but you'll get soaked waiting for a bus. So I broke down and purchased a fine umbrella. The weather reports were immediately revised to exclude any forecast of rain for the duration of the Spring.

The whole concept of waiting your turn on line is different here. I received a package last week and went down to the Post Office to pick it up. Just like at home, packages that are too big for the mailman to carry have to be picked up by the recipient. You get a notice and take it to the packages window and present your id. Then you pay 90 stotinki, get two or three forms stamped and take your package away. While I was on line, several people came in, walked straight up to the front of the line, completed brief transactions and left. I mention this because it is perfectly acceptable to cut into the line if you have a quick transaction. No one in the line objects as long as you don't tie up the service agent for longer than a minute or so. This applies to most lines, not just the post office. The Municipal Information center has just installed a "Take-a-number" system to help control the amount of time people have to wait for an agent. The biggest complaint from both the customers and the agents is that no exceptions are made for people who just have a quick question or a fast transaction. Imagine walking up to the front of a long line, butting in and saying, "Oh, this will only take a second." You would single-handedly bring back tarring and feathering. This system is more cordial and works very well here unless there is a loud American in the line. "Hey, wait your turn! The back of the line is over there!" Fortunately, not a lot of people understand me.

However, when it comes to lines to board a bus, all the rules go out the window and survival goes to the strong. I once waited for a bus to Saedinenie in an unruly mob of forty or so people. The bus stopped with its door directly in front of me. There was a space of about two feet between me and the door and I was the last person but one to board. People flowed around me like I had taken root and I still can feel the bruises on my ribs from being elbowed aside. I report with pride that I did manage to beat an elderly lady laden down with packages onto the bus. I got the last seat and then surrendered it to her anyway. That, by the way, is a commonplace courtesy here as well as at home. Anyone who obviously physically needs your seat more than you do is welcome to it.

I just finished giving two customer service seminars to the employees in the Information Center. The hardest thing to get them to realize is that the citizens coming in for help are actually their Customers. I don't think that this is particularly a Bulgarian perception as much as a Government employee perception. So most of the seminar was spent trying to help them change their way of looking at their customers. The argument that seemed to be most acceptable was that, although their customers don't have an option to go to another Municipal Center for information or service, they do have an option to behave well or badly when they come in to ours. If they are treated like valued customers rather than units to be processed, they might choose to behave well in return. "Okay, we'll treat them well, but we still won't think of them as 'customers'." Small steps, small steps.

As you may or may not be aware, I've had a couple of personal emergencies back in the States. Because the most recent emergency involves an immediate family member I am being given Emergency Leave. I have felt that from Day One, the Peace Corps has treated me extremely well especially since my arrival in Bulgaria. Emergency Leave has to be authorized by the PC administrators in Washington and requires a request from a family member and confirmation by a physician that the situation is serious. Once my EL was approved, the local PC staff have jumped through hoops to get me onto a flight back to the States. I spent last night sleeping in the 'Sick Bay' in the PC office in Sofia and today one of the PC drivers will take me out to the airport for my flight home. Everyone in the office has gone out of their way to give me as much assistance and support as they possibly could during a stressful time. I plan to return in about a week and they will meet me at the airport and put me on a bus back to Stara Zagora. By the way, I'm leaving Bulgaria on the prettiest day we've had here in six months!

A Language Conundrum

2005-03-14T07:22:00.000-08:00

Sunday was a beautiful day in Stara Zagora, the first really Spring-like day we've had this year. It was sunny and warm and people came out to walk through the town in their light jackets and shirtsleeves. Most of the cafes in the Center put their sidewalk tables out so Matt and I decided to grab a couple of chairs, order a couple of coffees and watch the local citizenry parade by. When the waitress came over to take our order, I decided I'd rather have a coke. Matt ordered his coffee and I asked for a coke. She brought back our drinks and gave me my coke in a bottle with a tall clean glass alongside. I then asked her for a glass of ice on the side. Ice in Bulgarian is "led" and is pronounced "let". "Mozhe lee let?" is May I have ice? She looked at me as though I were speaking Martian and bobbed her head up and down in a motion that means yes everywhere in the known world except Bulgaria. Nodding your head up and down here means No. Emphatically No. Shaking your head from side to side, which we have always used to mean No, means Yes. Anyway, she was bobbing away, emphatically, so I asked if they were out of ice and she got very annoyed and snatched my coke bottle from the table and stomped off. Stomping off is the same here as there, it means you're annoyed and, if you're a wait-person, will in all probability affect the size of your tip. She returned a few minutes later with a bottle of coke light, but no ice. I hate coke light. I surrendered and gave Matt the coke light and we discussed various new approaches I might take to get a regular coke with ice. I called her back over and said, very slowly in my best schoolboy Bulgarian, May I have a regular coke with ice. Ice. Water in Winter!! That did it and she looked as though she had just deciphered the Rosetta Stone and said, Oh, you want ice! And when she said 'ice' it sounded to me just like when I said 'ice', but nevermind. Tonight I'm going to take a shot at discovering where they hide the mayonnaise in my supermarket!

The point here is that as English speakers, we're used to having non-English speakers butcher our language and we are used to trying to figure out what the other fellow is saying. In Bulgaria, many people are prepared to hear only two things; perfectly spoken Bulgarian or some language that they don't understand at all. The concept of having a sympathetic listener is non-existent in many places here. Also, almost no one orders ice for their drinks until Summer. So there was that little cultural barrier to cross as well. Or, she might just have been a bad waitress!

Our Film Club had its second meeting on Tuesday. I had been told that there would be some attrition as we went along so I was curious to see how many of the original thirty kids would reappear on Tuesday. Well, forty-three of the original thirty showed up. Go figure. At least three of the new enlarged group also took time to explain to me that three or four of their friends would come to the next meeting but were busy that particular day. So figure fifty as a good round number, divided into groups of four or five, all writing scripts based on nothing but the limitations of their fervid imaginations. Then remember that we have exactly one small Canon video camera to share amongst us and you can see that this might become something of a challenge.

Next Friday we'll be conducting a Customer Service session for the employees at the Municipal service center. We'll put the final touches to the program on Monday and Tuesday. The Service Center is located on the ground floor of the Obshtina (town hall) and seems to be a model of efficiency. People needing to conduct business with the Municipality come to this one central point and take a number. They are waited on in turn and can come back at any time to check the progress of their paperwork on one of the self-serve computers. From my brief observations of the staff, I would conclude that they are professional, helpful and efficient. Naturally, these are the people I have to teach Customer Service to, not the surly waitresses at the local cafes. I intend to rely heavily on the "Well, what do you think you can be doing better?" method of facilitating.

Neolithic Dwellings Redux

2005-03-09T06:27:00.000-08:00

I went back to Saedinenie last Friday to visit Veneta & Stoil. I haven't really worked my way into any sort of social life here in Stara Zagora so it's really nice to go back to that small town where everybody knows my name. I was greeted by half a dozen people on the walk from the bus station to Veneta's place and had to stop and tell each of them what I'd been doing and how I really preferred Saedinenie to Stara Zagora. In many ways, that is the truth too! I had the usual belt popping meal with Veneta and Stoil and then he and I watched soccer for awhile and drank a glass or two of his homemade rakiya. I asked them if they planned to get a new pig and a new PC trainee in the Spring and they gave me a definite 'yes' on the pig. I offered to speak with the PC on their behalf if they want a new trainee on the condition that the new guy doesn't get 'my' room! There are limits, after all. Right now, my room is filled to bursting with all of Veneta's plants and potted shrubs. She even has several trays of veggies that have been started from seed and are beginning to sprout. The next group of trainees will arrive in April and will be comprised of TEFL's (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). Then in August the next group of COD's will arrive and our group of B-16's will be almost half way home. Veneta hasn't decided whether she wants a new guy or not, but I'm sure she'll let me know.

They lit a fire in the wood burning stove upstairs for me and I crawled under fifty pounds of quilts and blankets and was actually quite comfortable during the night. The next morning, during breakfast, the doorbell rang and Brian and Kate turned up at the gate. They had come to town to visit their own Host families and to see if they could buy some of Stoil's homemade (domashna) vino and rakiya. The vino is a hearty red table wine that is quite good and the rakiya is an award winning beverage with just a hint of Jet A fuel combustibility. I tried to buy a bottle of each to take with me back to SZ and got thoroughly chewed out for my trouble. Someday I'll learn. They loaded me up with wine, rakiya, fig jam and stuffed peppers to ease my journey back home. It is always great to get together with the two of them!

Back home I went about my chores and did a load of wash. I failed to notice that a pair of brand new navy colored socks had snuck their way in with my white unmentionables and now my shorts are all a very attractive dingy grey color. At least the washing machine worked without destroying anything this time.

Tuesday, March 8th, was the International Day of Women. I brought flowers and candy to the four ladies I work with and congratulated them heartily on being women. They took me out to lunch as the token male in the office and we ate in one of the nicer restaurants in town. I was set to order the pork chops with garlic mashed potatoes but was convinced at the last minute to change to the special, lamb. When my meal arrived I discovered that a hunk of lamb consisting of part of a spine and maybe a hip had been removed from the animal with the surgical precision of a Viking's axe and then charred so thoroughly as to disguise any evidence that it had ever been organic matter. The coal-like lump of matter sat stolidly in a pool of lukewarm oil but it did have a solitary raw green onion as a garnish, so the meal wasn't totally inedible. One of my colleagues had quietly ordered the pork chops which arrived looking absolutely wonderful. They were moist and succulent with a light breading and the garlic mashed potatoes looked so good that I, briefly, considered bludgeoning her to death with my club of lamb and stealing them. Serves me right for eating in a public restaurant on Women's Day.

As I've mentioned previously, there are two Neolithtic Dwellings in Stara Zagora that have been determined to be over 8,000 years old. We believe that they could and should be a major tourist attraction but the City doesn't really publicize them. Now we're putting a project together that proposes to improve access to the Dwellings, upgrade the facility that protects them, and announce their existence to the world. Oh, and in addition to that, we also would like to rebuild them to their original state (prior to the fire that burned them to the ground 8,000 years ago). Actually we are proposing to build full scale replicas of the originals right next door and have them be part of an interactive exhibition. Visitors would be able to make bread and pottery in the homes just like the inhabitants did so long ago. I've begun referring to them as the Neolithic Condos and Timeshare Association and that was how the original proposal was titled until the little language misunderstanding was sorted out. So, for those of you who are interested, pre-construction pricing is still available on the New Neolithic Dwellings!

It was time today to don my jodhpurs, monacle and beret and snap my riding crop smartly across my palm. Yes, the Film Club kicked into action at the local Languages High School. Many of you have had experience dealing with young people, some on a professional basis. I have not. I found myself delivering a monologue on film making to a room full of small statues dressed exactly like teenagers. When I asked, just before they left, if they were interested in coming back for a second meeting they gave me an enthusiatic group head nod and filed out. The teacher who was helping me assured me that this level of behavior is completely uncharacteristic and that they will certainly misbehave next time. In the Bulgarian school system, these kids are the best and brightest. When they are in grammar school, the kids take tests to determine which high school they'll be eligible for and the school requiring the highest marks is the Language School. Many of these kids will go to colleges or universities in England, Europe or the States. The Science and Math School is next, followed by other 'specialty' schools and then the general education schools. If enough of them are interested and return on Tuesday for our second meeting, I think I'll enjoy working with them over the next year or so. They all speak English and the movies will be in English as part of the agreement with the school. I've asked them all to try and help me with my Bulgarian so it will be fascinating to see what new words I learn.

Next Tuesday the Opera is "Tosca". It oughta be a hoot! So, until next time, as we say in the Corps, "Peace".

Chestita Baba Marta!

2005-03-01T04:15:00.000-08:00

The first of March, in Bulgaria, is known as Baba Marta Den or Granny March's Day. On this day people give everyone they know a small decoration made from red and white yarn. These decorations are either pinned to the clothing or tied around the wrist like a bracelet. The decorations are called Martenitsi and they represent good luck, good health and happiness throughout the coming year. The white yarn represents the outgoing snow and the red yarn represents the sunshine of the coming Spring. The Martenitsi are worn until you see the first tree in bloom or the first stork, then you throw them into the nearest river so that your luck will flow like a river. If there isn't a convenient river nearby, you hang your Martenitsi on the nearest fruit tree to ensure that you will have a prosperous year. During the last week of February, the town center was chock-a-block with vendors selling Martenitsi. You'ld be amazed at the variety of small decorations that can be made from red and white yarn. Although it's snowing and cold today, I walked down through the center to see if there were any vendors left and discovered that this is probably their busiest day of all. Hundreds of people were buying last minutes Martenitsi for those awkward situations where someone you've forgotten about pops up and nails you with an unexpected wish for good luck! So there I stood, a foreigner absolutely festooned with red and white decorations looking somewhat like a walking Christmas tree, frantically buying as many Martenitsi as I could fit in a pocket. Today you wear all the decorations you've been given, but I'm told that tomorrow you can reduce the number to one or two and then begin looking for a leafing tree or a stork. For a grown-up man to be wearing delicate little red and white yarn tassles and bracelets might be thought to be embarassing, after all would John Wayne ever wear Martenitsi, but it's mandatory here and everyone has them and you wear them until you see a stork. Hey, look! Isn't that a stork?

March 3rd is Bulgaria's National Day. This year it falls on a Thursday so the government has declared a four day weekend and we all get Friday off as well. To make up for this missed day of work, we will all work a six day week the following week. People I've spoken with seem fairly non-committal about the Saturday so it will be interesting to see who actually goes to work that day.

Another tradition in Bulgaria concerns the celebration of birthdays. Your birthday, or Rozhden Den, is a truly special day and you kick off the celebration yourself by treating everyone around you to a party. You bring chocolates and cakes and wine to work and later you invite your friends home to help you celebrate. Of course, people give you gifts too, just like at home, but you don't hang around hoping someone will remember your day. I like this pro-active approach. Hey, it's my day and you're going to celebrate it!! Most Bulgarians also have a Name Day. There's a calendar of Name Days and you get to celebrate just as though you were having a birthday on your Name Day. Again, you kick off the proceedings and treat one and all to a party. Unfortunately, there is no Bulgarian equivalent of Larry, so I'm going to just have to pick a likely sounding name and use it.

Na Ghosti is a visit or more literally, guesting. So I'll go na ghosti to Veneta & Stoil's for a day over the long weekend. I haven't seen them since Christmas and it will be nice to just sit around and catch up. I call them or they call me once a week or so, but it's very difficult still for me to talk on the phone. I do better sitting face to face with my dictionary firmly in hand. I'm also planning a day trip up to Kazanluk, a town about an hour north of Stara Zagora. Kazanluk is famous for being the burial place for Thracian Kings and has so many burial chambers that the government has had to stop excavating them because they can't deal with the volume of archeological treasures that they have already uncovered.

Which reminds me, there's a Bulgarian saying I'd like to share with you; "kogato doide slapata nedelia, nay pita kakvo iskash." Which translates to, "When Blind Sunday comes, it doesn't ask what you want." Don't ask me, I don't have a clue but people say it often and in a wide variety of situations.

In the meantime, I'm the tall American covered in red and white yarn searching the skies for any sign of a stork!

We Have Neolithic Dwellings And You Don't!!

2005-02-25T04:30:00.000-08:00

Last week we all put on our slogging clothes and slogged on through IST (In Service Training). The bulk of the week was structured around lectures, seminars and training events about Project Design and Management. Our counterparts were invited to attend this training week with us and many did. Each organization requesting a volunteer has to commit to providing the volunteer with a counterpart who will act as guide, interpreter, and mentor through the two years of service. My counterpart is Darina. The head of my program in the PC (Community and Organizational Development) is Dimitar. Dimitar came to SZ, met Darina and immediately exempted her from attending the PDM workshop week. Darina has been successfully designing and managing projects at a highly professional level for the past ten or twelve years and the week would have been a huge waste of her valuable time. Some of the counterparts and PCV's did get a lot out of the training. As with most of the things PC Bulgaria organizes, it was well thought out and well run. The material was pitched to a reasonably basic level due to the wide range of skills amongst the 100 plus attendees. That made for some long sessions for people who came equipped with a grasp of the material. On Friday we were given a whole day of language lessons served on a menu that allowed each of us to pick and choose both topics and levels that suited us. I found it to be the most useful day of the week. My first night in Bankya I roomed with my sitemate from SZ, Matt. There are a group of younger volunteers here who are known as the hard-core partyers and Matt is a fully paid up member in good standing. Our room was surrounded by rooms holding others of his ilk so I didn't get much sleep that night. I asked to change rooms the next morning so my bitching and griping wouldn't dampen the party mood. The 'resort' we were staying in was some sort of convalescent hospital and I was given a room to myself in another wing. It was appreciably quieter among the recovering heart attack and stroke patients, God bless them! The biggest negative to the week, however, was that it rained every single day. We were fed breakfast and lunch in the 'resort', but had to walk to town for dinner each night. It was cold, dark (Bulgaria doesn't really believe in streetlights) and raining every single night. Most of us caught colds as a sort of diploma for completing the course.

On Saturday I headed back to SZ and all the mundane chores that go with living alone. Shopping, cleaning the apartment, doing laundry and cooking dinner. It was nice to be home after a cold wet week in Bankya.

We have a couple of interesting things on the horizon. Europe Day is May 9th and we've put in a bid to become the local coordinators for the festivities in our region. If selected we'll need to organize a series of outdoor cultural events built around Bulgaria's pending European Union accession in 2007. We're talking about staging a concert in the ruins of the Roman Forum, having an outdoor performance of the National Puppet theater, and creating a Taste of Stara Zagora Day, modelled after the famous Chicago celebration of food and festivity. There is also a drive to improve the visibility and access to the Neolithic Dwellings in Stara Zagora. Some years ago, when workers were laying a pipe through an open piece of ground near the Trakia University one of them noticed that they'd dug through something that looked both very old and man made. A team of archeologists took over the excavation using whisk brooms instead of backhoes and discovered the remains of two homes. Both homes were destroyed by fire but much of their structures could be seen in the rubble. Carbon dating of some of the recovered materials (wood and wheat chaff) proved the homes to be about 8,000 years old, making them the oldest such habitations in Europe. Yes sir!! Right here in Stara Zagora, who knew!?! They are one of the best kept secrets in town but now we're thinking of promoting them a little to attract tourists. It'll help if we put up a sign to help people find them as they are located behind the university and the only access to them is to walk through the parking lot and grounds of the hospital. Anyway, we're now looking into various ways to improve access and to promote awareness. Next on a list of interesting things, my project to help the disabled ladies has been approved. Next week we'll begin drafting the final plans and then begin the work. I'll be responsible for working with Malcho to help him create a business plan. Malcho lives in the Home for the Disabled and was selected by the women to work as the manager of the business. Like the seven women, Malcho is in a wheelchair and is physically disabled. None of the women wanted to take on the responsibility for managing the enterprise and they introduced me to Malcho. He is very excited about getting to do this and I'm looking forward to working with him. Finally, I have a meeting set up with a group of kids at the local Foreign Languages High School for the week after next. My contacts in the High School have sent around a notice that I would be interested in starting a Film Club and there has been enough of a response that I'll meet with them in two weeks. My total lack of knowledge inspires complete confidence in my inability to perform! How hard can it be, Andy Warhol once shot an eight hour movie of the Empire State Building!!

So, that's it. Fun stuff on the horizon and next month it'll be Spring. The ice has melted in my toilet bowl and I actually hung laundry out on the terrace last weekend. It froze solid in minutes, but I did it and that's the important thing. We're going to switch our internet service provider at work to pick up a DSL line that will improve our speeds here exponentially. HBO is now offered in English as an option on the local tv cable. Raffy (the Italian ice cream franchise) will re-open in the Center next month and my washing machine hasn't had an 'episode' in three or four loads. The Hallmark Channel is showing too many reruns of "McLeod's Daughters", but some hardships are to be expected. This is, after all, the Peace Corps.

Chicago Cold!

2005-02-06T23:51:00.000-08:00

One of the first things I heard about Bulgaria, before I arrived, was how cold the winters are here. I was told to prepare myself for truly brutal cold. I'm from Chicago so I'm used to fairly unpleasant winters. Chicago gets a weather system that comes down from Canada and is known as an "Arctic Air Mass". This is a hammer of extremely cold dry air that pounds into town on an express train of a wind. It is so cold that any exposed surface of skin hurts like it's been burned and then just goes numb. There is very little snow but what snow there is comes in flat and level and blinds you. Sub-zero temperatures are the norm, sometimes for more than a week at a stretch. So, until this week, I haven't been too impressed with the Bad-Boy Bulgarian Winter. Okay, so it seems there's also a "Siberian Air Mass". Who knew!? Just like home, the cold air arrived on a strong wind that swept down from the nearby mountains and froze Stara Zagora like a marble statue. Much of the country has been buried in snow but we didn't get more than an inch or so here. Instead, we caught the wind and the sub-zero temperatures. The wind was so strong that it blew over a tree near my apartment. At home, I had central heating and once I was out of the wind and safe inside I sort of enjoyed listening to the weather rattle the windows and the shake roof. I could turn the thermostat up to seventy or so and sit by the fire and 'brave the elements'. In most homes in Bulgaria, heat is provided by either a small wood burning stove or by electric radiators and heaters. No matter what you use to heat your home you can usually only afford to heat a small part of it, a room or two at the most. In the hardest months of the winter, people tend to collapse their living space down into one or two heated rooms and to seal off the rest of their home. I have an electric radiator that is mounted on wheels and can, therefore, be rolled from room to room. I tend to keep it in the living room where I sit and read, and now, eat my meals. I also have a small open electric heater in my bedroom which does little more than keep frost from forming on my floor. My kitchen is unheated and a pork roast I took out of my freezer and set on the counter to defrost took three days to do so. My bathroom is also unheated and cold plastic toilet seats provide a most unpleasant wake-up call. The bathrooms don't have separate showers, just a shower head that comes out of the wall and rains down onto everything in the room, sink, toilet, you, etc. The drain is set into the floor. Although my shower drains pretty well, there is usually some water lying about on the floor and it's been frozen solid all this past week. It's a very unusual feeling to be standing in a scalding hot shower and sliding around on ice at the same time. The "Siberian Air Mass" is supposed to last until the middle of this week. It isn't quite as bad as the worst of winter in Chicago, but here it's harder to find a warm place to sit and enjoy the foul weather.

I finished an application for a SPA Grant last week. SPA, as you may remember, is a Peace Corps funded program that offers small grants for community development projects. The process is very competitive and the application takes quite a bit of work to complete. A somewhat common theme of our experience as PCVs in Bulgaria has been the unending pressure by our organizations to "get us a grant, get us some money". My second day in Stara Zagora, I was asked to begin applying for a SPA Grant. Mind you, we didn't have a project in hand yet but there was money on a table somewhere and we should begin reaching for it. So, many months ago I looked around and began to think that the women in the Home for the Disabled might qualify for some SPA assistance. If we could get them set up as a small business, it appeared that this might be what SPA was created to fund. So I began working on designing a project that would help the women turn their knitting enterprise into a self-sustained business completely independent from outside funding. The Municipality and the Home were approached and agreed to dedicate an unused room for the exclusive use of the business. It was also agreed to classify the women's knitting as "Work Therapy" which would exempt it from a 70% 'tax' on income that people living in the Home have to pay to help defray the expense of living there. A large part of the project will be to select and train an individual to manage the business once we step back. The application form is seven pages long and forces you to consider your project in graphic detail. I was able to fill in all the blanks except for the budget. My language skills aren't up to getting price quotes yet. My colleagues said that they'd do the budget with me so I shouldn't spend any time on it. Our project has three main components; first, we'll renovate the room into a nice comfortable workspace for the women; second, we'll select and train an individual in basic small business management skills; third, as part of the development of a business plan we'll develop a set of marketing tools. The bulk of the money we're requesting is for the renovation of the room and the purchase of a computer, printer and software. The justification for the computer is that we're designing a website to take orders and we also need it for general business record keeping and accounting. Applications were due by email on Friday and on Thursday we were working on the budget. I had added a coffee maker and a radio/cd player to the equipment list to make the room a more inviting and comfortable place for the women to work. I noticed that a couch, tv and coffee table had also been slipped onto the list. "Why are these items being requested?", I asked. The women are all in wheelchairs and can't use a couch without a great deal of physical assistance and they are going to be using the room for knitting, not watching the soaps. Oh, they might have 'visitors'. It also turned out that the computer would not be installed in their room, but in the main computer room of the Home for 'security' reasons. After a mildly heated discussion I realized that the room would soon become a staff lounge and the computer would be available for the general use of the population of the Home. I explained that this was fine as far as worthy objectives went, but it wasn't the project we'd been working on for three months and that we'd have to miss this deadline and re-do our application to more accurately reflect our new goals. Diplomacy, as Will Rogers once said, is the art of saying, "nice doggie", until you find a big stick! So now we have an agreement about the use of the room and the computer, both will be dedicated to the exclusive use of the women. If their enterprise simply fails to become self-sustainable then the Home will enjoy the use of a nicely refurbished room and a decent computer and that's not such a bad thing either.

A word or two on cooking. I have become quite a good maker of pots of soup. On Sunday I generally whip up a large pot of one sort or another of wholesome delicious soup and eat it throughout the week. Yesterday I made a pot of chicken and rice soup with onions, carrots and a hint of garlic. That was the intention anyway. First, I popped four boneless chicken breasts into the oven to cook. I rubbed them with garlic to give them a little flavor. I remembered to pull them out of the oven when the smoke alarm kicked into panic mode as black clouds of chicken tainted smoke billowed across my ceiling. No problem, I just cut them up and threw them into the pot charred skin and all. Upon reflection I should have scrapped the black crusty bits off first. Anyway, as the soup started to simmer the odor of burned stuff began to permeate the apartment so I crushed a couple more cloves of garlic into the soup to initiate a direct frontal assault on the wretched burned chicken parts. I added more water and another onion and let it simmer for some time, then I smashed in a couple more cloves of garlic, just to be sure. I wanted a brothy soup with a hint of garlic and I ended up with a stewlike soup that has driven all the vampires and werewolves back into Romania. I added some pepper and another onion and even though it brings tears to your eyes, it isn't half bad. An added benefit is that after eating a bowl or two for lunch, I have a much larger personal space at work in the afternoon! I call it "Burned Chicken with a Whole Helluva Lot of Garlic" soup and the recipe is yours for the asking.

I'm completing the editing on a short movie about the Habitat Day and hope to have it posted by the end of this week. So, from Bulgaria..stay warm, stay healthy, and "find us a grant, find us some money!".

Ready, Fire, Aim

2005-01-30T07:19:00.000-08:00

I enjoy playing around with my video camera and then making little movies on my laptop computer. The PC encourages us to get involved in our communities outside of our primary assignments. Most PCVs find secondary projects that involve working with kids. My Bulgarian tutor is a teacher in the local high school so I put all this together and asked her to speak with her director about having me start a Film Club. Once the ball was rolling, I met a volunteer who lives in Pazardjik and told him about my plan. He said that he had already started a Film Club for high school kids in Pazardjik and invited me to attend a meeting to see what they were working on. So, on Wednesday I trundled off to Pazardjik to meet up with Josh and visit his club. Within five minutes I knew that I was in way over my head. I make little home movies and put some sound with them and a title or two. When I get real tricky, I add a plug-in special effect. Then I sit back and wait for the Academy to call. Josh worked on Jackie Chan's "Rush Hour" and has a degree in fimmaking. After listening to him explain 'master' and 'coverage' shots, I knew that I don't really know anything at all about making films. Which, of course, makes me eminently qualified to teach others. If all goes according to plan, my Film Club will begin with the new semester in February. I'm out looking for jodhpurs, riding boots and a monocle now.

Then on Thursday night I attended a performance of "Rigoletto" at the local theater. The Theater is the prettiest building in town, in my opinion, and stages plays, ballets, concerts and operas. Until Thursday I'd never been in it but the Agency has some kind of membership card that gives us discounts on tickets so I ponied up all of three leva and joined a hardy group of culture lovers at the opera. The performance was a lot of fun to watch. The Theater is quite small and beautifully maintained and every seat has a great view of the stage. Because the stage is small, the set was pretty ingenious and the costumes were terrific. The singing was good but the whole experience was great. I'll probably become an opera buff before I leave Bulgaria.

On Friday I went to Plovdiv to meet up with Brian and Kate to go together to Sofia the following day to work on a Habitat for Humanity project. We had dinner and then, because we had to get up at 5:00am the following morning to catch the bus, Brian and I realized that the only option we had was to immediately call a cab and head for the bowling alley! Kate, having retained most of her sanity, declined to join us. The Plovdiv bowling alley is a very modern facility with Brunswick automatic scoring, free shoes, and black lights with glow-in-the-dark bowling balls. After bowling, beer and cigars, Brian and I headed back to his place where we got a little sleep and then woke up in time for the bus. Kate wasn't feeling well and the weather was lousy so Brian and I went by ourselves to Sofia. We met Sara at the bus station in Sofia and the three of us took a cab to the Habitat project site. We were the first of about twenty volunteers who showed up to help and the turn-out was surprising considering the weather. The freezing sleet was coming in horizontally on the brisk Bulgarian winter wind. After signing in, we were assigned tasks that we felt comfortable taking on. Brian, for example, built an interior vent wall (sort of a chimney-like affair) out of bricks. Sara and I were handed strange looking tools and told to dig grooves in the walls where ever there was a black line. Very little wood is used in construction here. The interior walls are made from some sort of soft cinderblock and then covered with plaster. Electricity is run to outlets on flat wiring that is laid into grooves in the cinderblock and then plastered over. Our job was to dig the grooves for the wiring team that followed behind us. Aside from hauling firewood in from the woodpile, it was the least technically challenging task being assigned. However, when anyone asked what we were doing, we simply stated that we were "groovers" and soon everyone else wanted to be "groovers" too. By the end of the day we decided that we had earned a promotion to "master groovers" and are considering beginning our own union. Actually, with the good turnout, we got a lot done on the building. I also got to meet a man who has commited to buying one of the eight units. All the families who will eventually live in the building are required to put in a minimum of 500 hours of their own labor and it was really nice to meet the man who took obvious pride in the work he was doing on his own home. At lunchtime, Habitat had Subway sandwiches delivered and we all were given as much food as we could hold. By the end of the day, it was too late to catch a bus back to SZ so I went along with the others to one of the two Hostels that PCVs use in Sofia. The good news is that it only costs 12 leva (the Sheraton costs 170 Euros), the other news is that there are three rooms with beds covering every square inch of floor space. They had three empty beds and Brian, Sara and I ended up in three different rooms. My room had nine beds filled with an assortment of college aged people, all of whom went out at about ten o'clock for a night on the town and then proceeded to come home in shifts beginning at about one in the morning and continuing until five or six. Hostels are interesting places and I'm glad I experienced it, but there's a definite reason they're known as 'youth' hostels.

Project applications for PC funding are due on Friday and mine is nearing completion. I am requesting money to renovate a room in the Home for the Disabled so the women who are trying to start a knitting company will have a warm and comfortable place to work. The Home has donated a specific room and we're still trying to help the women get their business going. Applications for PC funds are highly competitive and take quite a bit of work to complete. Whether our application is funded or not, it's been a learning experience just getting it ready to submit.

So, among the skills I've come to Bulgaria to learn are: film making, teaching film making, opera, home building (specifically grooving), hosteling, and filling in government grant applications. My horizons are expanding so fast, if you aren't careful they might knock you down.

Editing, This & That!

2005-01-18T02:19:00.000-08:00

"The rate of criminality in crimes registered in the region decresed upwardly to 57,89% having less impract through this year and to last year. Some of the newest crimes are going to be 5,443 homicides and other public nuisance but unregistered by the police. Also will be motor vehicle catastrophes too."

Some of my work involves editing English text that other people have translated. This paragraph was in the Chamber of Commerce's annual report and seems to forecast some fairly grim times ahead for Stara Zagora. Fortunately for us, the anticipated 5,443 homicides will be nothing more than "public nuisances". Brian was asked to edit the English version of his Agency's website and worked through all 22 pages diligently making corrections and suggestions. When he was through the Agency asked him to hold off before uploading the changes because they wanted to "get a second opinion". They hired a French Canadian to check Brian's work and then told Brian to upload the Canadian guy's text without altering it. So, the website has a new and interesting look complete with a whole new set of errors.

Most volunteers have cell phones but here they're called "GSMs" or "mobiles" or diminutively, "moby's". We rarely use them to call each other because the costs are prohibitive. Text messaging costs a fraction of calling so we just send text messages back and forth. In Bulgaria, it doesn't cost anything to receive either a call or a message, just the sender is charged. We can also go onto our computers and send messages for free to our friends' gsm's. One relatively ridiculous form of chatting is to send computer messages to your friend's phone and receive his computer messages on yours. As volunteers, we can be extremely thrifty! We don't have call plans here, we just buy vouchers in various denominations to recharge our phones. Typically, we'll put 30 leva at a time onto our GSMs and recharge once or twice a month depending on personal use. GSMs also help satisfy our safety and security requirements. It's essential for the PC to be able to contact us at all times and as long as you have your GSM, they can reach out and touch you where ever you may be.

I have several options for grocery shopping in Stara Zagora including a Billa (an Austrian supermarket chain) and Metro (some other foreign chain). I rarely go to either because they are both located on the outskirts of town. For fruits and vegetables, I go down to the pazar or market. It's an open air market with approximately 100 stalls selling everything from avocados to zucchini. Most of what's available right now has been imported, but in the Summer the selection and quality of the fruits and veggies is unbelievable. I also go to the market to buy my eggs and honey. I get the eggs from an old woman who has an egg stand near the potato man. Her eggs are graded by size and the price per egg is clearly marked. You tell her how many you want and then select the eggs that appeal to you. I learned to pick out my own eggs after I discovered that she had a habit of giving me eggs that had small cracks in them. Nothing I hate worse than walking all the way to the pazar, buying nine or fourteen eggs, walking all the way home and discovering that one of them is broken; at a cost, I might add, of several stotinki! I buy meat from a butcher up the street from my office and I can pick up assorted odds and ends from the small 'magazine' (store) across the street from my apartment. When I have to stock up on foodstuffs, I go to the 'supermarket' about two blocks from my place. This is a grocery store that's about the size of a White Hen and is pretty well stocked. I get my bread from any of the places where I shop. I tend to find myself in one store or another almost every day. Maybe I'll become better organized and cut that down to every other day before I leave. The food here is plentiful and relatively inexpensive and our PC allowance is more than sufficient. Meat is available in the forms of chicken and pork. I can't find a good steak yet, but I'm not through looking.

Television is interesting here. I get about 50 channels on my cable and about half of those are dedicated to either soccer or chalgah singers. There are a couple of channels that broadcast in English. I get Cnn, The Hallmark Channel, The Animal Channel, and after 10:00pm the Cartoon Network becomes Turner Classic Movies. I also get a British History Channel. For those of you who worry that I may lose touch with my finely developed fashion sense, I can watch the Fashion Channel 24 hours a day.

I plan to go to Pazardjik this Wednesday to visit a PCV who has started a Film Club there. I was thinking about doing the same in SZ and want to see how he's organized his club and what they do. The PC encourages us to get involved with kids as a way of integrating into the community. My language tutor teaches at the local high school, so she can help me set up the club if I decide to try it.

On Saturday, I'll go up to Sofia with Brian and Matt to work on the PC Habitat for Humanity project. As most of you know, I can't hang a picture on the wall so this will be truly interesting. My assumption is that they will have someone stand behind me and hold my hand as I swing the hammer. On the other hand, maybe I'll do all the electrical wiring? It promises to be a most interesting day.

That's about it for now. We're having a delightfully mild winter here and activity at work is picking up, so for now, I've gotta go.

Back to Work?

2005-01-12T05:31:00.000-08:00

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!

Happy New Year, Dead Guy!

2004-12-29T04:09:00.000-08:00

I spent Christmas in Plovdiv with my friends from the Saedinenie study group. We all gathered at Brian & Kate's apartment on Christmas Eve and then took the bus into Saedinenie on Saturday to visit our Host Families. It's always great to see Veneta & Stoil again and eat tons of home cooked food. They make sure that I leave their place weighed down with Domashna Rakiya and Domashna Vino. Domashna means homemade. Although my language skills are still weak, I've always been able to communicate pretty well with Veneta. She understands my garbled first grader Bulgarian and uses words and phrases I'm familiar with when she talks to me. There are still times, however, when I miss the message by just that much. Veneta has an uncle who lives here in Stara Zagora and works on the local paper. She was explaining to me during our Christmas dinner that her uncle was "pochivka". "Pochivka" can be used to mean at rest or on vacation or a time of relaxation. I said that it was very good that he was resting and that I planned on resting soon too. Okay, I didn't know that "pochivka" is also used to mean dead. Surprisingly enough, here in Bulgaria as in much of the rest of the world, it is considered impolite to respond to someone who has just told you that one of their dear relatives has died by saying, "That's great! I'm planning on dying soon too!" Lucky for me, Veneta knows me and gives anything I say a most generous allowance. I believe the only time I ever actually offended them was when I insisted on paying for gas for their car after they'd driven me to the mountains on a sightseeing trip. They accepted it only after I assured them that it was the custom in America for the passenger to pick up the tab for the gas. However, we'll have no more of those bizarre American customs, thank you. Remember, this is a country where you give everyone you know gifts on your birthday.

There was talk that we might have this week between Christmas and New Year off from work. It didn't pan out that way and we're wrapping up the summary report on a project that was completed over the past summer. That's fine with me, because I don't have any plans and I enjoy the Agency. I'm only a ten or twelve minute walk from my apartment and I tend to go home for lunch. That gives me a chance to turn on my radiator and heat up my living room so it's nice and warm when I get back home at night. Today when I got to the building the elevator was once again "pochivka". I actually don't mind climbing the stairs as it's the only exercise I'm getting these days. So I started up and as I climbed, I could hear what sounded like a large group of people coming down. This is sort of unusual in the building as I rarely see more than one or two folks at a time in the halls or stairwells. The stairwell is narrow and as I rounded one turn, I was confronted by half a dozen burly men carrying down what looked for all the world like a coffin. They were wrestling this long box down our very narrow stairwell. Of course it couldn't be a coffin because it didn't have a lid on it. It was just a coffin shaped box filled with flowers. And a dead guy! Okay, it was a coffin. I have no idea why it didn't have a lid but that wasn't overly important right at that moment. I was squeezed up against one wall and the men murmured what were most probably apologies as they squeezed by pressed against the other wall. They stopped for a breather when I was more or less face to face with the dead guy and I couldn't help but notice that he looked sort of annoyed. It was probably because there were no elevators for his last trip out of the building but it might have been because his relatives didn't spring for a coffin lid. Feeling somewhat uncomfortable and not being able to move, I managed to blurt out the only Bulgarian phrase that came to mind, "Chestita Nova Godina". Happy New Year! The murmuring turned ugly at that point, but their hands were full and I was able to scamper up the stairs out of harms way. We've really got to do something about those elevators!!

I wish all of you a very Happy and Healthy New Year! See you in 2005!!

On The Road Again

2004-12-19T03:37:00.000-08:00

I spent this past week traveling back and forth from Stara Zagora to Sofia to visit the dentist on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. It's about a 3 1/2 hour bus ride each way so it made for a long week. The PC dentist is a Bulgarian who was trained in Sweden and speaks perfect English albeit with a Swedish accent. He did a fine job on my teeth and I don't have any worries about the quality of my care for the two years I'll be here. A small side benefit of the many trips to Sofia is that I now have a pretty good grasp of the public transportation system in the big city. The bus arrives at the misnamed "Central Aftogara", which is the bus station on the far north side of the city. The PC office is south and west and it takes two trams to get there. The dentist's office is in the Kempinsky Hotel which is on the southern edge of Sofia. A bit of trivia about the Kempinsky, it's the hotel used by the man who shot the Pope. He stayed in Room 911 the night before his assassination attempt. Our dentist uses Room 110.

The public transportation system works differently in Sofia from the rest of the country. Everywhere else you just get on and purchase your ticket on the vehicle, not in Sofia. There you must go to a kiosk and buy your ticket before you get on the bus, tram or trolley. Then after you get on, you have to take your ticket to one of the little ticket punches and stamp it yourself. Periodically a ticket checker will board the vehicle and demand to see your punched ticket. If you don't have a ticket or you have a ticket that hasn't been punched, you are subject to a fine. It's sort of like the honor system with a gray area.

I was able to make good use of my trips to Sofia to meet with a few people who might be able to help me draw up my request for funding for the disabled knitters. Networking is the name of the game here and I'm out of practice. My colleagues at work have developed an incredible network and they are able to bring in experts in almost any field whenever they have a need for advice or assistance. For example, we've been asked to provide training for two new groups, a group of pharmacists from Bosnia and a group of journalists from Armenia. Our expertise is in setting up the training programs and we'll just go out and subcontract with local experts on the pharmaceutical business and journalism. However, these two groups won't be arriving until next February so we probably won't begin working on the projects until after New Year. Right now the only contribution I can make is to tap into the PC network and I'm still learning just how far that network extends.

The weather here has turned rainy and cold so I used Sunday to cook. I made two big pots of soup and I'll live off of them all week. One is a lentil soup with onions, carrots, garlic and big chunks of ham and the other is a chicken and mushroom soup with some veggies and rice thrown in for good measure. The bread here is wonderful and my next project is to learn to bake. By the time I leave Bulgaria, I'll be reasonably self-sufficient.

As with the States, this coming week will be a slowdown week. We won't work on Friday and we'll have a very light schedule between Christmas and New Year's. Some of my friends are gathering in Plovdiv for Christmas and then going into Saedinenie for the day on Saturday. There seems to be some concern on their part as to whether or not they are invited back by their host families. My attitude is that "I'm family and they're stuck with me!". If I tag along I'm sure Veneta and Stoil will be delighted to see me, and if not, they'll fake it.

I'll try to get one more journal entry in sometime over the Holidays, but if you don't get to it; Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and a very Happy and Healthy New Year!!

Death in the Morning

2004-12-14T05:16:00.000-08:00

(With apologies to Ernest Hemingway and anyone else who believes they deserve one)

The day began, as it often does, early in the morning. It was cold out, but it wasn't raining and there was no wind. The American was glad of that for he was uncertain about the day's work under the best of conditions and foul weather might have made it too difficult for him to continue. He had his coffee and sat in the small room off the kitchen and waited. The Woman who owned the house asked after his comfort and he assured her that he was fine. Nothing much would happen until the men arrived, so he just drank his coffee and waited.

A little later but still quite early the men did arrive. They came in one by one and went into the kitchen where they took seats around the table and waited for the Woman to bring them coffee. They were rough looking men, the kind of men with a hard bark to them, men well suited to the task. The American was pleased that he hadn't shaved that morning and hoped that he too looked like a man of purpose.

A small pot sat simmering on the stove and from time to time one or another of the men would walk over to it and smell the rising fumes. One of them, the Biggest of the four, waved the American over to the stove and invited him to smell the liquid. The American did so and wondered why they were warming paint thinner on the kitchen stove and whether or not it might explode. He supposed it had some purpose in the morning's work. He was tapped on the shoulder and turned to be handed a small clean glass. While he stood wondering what the glass was for, warm amber liquid was poured into it from the pot on the stove. He could feel the heat in the palm of his hand and it felt comforting on the cold morning. Each man received a small clean glass of the liquid and the Oldest of them raised his and said, "Haidi, Nazdrvey!!" and each man touched his glass to each of the others and sipped his drink. It was the homemade rakiya for which the Older man received justifiable acclaim. Sugar had been added according to tradition and it had been warmed by the Woman before the men arrived.

The men drank their rakiya and talked in muffled tones as the Woman brought in steaming bowls of soup. This too was tradition. Bowls of chicken and rice soup into which each man squeezed half a lemon and added substantial amounts of salt and pepper were served piping hot. Then all but the American ate one small raw hot pepper and they were ready to begin their work.

Each man pulled on some form of protection against the cold, an old tracksuit, an old sweater, a pair of stained and dirty overalls. The American had neglected to bring old or dirty clothes and so went to the killing dressed for a Sunday walk in the park. He watched as they each pulled a knife from a pocket or belt or sheath, the Brother's knife was wrapped in a piece of old newspaper and stuffed down the front of his pants. The knives were uniformly long and as sharp as razors. The American remembered that he too carried a knife in his pocket, a small folding knife that he used to clip the ends from his cigars. He decided to leave it there. The men whetted their knives on an oiled stone and set them side by side on the outdoor window ledge. Then they moved down the alley towards the pen and one of them, the Oldest, carried a length of nylon rope.

They entered the pen without speaking and the Older man quickly snared the huge animal by a rear leg with the rope. The hog seemed to sense that things were going to go badly for him and made a futile attempt to retreat into his shed. He moved too slowly and too late. Each of the two younger men grabbed an ear, the Older man pulled steadily on the rope and the Brother simply threw his own bulk against that of the animal and together they began to move it away from the pen, back up the alley and onto the patio of paving stones in the front courtyard. The American stood aside to let them pass. They dragged the screaming terrified animal to the very spot where the American had sat beneath the grape arbor and smoked his cigars. Then they threw the struggling hog onto its side and while three of them sat on it, the Oldest man stuck one of the long razor sharp knives into its throat.

The high pitched screaming immediately changed into a drowning moan of pain and terror as the blood flooded out of the wound and down the pig's throat at the same time. The men all held the animal down as it struggled to regain its feet and escape. They knew their business and the hog would not escape. It would indeed die after some few minutes of struggling and moaning. There was a quantity of blood and gore on the paving stones and the wound in the pig's throat was vivid red against its snow white hide. The American was satisfied that he hadn't fainted, vomited or otherwise embarrassed himself.

When the pig was well and truly dead, one of the hard men lit a hand-held gas burner that shot a blue flame four feet out from its nozzle. The Grandson, who had been watching silently with the American, was dispatched on an errand. The Big man took the flamethrower and began to singe the hair off the pig by moving the blue flame in long easy sweeps up and down the dead body. Each individual hair glowed as brilliantly as the filament in a lightbulb and then blackened into char. The other men stood with the American and watched.

The Grandson returned struggling under the weight of ten liters of wine. Then he ran back into the house for a tall pitcher and a single glass. The Old man filled the pitcher and then poured the glass full of the red wine. He just held it, watched the flamethrower and didn't drink. Finally, when the white hog was blackened down its entire length, the flamethrower was shut off. Each of the men picked up his knife and together they began to scrape the black layer away. They were talking now, telling jokes to each other and stories. The American stood apart and held the glass of wine he'd been handed. He watched but didn't understand the jokes or the stories. The men worked on the hog with their knives as if they were giving it a shave. Using quick easy strokes they scraped away the black char and in fifteen minutes or so, the hog was white again. Then they rolled it over onto its other side and repeated the process. The hair was burned off, the skin was charred black and the men scraped it back to white. Every part of the pig received this treatment, the legs, tail, head and ears, all were blackened and shaved with the long sharp knives. A wooden plug was inserted into the pig's butt, and the flesh on its rump was scorched and scraped too. The Grandson stood with the American and explained in broken English that this process "disinfected" the pig.

When the entire animal had been "disinfected", the men walked over to the small outdoor sink and washed their knives. The American held out the glass of wine to the man nearest him but that man just chuckled and shook his finger back and forth. Then they turned the flamethrower back on and the Big man began again to blacken the skin.

Now other members of the two families began to arrive. Wives and daughters walked over, looked at the pig and went into the house where the Woman was setting the table. Newly arrived men stood around the pig and smoked and offered advice on how best to blacken and scrape. The mood was light and they bantered back and forth. The Big man handed the American a knife and took the glass of wine from him. He was shown to a blackened area on the animal's flank and he began to scrape it clean. As with most things that other people do well, it was harder than it looked. At one point he tore the skin he was scraping and stopped to show the men his error. They laughed and slapped his back and told him not to worry. He finished his small area.

When the hog had been scraped white for the second time, the flamethrower was again lit and with the same long fluid strokes the Big man turned it black for the third time. This time was different. Warm water was poured over the charred animal and salt was rubbed into the skin. The American was given great hands full of salt and rubbed it into the black skin just as he saw his friends do. The blackened skin was smooth, hot and pleasant to touch on the cold morning.

Then the scraping began in earnest and the spectators crowded closer to the pig. The Brother scraped one leg clean and cut a small piece of skin from it. He held it up for all to see and then popped it into his mouth. The other three legs were cleaned and quickly, The Big man and the Older man cut small pieces from them and ate them. A piece was cut away and handed to the American. It felt like a small patch from a wet leather glove. The American held his breath and put the piece of white skin into his mouth. It was soft and the fat clinging to the underside of it was still warm. The Grandson was offered a piece but declined saying, "I don't like this thing". The glass of wine was now passed from man to man and each took a long swallow from it. When the glass reached the American it was greasy and smeared and the wine tasted better than any he could remember.

The spectators were given pieces of skin after the men and they too were passed the glass of wine. The glass was constantly refilled from the pitcher and the pitcher from the big bottle. The for the third and last time, the hog was scraped clean. It lay in the cold morning sun looking as though it had been carved from a single piece of alabaster. It's ears and tail were removed and set aside. It was rolled onto its back with its legs sticking straight up in the air and its head was removed and it too was set aside. The legs were taken off at the first joint and set over with the head. They would be used to make a special dish later in the Winter. The four legs and the head would be covered with water and onions and then frozen. The Woman explained all the steps that would follow but the American didn't understand her. She just laughed and assured him that it didn't matter because he'd be back to eat it and would see for himself.

A cross was cut into the skin between the upraised forelegs. It was half an inch or so deep and the Brother filled it with salt. Now each man took his knife and cut pieces of skin from the legs, dipped them into the salt, ate them and drank from the communal glass. Between them, piece by piece, they ate all the skin from the legs.

The cross was a tradition dating back to the time of the Turkish rule. The Turks were allowed to confiscate any and all food from the local population but, being Muslim, they never took the pigs. The people say that their pigs kept them from starving for 500 years. The cross helps them remember their faith and their history.

Finally, the belly was opened and the entrails removed. The kidneys and part of the liver were taken into the small cooking shed where the women began to grill them over the fire that had been kept burning all morning. As these organs were grilled, they were cut into bite-sized pieces called "meze" and brought out for the men to eat as they butchered. The single glass of wine was passed freely to any man who wanted a sip. The American ate and drank but wasn't asked to help with the butchering. The hog represented a yearlong investment and it was food for the two families for the coming year. This was no place for an amateur to earn his stripes.

Now choice morsels of fatty muscle were being cut and grilled and the American stood next to the Grandson and they ate together and wiped the grease from their mouths with their hands. The Grandson held up a grilled piece of pork dripping with melted fat and smiled, "This is why the pig has to die", he said and ate it in one bite.

The pig was butchered and sorted into bins, skin and fat here, ribs over there, organs in yet another bin, nothing was thrown out, everything would be used. A huge vat filled with cabbage was cooking over a fire in the shed. The Woman moved amongst the bins and indicated which pieces she needed and the Grandson carried them into the cooking shed and dumped them into the vat. When cooked this mixture of pork and cabbage would be bottled and divided between the two families.

It was early in the afternoon when they finished butchering the hog. After it had disappeared into the bins, the killing ground was cleaned of blood and ofal and the tools put away for another year. The men cleaned themselves at the outdoor sink, stripped off their overalls and went into the house. The women took over and began to serve the food they'd been cooking through the day. It had been a good day and both families were in high spirits. Rakiya was brought out and glasses were filled. Toasts were offered back and forth and more rakiya was called for. The rakiya had been made by the Big man who had been taught the craft by his father, the Older man. The wine was also home made by these same two men and it too was acclaimed throughout the region.

The American ate and drank until he could do no more and then reminded the Woman that he had to catch a bus back to his own city. He stood in the yard with the Older man and they sipped a last rakiya beside the empty pen. On the bus ride home from the village the American thought back to the Summer and the nights when he and the Older man would stand out by the pen, smoke cigars and talk to each other and to the pig. He thought he might miss the pig but then remembered the fresh pork roast in his bag and thought about how he would hand rub it with garlic and marinade it in red wine and spices grown by the Woman. Then he would roast it slowly with new potatoes and carrots and apples and it would be perfect. This, after all, was why the pig had to die.

Taps

2004-12-09T05:29:00.000-08:00

Two guys came to my apartment earlier this week to install a high-speed cable for my computer. The same company that provides our internet access at work had agreed to wire my apartment and Petya's too. I was told that it would cost 15Lv a month and that there would be some limitations on speed or quantity or something. Sometimes it's difficult to figure out what I'm being told. But sure enough two days and several hours after their appointed time, Moe and Curly showed up (I was already there). The first thing they did was look over the plan of attack. Then they shattered my neighbor's planter that contained his tree and had been moved into the hallway for light. Next they punched a large hole in my wall inside the front door before they finally drilled a hole through the frame where the landlord had carefully indicated he wanted it to go. Once that was done, they ran a cable into the room I wanted to use for my computer and put a connector on the end of the cable. Then they explained to me that it wouldn't work, because I use a Mac and the 15Lv/month service only works in a Windows environment. Then they left. So, now I have a high speed internet cable sitting on the floor of my room and people wonder why I'm not particularly grateful. I can have it hooked up to my computer but that will cost 33Lv/month and that isn't what I was promised. At the moment we're at an impasse. I refuse to pay and they refuse to provide me with service. Negotiators are being called as we speak.

I did finally get to pick up my Lichna Carta today. Now I am officially a temporary citizen of Bulgaria. I even get to pay the Bulgarian entrance fee when I go to the museum. Every Bulgarian has a Lichna Carta and must carry it on their person at all times. The police have the right to stop you at any time and ask to see your card and if you can't produce it, you can be fined.

From the day I arrived in Saedinenie until I moved to Stara Zagora, Veneta & Stoil worked every single day in their garden. They spent the summer growing, harvesting, bottling, canning and preserving food for the coming Winter. This isn't done out of any sense of rejection of buying one's food in stores, it's done for survival. They live off of the food they grow all year long. I was given a great opportunity to watch and in some cases to help them as they made juice and jams and compotes and dried fruits. I plan to head back to Saedinenie this weekend, but this will be my last trip there for awhile. On Saturday morning the pig will suddenly succumb to a severe case of cut throat. As Tony Soprano might say, "Tomorrow the pig sleeps with the fishes!" Judging from the size of the pig, it promises to be very unpleasant for the fishes. I've been invited back to join in on the party. It may seem strange that butchering a pig is a cause for celebration, but there are good reasons for it. It's traditional in villages for families to acquire a piglet in January or so every year and fatten it for slaughter in December. In many cases this is the only meat they will be able to afford during the following year so in terms of stocking the larder it is an occasion to celebrate. There is also an historical reason, during the 500 years of Turkish rule in Bulgaria, the Turks were allowed to confiscate any and all food from the native Bulgarians. The only things they didn't take, because they were Muslims, were the pigs. The Bulgarians believe that the pigs kept them alive. Therefore, there is usually a party of some kind built around the slaughter and butchering of the pigs. None of the pig goes to waste. The pig becomes sausages, chops, ribs, bacon and ham. The skin is scorched and eaten as the hog is butchered. Veneta & Stoil even make soap from some undetermined part of the animal. I do plan to take pictures and some video of the event if it doesn't get too ugly. I might be able to post some of this online if it isn't too graphic. I saw the pig on my last visit to Veneta's about two weeks ago and he's doubled in size since I left in October and must weigh in at better than 300 lbs now. It's going to be very interesting to see how Stoil and his sons plan to take him down. I'm assuming that hand grenades from a safe distance are probably considered bad form. Anyway, it is comforting to see that he's no longer the cute little fellow I used to talk to after drinking Rakiya.

I've begun working with a group of seven disabled women who formed a small hand knitting enterprise about a year ago. They live here in town in a Municipal institution that is no better or worse than similar institutional homes in the States. These seven women knit scarves and shawls which we then deliver to a crafts store in Sofia. We select, buy and deliver the yarns to them and give them the patterns for the various pieces. They do the knitting and we deal with all aspects of the financial transactions. There are a whole catalog of problems facing this small enterprise right now and I'm trying to work out a viable plan to keep them going. The most pressing concern is that the funding that has been supporting them has ended. They aren't in a position to become self-supporting yet and cannot continue without our assistance. We cannot continue to provide that assistance without acquiring additional funding. Even if we do get new funding, it is not certain whether they will ever become independent of some sort of assistance. Apart from attitudes formed by a lifetime of receiving State care and a general lack of basic business skills, the law requires them to turn over 70% of any income they receive to the Home. It takes them approximately 24 knitting hours to produce one hooded shawl. After costs are deducted and the State claims its 70% of the remainder, the knitter is left with about 6 Leva or roughly $4.00. The reality of the economics here produce a massive disincentive on the part of the Disabled to work. So my current challenge is to find a way to keep them afloat long enough to discover a way to make them self-sustainable and provide them with enough income to make the effort worth their while.

I want to thank my brother-in-law, Greg, for his generous offer, on behalf of his company, of 250,000 lbs of yarn. I am assured that this is enough yarn for at least a dozen sweaters and several pairs of mittens.

Next week I will travel to Sofia on Monday, Wednesday and Friday for my final dental appointments. The dentist is a Bulgarian who was trained in Sweden and is used by the entire expatriate community. He has up-to-date western equipment and I feel very comfortable with him. I have meetings set up with various people in Sofia for each day and hope to find the beginning to solving the funding problem for the knitters. I also have a small stack of documents that have been translated into or written in English which have to be edited for grammar and spelling.

That's life in the big city.

Oh, That Chalgah Singer!!

2004-11-28T06:25:00.000-08:00

Bulgaria has Chalgah singers and you don't! These are invariably slim attractive women who sing very passionately while striking poses that require them to thrust various body parts hither and yon. While they are not necessarily scantily clad, although most are, what clothing they do wear is usually fitted as a second skin. The music is unlike anything you'd be familiar with and is typically Bulgarian. It's a bit like pop rock with a dash of Bulgarian folk music under a Turkish influence. I don't think the music itself is as important as the presentation, which is always extremely dramatic. It's also interesting to note that all Chalgah singers only have one name, Maria, Daniela, Tatiana, etc. Chalgah is bigtime here and there are a couple of channels on tv that are dedicated to the art form. The nationally known Chalgah singers are every bit as famous here as Britney Spears. There are magazines devoted to following their lives just like movie stars and every little girl wants to be one.

On Saturday I went to Plovdiv to meet up with Brian & Kate so we could go to Saedinenie together for our Community Project Benefit Concert. Our community project had been to get trashcans installed around the town center and park, but time ran out on us before we could get the funding although we did have the plans in place. We were going to throw a concert for the town and use the proceeds from ticket sales to buy the trashcans. The ladies from the Cultural Center organized the concert after we left town and set it up for last Saturday. They did a fantastic job, the concert was great! Local talent got up on stage and sang and danced and played musical instruments. It was mostly school kids, but the current PCV in Saedinenie sang a Beatles tune and Pavlina, Stoil's daughter, got up and belted out a couple of Chalgah type numbers. Then an announcement was made that we had a 'special' guest who'd come to help out. The sound system blared and out came...Tatiana!! Yes, that Tatiana. Tatiana the very very famous Chalgah singer. It was as though (your favorite singer's name goes here) had popped out on stage at your local high school benefit talent show. She was tastefully attired in red leather pants and a furry white semi-top with a sleeve. Oh, and of course she was wearing the mandatory nine inch spike-heeled boots. She lip synched her way through several of her best known numbers and blew kisses to the crowd. For her last song, every little girl in Saedinenie under the age of ten was invited up on stage to dance with her. I will predict that Saedinenie will produce several of the next generation of Chalgah singers as a direct result of that gesture.

This week was fairly quiet. I had a couple of lessons with my tutor and I think it will go fine. On Wednesday night I decided to do a small load of laundry. It's been very cold here lately, in fact it snowed during the day on Wednesday, and I have to hang my laundry in the bathroom to dry. It takes about the same amount of time as it does when I hang it out on the terrace but there isn't as much space so I have to do a small load every couple of days to be able to get it all to dry. Every time I use the washing machine it breaks and I have to go down to get Hristo (my landlord) to come up and fix it. This time I was almost going to go down and get him before I started the load, but I didn't. The machine had been running for about three minutes when all the electricity in the entire apartment went out. I thought that the washer had shorted out and taken the fuses with it. That meant no water and no heat. I went down to Hristo's apartment and dragged him up to discover that the washing machine was fine, it was the fusebox itself that had blown up! So he simply ran a wire that bypassed all the fuses to restore electricity and promised to get me new fuses shortly. I finished the load of laundry without further incident.

There are many different types of Peace Corps experiences. For example, volunteers in small towns or villages have a much different experience than those of us in larger cities. In many ways their experience is much more akin to what I think of as a 'real' Peace Corps experience. The Peace Corps goal of integrating fully into your community seems much more attainable to volunteers in the villages. I hope that in time I will become more a part of the 'community' here in Stara Zagora, but for now I feel much more comfortable and much more a part of the community in Saedinenie. I still feel like a visitor here in Stara Zagora. Apparently, this is a pretty common feeling among newly placed volunteers. There is a predictable drop-out rate among volunteers who arrive at their new homes just as Winter sets in. We've lost two more campers this month and the grapevine says that several more have their bags packed. The problem is that we're new in town. We don't have defined jobs or responsibilities. We're not involved in anything relevant or meaningful. Many of us don't speak the language very well. It's cold. It's dark. We don't know anyone where we live and the people we do know live too far away to visit without a major hassle especially in bad weather. And, of course, the Holidays are coming up. Family and friends back home will be missing us and we'll be wondering why we are here and not there. Eventually, a percentage of volunteers just decide that they can be doing something more useful with their lives and head for home. However, the majority stay and just keep on plugging away. The PC tells us that we'll spend an indeterminate amount of time in the 'swamp'. We'll feel like we're not getting anywhere and we're always bogged down. It'll take us time to get out of the 'swamp' and to find things to do that will be fulfilling. It's made clear to us that we have to find these things ourselves, no one is going to hand them to us on a plate. Some volunteers just stop looking for anything to do and are content with the rounds of visiting and socializing that take place. Some volunteers throw in the towel and go home. But, most volunteers just keep trying to find something to do that will help their community in some small way and will make a small difference in people's lives. Eventually, most volunteers are successful.

Those, at the moment, are the challenges that I and several of my friends are facing. There is no defined roadmap out of the 'swamp' but we all share ideas and encourage each other in small ways. The ray of light at the end of this tunnel is the knowledge, based on PC experience, that when it's our turn to leave, we won't have had time enough to even begin all the meaningful projects that occur to us.

I, personally, am hoping to work with disadvantaged Chalgah singers who were born with two names.

Happy Thanksgiving

2004-11-19T04:03:00.000-08:00

Much of PC philosophy is embodied in the requirement for all volunteers to become fully integrated into their host communities. That's also the primary reason for the emphasis on having us learn the language. We are required to be at our sites during all working days and are encouraged to remain at site on most weekends. We're seen to be more effective, and safer, if we truly become part of the local community and that doesn't happen if we blow town at every earliest opportunity. These are well thought out policies that contribute enormously to our success as volunteers. Another policy deals with holidays. We are not given time off for our American holidays, but we do get to observe the local Bulgarian holidays. Again, this just helps us become less 'foreign' and more like our local friends. It makes good sense.

Unfortunately, Thanksgiving isn't actually a Bulgarian holiday. Who knew!? Therefore, on Thursday when you are all sitting down to your turkey and football games, I will be at my desk working to achieve World Peace. Before you all begin drafting letters of protest to the US Ambassador on my behalf,let me hasten to add that I too will celebrate Thanksgiving. What we do here is pick a weekend around Thanksgiving and gather together in some likely spot and eat turkey and watch soccer on TV. My apartment, it turns out, is a likely spot and my friends are gathering here this weekend. Locating a turkey turned out to be a challenge. It seems that turkeys don't become readily available in Bulgaria until Christmas but a colleague of mine at work called around and found one that I bought sight unseen over the phone. It would be delivered to me at the office the following day and I had a real fear that it would be led in on a leash! Fortunately, it was delivered frozen solid and wrapped in plastic like any good turkey should be. It is a Brazilian turkey that was exported by a French company to Germany and then sold to a store here in Bulgaria. It's about the size and shape of a duck, so it may very well have been walked here from Stuttgart. No matter, we've got a turkey. The gang will include Brian & Kate, Sara, Lindsay, Maria, Matt and the other Brian. Hopefully we'll all wear birkenstock sandals, play records and sing old folk songs. Does anyone remember all the words to "Kum Bye Yah"?

Everyone will begin arriving tonight so naturally this morning the last remaining elevator gave up the ghost. The elevator that 'works' stopped working on Monday and we were reduced to using the elevator that 'sometimes works'. Then, during the night the elevator that 'sometimes works', didn't. I live on the eighth floor which is really nine floors up because you don't start numbering floors until you've gone up to the second floor which you then call the First. So, now I get to walk up and down nine floors to go in and out. As Rumiana said when I complained, "In Bulgaria we call this exercise." In America we'd call a lawyer and sue somebody! I sure hope my friends have packed lightly.

Work continues to be a bit of a mystery. We've spent the better part of this week looking over the bid sheet for the project to coordinate the work on an archeaological site in Kardjali. It's being funded by the European Union and many of the requirements don't seem to make any sense at all. For example, seven or eight experts are identified that would have to be hired, A Team Leader, an Architect, a Historian, etc. In each case, one of the requirements is that they be fluent in spoken and written English. In the case of the Team Leader, we have a man who is letterperfect for the job but is fluent in Bulgarian and French. The sponsoring organization says, "No, find someone who is fluent in English, even if he doesn't have this man's work and experience credentials". It makes more sense to us to hire the most highly qualified individual and supply a translator (if needed), but we've been told to go with a less qualified person as long as he/she meets all the requirements. We're so disgusted that, as of today, we're still undecided as to whether we'll submit our bid. This is a large project and bids were by invitation only so we can't be too cavalier about dropping out.

I've started to put together a short film to add to my website. I hoped to have it up and running by the end of the month but I may not make it. In order for it to work, I need to keep it under 5 minutes in length. Unless you have a really highspeed broadband connection, anything longer than 5 minutes becomes painful to download and open. The problem I'm having is that the rough cut I'm working with is already 27 minutes long. I keep trying to edit it down and it just keeps growing like some alien fungus. Every time I go into it to chop out a bit, I find something new to add. Apparently, it's decided to appear in theaters near you very soon. Or, I may decide to chop it up and post it as sequels, "Bulgaria, The Early Days", "Bulgaria, The Days That Came Right After Those Days", "Bulgaria, Another Couple Of Days", etc. Anyway I promise the wait will be worthwhile because you'll see such sights as turkeys, real Bulgarians, pseudo-Bulgarians, goats, and assorted buildings all accompanied by highly inspirational music.

I've got to go down to the train station now to pick up the first arrival, so think of me lying on my couch on Saturday (Thanksgiving Day in Stara Zagora) stuffed with Brazilian turkey, and hoping that the Stara Zagora Beroas finally manage to beat the Lovech Liteks. Beroas!! Beroas!!

A Week In The Life...

2004-11-12T01:58:00.000-08:00

It's been a busy, hectic and interesting week. I spent most of last weekend visiting Veneta & Stoil in Saedinenie and just hanging out with them. Veneta was very interested in knowing how I was doing with shopping, laundry and the like. She showed me, briefly, how to hang stuff on the line, but it didn't look like rocket science to me so I politely cut the lesson short when Stoil asked me to help him lift some propane tanks into his trunk. It was great to be 'home' and sleep in my own bed. Veneta instantly dropped back into her food-pusher identity and I basically had to waddle back to the bus. I probably won't get to see them again until Christmas unless they make the trip to Stara Zagora.

The PC Country Director and Medical Officer came to Stara Zagora to see how Matt and I were getting along and to check out our apartments. Both apartments passed the safety and security inspection so neither of us has to move. Then they took us to dinner at Rasputin's, which is Stara Zagora's version of Charlie Trotter's newest joint. It's way beyond a PCV's allowance tolerance! I asked for a flu shot and our Medical Officer (Andrea) brought one along and harpooned me just before dinner. The medical care I'm receiving now is the best I've had in years. I broke a filling a couple of weeks before training ended and mentioned that I'd like to have it fixed once I got to Stara Zagora. The medical staff told me that the only dentist I could use is in Sophia and they would set up an appointment for me. I went up by bus, had my tooth taken care of, had lunch and rode back to Stara Zagora that same afternoon. Our dentist has modern equipment and a nice manner. He found three or four other old fillings that are ready to go so I'll be taking the Sophia trip another few times. It takes a little over three hours each way by bus and the ticket runs around $15.00 roundtrip. On the Stara Zagora-Sophia run you get an assigned seat, a beverage service and a movie. I think of it as riding a very low slow airplane without any wings.

I've been working on getting my Lichna Carta (Green Card) since I got to Stara Zagora. The first step in the process was to register with the police. You stand in a long line and finally get to a very small window where a woman looks over your passport and all the forms you filled in beforehand. You were able to fill in these forms because the PC knows what you need and provided them during training. However, the woman behind the small window doesn't like the forms the PC provided, so she throws them away and gives you forms that she likes better. It doesn't matter that they are the exact same forms as the ones she threw away, she likes them better. Then you go away and fill in the new forms. When you're finished, you stand in line again and finally get to the small window, which is conveniently placed slightly below waist level, and bend way over to give the woman back the forms she liked better. She takes them and gives you a small document that she's stamped and tells you to go pay your "taxes", get a receipt and come back. You have to pay your "taxes" at a bank that's right next door so that isn't too bad. Of course, there's a long line but you're used to long lines by now. You pay your "taxes", get the necessary receipt and hop back onto the line to the small window. When it's your turn, you're told that you need four photographs and there are businesses across the street that will take just the right ones. The ones the PC provided are not ones she likes so off you go to have new photos taken. You wait on line for the photos and then get back on the line to the small window, clutching your precious new photos that you really hope the woman will like. When it's your turn at the small window you have to assume a very awkward position so that she can see your face and match it up to the brand new photos. It's entirely possible that your face wouldn't have matched up quite so precisely to the photos the PC provided so you are somewhat grateful to the woman for having the foresight to make you get new ones before she even checked. Then she gives you a receipt that shows that you've registered with the police and tells you to come back in ten days. So, of course, you do. You stand on line and, when it's your turn, you give the woman your passport and your registration form and ask for the forms to apply for your Lichna Carta. But wait, first you must pay some more "taxes". So you go to the bank next door, pay your "taxes" and return to the line. Now you receive a new form that has to be filled in on a typewriter, handwriting is forbidden. Fortunately, there is a small enterprise across the street run by two women, one of whom has a typewriter. You wait on line, hand her your blank form, passport and registration form and she goes to work. Once your form has been completed by typewriter, you get back on the line to the small window. When it's your turn you discover that you don't have a photocopy of your passport and learn that, incredibly enough, there is a small business across the street (next to the photography studio which is next to the typewriter business) that will photocopy your passport for you. There is no line at the copy business so you are able to get back on the line to the small window in record time. The woman looks over all your documentation very very thoroughly and finally sighs in defeat and accepts your application package. That's all there is to it; four weeks from today I can go back down to the police station, stand on line to the small window and receive my Lichna Carta. Couldn't be simpler.

Our Agency (REDA) is quite busy now. We've just been awarded a project to design a training program to help Macedonian food & dairy processors meet EU standards and code. I'll get to help set this one up and there's some urgency to it, as it will take place from December 8th to the 12th. I am also putting together a half day Customer Service training module to be given to employees of the Municipal Government's service center. On top of that we are evaluating whether to bid on a project to coordinate the development of an ancient Thracian archaeological site into a tourist attraction. That's me, food & dairy expert-customer service guru-archaeologist-tourist guy. Still, it gives me something to think about while I'm standing on line.

On a more personal note, I'm getting better at shopping and cooking. I made an excellent pot of lentil soup this week that carried me through five meals. I keep scrubbing the apartment and either it's getting less musty or I'm just getting used to the smell. I managed to do a couple of loads of laundry last night and although the spin cycle on the washing machine now shakes down the entire kitchen, my clothes come out ready for the line. I checked on the status of the clothes on the line this morning and discovered that most of them were, in fact, on the floor. I should have paid much closer attention when Veneta tried to teach me how to hang up laundry. Slowly I'm settling in here and it's beginning to feel almost as good as Saedinenie.

One last word about the Customer Service module I'm going to give to the service staff in the Municipality, among the first participants will be a woman who works behind a very small window in the police station. I do hope she's taken the time to fill in her required course registration form in advance!

Let's Get To Work!

2004-11-02T06:39:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend I sat down on a chair in front of my washing machine, an appliance so old that it may very well have been used to clean the last King of Bulgaria's socks, and translated the instructions printed over the door into English. A man in need of clean underwear will undertake such a project even on a sunny Fall day. Using my handy Bulgarian-English dictionary I more or less got the gist of things and decided to barrel ahead. Throw the lever over the sink to divert water to the washing machine, got it. Set the selector dial to 'white', 'normal', 'hot', no problem there. Put laundry soap into the tray on top, we're sailing now. Hit the 'On' switch, and away we go. Water flows through the soap and into the machine and it starts spinning around (it's a front loader and you can watch your stuff wash if there's nothing good on tv), a couple of clockwise revolutions, a pause, a couple of counter-clockwise revolutions and repeat. Nice, huh? Don't tell me that forty year old Eastern European appliances can't take the heat. Several hours later it occurred to me that my undershorts were probably clean and the washing machine was still going back a couple of turns, pausing, and then going forward a couple of turns. I went in and edged the dial forward a notch and the machine began to move through its next cycle. Okay. I'll just have to remember that it's automatic until it hits the 'wash' cycle and then you have to nudge it along manually a bit and then it's automatic again. Unfortunately, it then skips the non-functioning spin cycle altogether. So I have to lift out my dripping socks and drawers and wring them out in the sink before I can hang them on the line. What to do? I did what any sensible renter would do, I complained to my landlord. Last night Hristo showed up with a bag of tools and proceeded to dismantle the washing machine in my kitchen. He pulled wires apart and soldered them back together, he whacked things with a large rusty wrench and he made subtle adjustments with two different screw drivers. Now I have a washing machine that still isn't quite automatic, but at least the spin cycle works. In the States this machine would have been a member in long-standing in a landfill somewhere, in Bulgaria it gets fixed and used for another ten or fifteen years. And as Hristo says, "Nyama problem".

And then came Wednesday. I was extremely productive on Wednesday. Our office secretary had to spend most of her morning dealing with the cable tv people for me which put her seriously behind in her work and then I downloaded a particularly nasty virus into our network which forced her to spend most of her afternoon cleaning up my mess. I looked at an old email account on Yahoo that I thought I'd deleted back in the States and lo and behold there was a letter in it from "Dave". Heck, I know Dave and the attachment was a list of political jokes so I opened it right up. Bear in mind that most of my experience is on Macs so I'm not as constantly aware of the dangers of viruses as those of you who grew up on PCs. So now Toni is especially happy that the Peace Corp decided to send her a volunteer to help her out.

Wait, it gets better. They turned the water off in the city for two days so they could do some work on the pipes. They gave plenty of notice and everyone stocked up on buckets of water. Then there was a rumor that we'd have water sometime after 6:00pm last night for an hour or two. I did what any sensible person would in that situation. I turned the faucet on in my sink, planning to run and take a shower as soon as I heard the water come on. I got caught up watching CNN and went to sleep. The water never did come back on. At least not until 5:30 or 6:00am when I was fast asleep. Remember that faucet I left on in the kitchen sink? A dish somehow floated over the drain and blocked it. My downstairs neighbors are also particularly happy that the Peace Corps decided to send a volunteer to Stara Zagora to help them!!

Finally, a word about the 11:00pm news. The news at 11:00 here is read by two young women who are stark naked except for the shoes one of them was wearing the other night. The sports scores are read off by a third young woman, also naked. Other than that it's just like CNN, only nuder. Last night they were discussing the American electoral process, a subject they became quite animated over. It was heartwarming to see foreign broadcasters take such an interest in our most basic democratic institution.

I'd like to write more now, but it's getting late and I don't want to miss the news.

Stara Zagora

2004-10-30T03:15:00.000-07:00

A week ago today Veneta & Stoil drove me from Saedinenie to Stara Zagora and then they left. My group from Saedinenie has been spread out to the far corners of the country and I have to get to know a new city and a new group of people. I'm settling into my apartment and I think I'll be very comfortable there for the duration of my stay in Stara Zagora. Of course, the weather has been wonderful and I might be singing a different tune when Winter sets in. Apparently, the practice is to collapse down into one or two rooms and keep those rooms heated. Fortunately, I have some options because of the generous space I've been given, so I'll play it by ear as the weather turns colder. My office is well equipped with heaters and each of us has one nestled under our desks. All in all, I think it'll be alright.

I've spent this week putting stuff away and going on long walks to try and find odds and ends that I still need for my apartment. I still don't know where any of the stores are or which stores sell what goods and just wandering around is my way of discovering what's out there. I get to the office just before nine each morning and it's only a five minute walk from my apartment so I don't have to worry about catching a bus. One big drawback to living in a major city is that I don't walk past the Baba's on their benches and thus I lose an opportunity to gossip and practice my Bulgarian every morning. Stara Zagora is just like any other big city, in the morning people are hurrying to school or work and they bustle with energy but don't stop to smell the roses. It would have been very difficult to have been stationed in Saedinenie for two more years because there just wasn't anything at all to do in that small village, but I will miss it and I'll go back fairly regularly to visit. In fact, Veneta has already called to ask when I'm coming "home" because I've already been away a week!!

I have my own desk and computer at work and I sit by the window which can be very distracting. It occurred to me that in my entire working career, I never once had an office with a window. I'm beginning to believe that I was a lot more productive because of that. There are five of us here at REDA (Regional Economic Development Agency) of Stara Zagora, four ladies and me. There wasn't an awful lot for me to do this week, so I just tried to observe and keep out of their way. Petya gave me a chore to keep me busy and asked me to review our website with an eye towards updating information and correcting awkward English grammar and phrases. It took me three days to go over every page and I typed up nine pages of notes which I dutifully handed over to her. She looked at my report as though a bird had crapped in her hand and dropped it on a pile of papers on her desk and that's where it will live from now on is my guess. On Monday I'm supposed to begin polishing the English version of a training proposal we're bidding on. It has to be emailed to the sponsor organization by the end of the day Monday and they'll have it ready for me sometime late Monday morning.

I've been told to just bide my time and observe before leaping right in and trying to "help" so this kind of work is perfect for me for now. At lunch I take walks around the city to try to see what's out there. I've found a couple of movie theaters and two or three casinos along with a great bazaar and a beautiful theater. It looks like it'll be a great place to live.

On Monday, we're going to begin interviewing tutors for me. The PC encourages us to hire tutors to continue improving our language skills and in my case, the sooner the better. Initially, I'll try to get three hours a week with a focus on conversation skills. My goal is to be able to ask with confidence, "Where can I buy soap?" and to understand the answer.

It's time to go explore now, so until next week...Ciao!!

I Do Solemnly Swear...

2004-10-25T03:49:00.000-07:00

On Sunday night, Oct 17th, we had a Farewell Dinner for our Host Families in Saedinenie. We took over one of the small restaurants and had them cater a dinner. There was food, rakia and wine, and then music and dancing the Hora. That's a tradition at any Bulgarian gathering of more than three people. I have pictures and some video of that night and will upload them as soon as my cable is installed at home. Lindsay came up with the idea of taking a picture of each of us with our families and giving them the pictures in frames during dinner. Veneta was so pleased she started to cry. Stoil just had another rakia and then got up to join the Hora line. Here, men don't cry, they dance!

It was a busy week that began with cramming for my LPI (language proficiency interview) and culminated with signing a lease and moving into my home for the next couple of years. We took our LPI's on Tuesday and wanted to do well on them. There are several levels to the LPI and it's mandatory to achieve a level of Novice Mid in order to avoid re-testing in six months. My own personal goal was to get one level higher, Novice High, by the end of training. I took the test and had to wait until after Swearing-in to learn that I actually scored an Intermediate Low! It's hard to believe that scoring a Low in anything is good news, but I actually did much better than I expected and I'm really pleased. I headed home for lunch right after the test and discovered a party in full swing at our house. Veneta's lela (aunt), the fortune teller you met in a previous posting, had come by with some of her other relatives to celebrate my accomplishment. She told everyone that I did very well on the test before I even got home and they saw no reason to keep the rakia corked while awaiting the formality of my arrival. It's really handy to have a seer in the family.

We were all gathered together in Pazardjik on Thursday for a final day of admin meetings and instructions on beginning the process of getting our Lichna Carta's. Those are the Bulgarian equivalent of a Green Card and allow us to live and work here for one year. Then we'll have to renew them. It's a long bureaucratic process and I was told to begin it on the first day of work in Stara Zagora. The next morning we boarded a bus for Sophia and were taken to the gate of the PC Headquarters. Then,on Friday, October 22nd, 2004, Ambassador James Pardew swore into service the 56 of us who made it through training. The ceremony took place on the grounds of the PC Headquarters in Sofia and was followed by a brief Reception. After which we were all kicked out of the nest and sent to our permanent sites without the coddling and hand-holding we'd come to know and love as Trainees. Now I am a full-fledged Volunteer!! The ceremony itself was short and sweet and I have a video of it which I'll try to put on my website as soon as I get my computer back online. After the Swearing-in, we all milled around congratulating each other and one by one the new Volunteers drifted off towards the bus and train stations to begin their journeys to cities and towns spread all across Bulgaria. Sara, for example, had about a 12 hour journey to a small town on the Black Sea. I just picked up my overnight bag and hopped back on a bus to Saedinenie for a final night in my own bed. Veneta & Stoil were happy to have me home for this extra night and I felt like having another night of pampering before striking out on my own.

On Saturday they drove me to Stara Zagora, a trip that takes about an hour and a half by car and two and a half by bus through Plovdiv. We managed to find Petya, the Executive Manager of REDA (the Agency I'll be working for), and she took us to the apartment. Peace Corps wants our homes here to be safe and comfortable but not ostentatious. By PC standards, my apartment probably borders on ostentatious. It's on the 8th floor of an older building in a very nice part of town. My two terraces face south and east and I have two bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, a kitchen and one and one half bathrooms. The furniture and appliances are all old but clean and serviceable. I have about a five minute walk to work and ten minutes down to the center of town. Last night I took a chair out onto my terrace, lit a cigar and as I watched the night lights of Stara Zagora twinkle below me, I thought of all the PC Volunteers who revel in hardship and brag about having no running water or electricity. Then I switched on CNN on my TV and watched the news. Petya took me out to Metro (a store like Costco or Sam's Club) so I could pick up bedding, kitchen stuff, cleaning supplies, etc. I unpacked and on Sunday took all the debris down to the dumpster. I then went back upstairs and read a book for an hour. It was still nice out so I thought I'd go for a walk and nose around the neighborhood but I couldn't find my keys anywhere. I tore the place apart and finally realized that the only place they could possibly be was with the trash I'd thrown in the dumpster. I had to go back down to the street and crawl into the trash can to rummage through my own stuff to find the keys. As I was crawling back out, I saw my new neighbors and said, "Zdravete!", which is the polite form of Hello. They are really impressed with the new PC Volunteer next door!!

I started work this morning and have already worked on one small project. However, most of the day and most of this week will be spent in settling into my place and my office. I think I'll have a high speed connection at home before the end of the week, so I'll try to get some new pictures online then. For now, I've got to go off and do Volunteer type stuff, that's what they pay me for.

All Good Things Must End

2004-10-16T08:58:00.000-07:00

Our time in Saedinenie is drawing to a close. We'll be tested on language on Tuesday and wrap up training on Wednesday, then we'll be taken to Pazardjik on Thursday morning for our last Hub meeting as Trainees. We'll overnight in Pazardjik and be bussed up to Sofia on Friday to be sworn in as full fledged Volunteers by the US Ambassador to Bulgaria. Then the PC will cut us loose and we'll make our own way to our various permanent homes. Some of the group have commented on the fact that the PC has coddled us and shepherded us around like children since we got here and then, Bang!, they just cut us loose when we need assistance the most. Some people will have to move to their permanent sites on public transport from Sophia with all their worldly goods and chattel. I will hightail it back to Veneta's house for homemade chicken soup, stuffed peppers, clean laundry and a good night's sleep in my room. Then on Saturday, Stoil will drive me to Stara Zagora. Allow me to say, "Yippee!!"

We went to a truly pointless meeting in Sophia earlier this week and it was quite an experience. I had to get up at 5:30am to catch a 6:40am bus to Plovdiv. It was raining. There are no streetlights on my side of town. There are streetlights on the other side of town but they rarely work. There are no sewers or drainage culverts. The streets are nothing but potholes knitted together with strips of blacktop. You know that you've found a deep pothole when the water comes right up over the top of your boot. It was cold. But, we all made the bus and we caught the 9:00am express bus to Sophia after racing across Plovdiv to the South Bus Terminal. In Sophia we sat through a meeting in which a woman with a heavy accent read the slides to a Powerpoint presentation for one and one half hours. The slides were loaded with tons of economic data past, present and to come. It was the answer to an insomniac's prayer. After they woke us all up, we went to visit the PC office and were suitably impressed with how the 'other half' lives. We keep being reminded that "we're Volunteers and they're not". Finally, we went to lunch at a vegetarian restaurant that Maria knew about. It might have been the best meal I've had in Bulgaria. I will definitely take any of you who choose to visit to this place. The fried ice cream for dessert is worth the trip to Sophia.

Today I decided to go into Plovdiv to shop at the MegaMarina. That's the closest thing to a US grocery store we've got here. It's really nice and very well stocked and I wanted to buy Veneta and Stoil a couple of bags of miscellaneous treats to thank them for taking such good care of me. Up and down the aisles I went and without any further ado, I filled a shopping cart right up. They rang up my total and it was about what I expected. The only problem was that I didn't have enough money on me. I'm not sure why I didn't, but that didn't matter right then. See, in Bulgaria there is no such thing as a credit card or a personal check. Everything is paid for in cash. Everything. You want to buy a car, bring a large plastic bag filled with money. So there I stood with a line of grumbling Bulgarians threatening to get nasty held up behind me. Wait, there's an ATM right in front of the store and I've been issued a card so I can collect my allowances. Oh, unfortunately the ATM at the MegaMarina isn't actually working right now. Well, if everyone will just be patient, there's another ATM across the highway at the bus station. Okay, I shake a leg and run over to the bus station where I discover that my ATM card has been deactivated for some administrative purpose that I will learn about on Monday. Now I have to go back to MegaMarina without the wherewithal to pay for everything I've loaded on the counter. They begin pulling items back and when we hit the amount in my wallet I pay for the stuff and leave. I believe I'm permanently banned from MegaMarina, but it might only be for six months. My language skills still aren't up to dealing with banishment.

Veneta and Stoil were very pleased with the stuff I brought back. It's raining and tomorrow we have the farewell dinner for our Host Families. We've arranged an evening at the local restaurant and everyone is excited about it. People we don't even know stop us on the street to congratulate us on having such a wonderful party. We're celebrities here and the fame has gone to some of our heads. I've been known to offer autographs to any gathering of more than three people.

Well, it's time for me to head back to the house. Dinner will be served promptly at 8:00. Boy, will I miss the level of pampering I've experienced during the past two months.

Have a Little More...

2004-10-09T06:39:00.000-07:00

If any of you are thinking of joining the Peace Corps, and I wholeheartedly endorse the idea, there are one or two things you'll have to understand. First, the PC has an excellent training program that begins by moving you in with a Host Family. In Saedinenie we have five Host Families and five very different experiences. One thing we all have in common is the stated goal of each of our Host Mothers to feed us all the remaining food in Bulgaria at each and every meal. Veneta piles my plate high with double or triple the amount she and Stoil eat and if I'm ever so foolish as to actually empty a dish or glass, it is immediately filled back up. In addition to the food on my own plate, there are always a wide variety of "side" dishes who's number and weight cause the table to buckle in the middle. I'm expected to constantly take food from these plates as well as my own. Veneta watches like a hawk and if I take a forkful of feta cheese, she immediately points out that I've missed the salami. If I go for olives, the feta cheese is pushed over to me. No matter how much I eat, Veneta always asks me to "have just a little more..." It seems that all the Host Mothers live in a very real dread of having one of their volunteers starve to death in their homes. Fat Chance!!

In my opinion, Bulgarian drivers are, by and large, careful and considerate. They take great pride in owning a car, which could be the most expensive thing they ever buy, and they don't take unnecessary risks with them. Stoil will push his ancient Lada up to sixty or sixty-five mph, but only on good, straight and empty roads. I've also witnessed no instances of road rage or other acts of stupidity. This goes against my own stereotype of drivers in developing countries as machismo driven maniacs. If the PC allowed it, I'd feel very comfortable driving here. Driving any motor vehicle, however, is cause for immediate dismissal and a one-way ticket home. It really isn't a problem and we all learn to work the bus and train system, just like the vast majority of Bulgarians. Stara Zagora, my permanent site and the city I'll be moving to in two weeks, has blocked off several streets in the Center of town for pedestrian traffic only. It really makes the city a nicer and quieter place to live.

When I arrived here in August, Veneta and Stoil were constantly harvesting one crop or another from their garden. Everything is preserved in jars and bottles for the Winter. Lately they've been jarring and pickling a mixture of cauliflower, carrots and cabbage that will be consumed throughout December, January & February. The grapes are all down and Stoil's oldest son, Ivalyn, will make this year's batch of wine and rakiya with them. I think I've been invited to join in on the work in a week or so, but I'm not certain that I'll be able to because of my move to Stara Zagora. I've definitely been invited back to Saedinenie for the pig roast in December. There's always a big party when the pig is slaughtered and butchered. Nothing on the animal is wasted. Veneta even makes soap from some of the fat. I've tried the soap, expecting it to smell like bacon, and was surprised to find that it's really pretty good. It doesn't smell at all because there are no chemicals or perfumes in it. It's just like pure glycerin soap and can also be used as shampoo. I plan on bringing a chunk with me to Stara Zagora so my guests can use it. Other than soap, the meat is processed in the usual ways. Bacon, chops, loins, etc. are all taken and frozen. Some of the meat is dry cured and becomes 'Babek' which is a very delicious pork jerky and is eaten all year long. Sausages are made from almost any part that can't be readily identified. One pig will feed the family for the rest of the year. Of course, it isn't the Bulgarian way to have meat at every meal or every day.

We are continually reminded that our primary job here is to become goodwill ambassadors for America. Our objective is to let host nationals get to know Americans other than the ones they see in the movies and on TV. We've been very fortunate in Saedinenie in that the community seems to have enjoyed having us here as much as we've enjoyed being here. People greet us when we walk down the streets and if we leave town for a day or two, people ask us where we've been. Often, we don't even know the people talking to us, just that they are part of the town and they are aware that we're here and they like it. When we sit in a cafe, people strike up conversations with us and express interest in what we're doing. They all ask how we like Saedinenie and don't we wish we could live here for our whole time in Bulgaria? It's a great place to be right now.

Where Have They All Gone?

2004-10-02T02:31:00.000-07:00

At breakfast tables everywhere across America the one burning topic of conversation that unites generations in common concern is, where have all the accordians gone? I, myself, used to lie awake at night pondering this mystery. Well, you can all rest easy now, they're here in Bulgaria - all of them! Every band in the country has at least one accordian player and that musician is always prominently featured right out in front. So there you go.

Although we haven't done too much other than study language this week, a couple of little things have happened. A major International Trade Fair is being held in Plovdiv this week so our group took Friday afternoon off and went into town to check it out. There are a lot of exhibitors showing their wares in a very large and modern facility. We couldn't seem to discover just how the show was arranged. In America a trade show will represent something with a common theme, printing, cars, computers, etc. This Trade Show apparently represents anything from large construction equipment to a small firm that makes plastic dresses. There was no rhyme or reason for the layout of the booths and you might find jack hammers located right next to a booth selling the latest fashions in hair coloring. Much to our disappointment, no one adopted the American custom of giving away freebies so we all went home empty handed. All in all it was about as interesting as a Trade Show focusing on the sand industry.

Another interesting cultural experience this week was that coal was delivered to homes throughout Saedinenie. Aside from being a graphic reminder that winter is coming to Bulgaria, it was very interesting to note the way coal is handled here. It is dumped into driveways and onto sidewalks in front of houses and businesses and then it is shoveled into cellars, bins, sheds, or whatever. The interesting thing about this is that it is primarily the Babas who do the shoveling, even in homes that have healthy teenage boys the Babas shovel the coal. Two Babas with shovels can clear a small mountain of coal in a morning and still have time to sit on their bench and gossip in the afternoon. Can you imagine Grandma at home shoveling coal while her teenage grandson sits upstairs and watches videos?

I have received a letter from my counterpart in Stara Zagora informing me that they have found me an apartment. It's in the center of town which is really nice and it has "sunny rooms" which is encouraging. However, it's "not luxurious" and they "will try to make it nice" for me before I get there. When I joined the Peace Corps I distinctly remember reaching an understanding with them that my accommodations would, at all times, be luxurious. Isn't that what volunteering is all about? There are only three weeks of training left and it would be an understatement to say that the time has flown. We've all been told that tutors will be set up for us in our new cities so we can continue our language lessons. In the meantime, we'll be back in the travel exercise groove beginning with this week. We have three days of language in Saedinenie and then go to Pazardjik for two days of technical training. The following week we'll go into Sofia for a day of networking and identifying sources of revenue for our organizations. Our biggest concern at this point is how each of us is going to move all our belongings to our sites over the weekend of October 22nd.

My site mates have all gone on a mountain hike this weekend, leaving me here to hold the fort. Just as I was about to volunteer to go along with them I remembered the monotonous tendency of mountains to go uphill and I've got quite a bit of homework to work on and a document I've agreed to try to translate into English for the ladies at the local cultural center (Chitalishte) which is where our classroom is located. It'll be my first shot at a formal translation and I think that with Stoil's rakiya and my own cigars, I should manage just fine.

Until next week, I hope you are all well and happy.

You Say You're Speaking Bulgarian??

2004-09-25T03:56:00.000-07:00

The Peace Corps has done an excellent job in bringing us to Bulgaria and training us to do our jobs. We've been taught and trained and given ample opportunity to learn through exercise and experience. During staging in Philadelphia we were given a broad stroke introduction to the Peace Corps experience and introduced to each other. Then, as a group of 59, we were brought to Bulgaria and taken straight away to a Training Complex in a town called Strelcha. There we were given some basic language lessons, a lot of orientation material and our agenda for the next ten weeks. When we were thoroughly comfortable with life in Strelcha and its routine, we were divided into training groups and sent off to live in twelve "satellite" towns with Host Families. So, for the past seven or so weeks I've been living here in Saedinenie with Veneta & Stoil and experiencing intensive immersion type language training. It hasn't been all language lessons, however, as we've been given various assignments designed to teach us to travel, order food, ask directions, find information on specific topics, etc. But during our time in our "satellite" towns, our primary focus has been on language.

The Peace Corps has one of the finest language training programs in the world. Thousands of individuals with just as many individual learning abilities have been taught to speak and understand a plethora of languages. We have four or five hours of formal class a day, we live with non-English speaking families in small towns where English is considered a foreign language (can you imagine?) and we participate in exercises designed to force us to use our new found knowledge and skills. It's awe inspiring.

Some of us, however, are proving to be resistant to persuasion and are progressing rather slowly. In fact, one of me is progressing so slowly that the incredibly talented team of PC language teachers is now trying to determine whether it wouldn't just be easier to change the official language of Bulgaria to English than it will be to teach me Bulgarian. For example, we've just learned future tense and other than having Veneta's aunt read my coffee grounds and tell me what's gonna happen, I'm not all that interested in talking about the future. Next week we learn past tense which is supposed to be the most difficult part of the Bulgarian language. There are no simple rules for changing verbs to past tense and I have a lot of trouble with tenses that have simple rules. So, I've decided that I will deal with the past tense by ignoring anything that happened before right now. See, that didn't just happen and I won't talk about it.

One of the outside exercises we took part in this past week was a trip into Plovdiv to see a show at the Roman Forum (yes, another Roman Forum!). This show was called "This is Bulgaria" and it represented the various regions of the country as well as their history in song and dance. It was really interesting and the dancing was truly wonderful. The only small problem was that we were sitting on hard cold marble steps the width of curbs and there wasn't even a five minute intermission during the three hour show. The feeling still hasn't returned to my butt.

I've got a lot of work to do this week but fortunately we're going to be in town for the next couple of weeks. Then on October 22nd, with any luck at all, we'll be sworn in as full fledged Peace Corps Volunteers. All I have to do is pass the language exam. Maybe they'll have it in English??

A Night At The Opera

2004-09-17T08:27:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday we were all gathered together in Pazardjik to meet our Counterparts and be escorted back to our permanent sites for a few days of orientation. My Counterpart is Darina Draganova, Project & Training Manager for the Stara Zagora Regional Economic Development Agency. We left Pazardjik and went to Stara Zagora Tuesday night and I spent the next two days being ushered from one meeting to the next. I've met half a dozen people who interact with our Agency in one way or another and they all seem to be looking forward to having me in the city. I didn't understand why until Darina and our Executive Director, Petya Atsinova, explained to me that as a PCV I'm a source of free labor and they can't afford to hire anyone right now. Free at last, free at last. I don't think MLK, Jr. had this in mind. The city of Stara Zagora has a reputation as the prettiest city in the country and it certainly is the nicest one I've seen so far. It has clean tree-lined European streets and I never saw one goat, cow or donkey the entire time I was there.

Stara Zagora is home to the Zagorka Brewery, makers of Bulgaria's most popular beer, two universities, a nationally recognized theater and opera, and the most famous puppet theater in Bulgaria. I'll have an apartment somewhere in the center of the city as soon as they locate one for me. The Agency will find it and rent it, but the PC will pay my bills. It brings tears to my eyes to think that my tax dollars are finally at work in a good cause, my own personal comfort. The city is also home to an archeological site containing two Neolithic houses. These have been dated back 8,000 years and are claimed to be the oldest known dwellings in any civilization. I think Darina has one of them in mind for my apartment.

The Agency does a variety of things including translation services, project design and implementation, market analysis and support for small and medium sized enterprises. I'm not entirely certain what it is that I'll be doing but I've seen my desk and it's full of papers so apparently I have work to do. The Agency consists of four ladies and me and we work with Municipalities and NGO's (Non-governmental Organizations) offering them any assistance needed to develop or create business in the Region.

My last night in town I went to the Opera. Aida was playing and it was somewhat of a surreal experience. It was held outdoors in the ruins of an ancient Roman Forum and it occured to me as I waited for the show to begin that I was sitting in a Roman Forum in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria watching an Italian opera about an Egyptian love triangle being sung by Bulgarians. The show was excellent and I'll cover a little of it for those of you who aren't as cultured as I hope to become. Okay, first the spear carriers and handmaidens take positions on opposite sides of the Forum. They strike poses and look nice. Now here I have to dispell an old myth, In Aida the fat lady sings almost right away and the show goes on for another three hours. I know it doesn't make sense, but there it is. Another thing that happens is that the handmaidens actually begin, at one point, to Walk Like An Egyptian. the band missed a wonderful opportunity here to break into that tune but they trudged on with Verdi. During the Second Act, ten or so Ballerinos (I'm guessing that this is the proper term for male ballerinas) begin to perform a dance taken right out of Monty Python. Allow me at this time to share some information, it turns out that at no point is it considered appropriate during a performance of Aida for one to laugh out loud and slap one's own knee. The ballerinos are being perfectly serious about their dance and don't appreciate having one find humor therein. Nor, it seems, do one's fellow opera buffs. That being said, the prima donna performed an aria or two, a triple salchow and one paseo de muerte and the opera was over. Next month I'm going to try to attend a performance of the puppet theater. Unfortunately, my picture is being circulated in the fine arts circles in Stara Zagora so I may have to resort to disguise.

Tomorrow I'm off to Sofia to visit my folks. Check out the new photos and tune in next week for more fun.

'Til The Cows Come Home

2004-09-11T08:48:00.000-07:00

If you're doing anything until the cows come home, you have to stop at 7:40 pm. That's when the cows go home past my house anyway. There are eight of them and they wander up the street every night at twenty to eight. It makes an excellent counerpoint to the herd of goats that marches past at 7:00 am every morning and serves as an alarm clock for me. There is also a herd of turkeys that a Baba drover moves through the vacant lots across the street, but on an irregular basis.

Sunday was Saedinenie Day and we had a big celebration that included fireworks, a speech by the President of Bulgaria, a re-enactment of the military engagement that took place and a Hora (line dance) that included the entire town and lasted for several hours. Many of Veneta's relatives came to town and one of her aunts turned out to be a fortune teller. Veneta asked her to come back to Saedinenie later in the week to tell the fortunes of the five Americans and she seemed quite pleases to have been asked. My fortune, told from cards and coffee grounds, is that I will be hugely successful and very rich, I will return to the States and start a new business with an old friend and live an extremely long, healthy and happy life. I admit I was sceptical at first, but now I truely believe that Auntie has a gift. It's eerie.

We had language classes for four days and two independent projects to complete during those days as well. We held our second community meeting to help design a project for us to work on until we leave. Together with two ladies from the Municipality we have agreed to try and get trash bins installed around the park to help alleviate the litter problem. Our second task was to meet with a member of a local minority group to interview him/her. Veneta introduced us to a Roma woman (gypsy) who's been her friend since childhood and we talked to her for an hour or so over coffee. All of these experiences are designed to teach us how to integrate into our new communities.

On Friday I learned that I will be living and working in Stara Zagora for the next two years. It is a large city in the center of the country and is supposed to be very pretty. I'll have an apartment eventually but they haven't rented one yet. On Tuesday I go to Pazardjik to meet my counterpart. Each PCV is teamed up for the duration of his/her stay with a counterpart from the sponsoring organization. Then on Wednesday, my counterpart will take me to Stara Zagora for a brief orientation. I'll meet the people I'll be working with and get to see some of the city. On Friday I'll head back to Saedinenie to get on with the rest of my training. I know that I'll be working with an organization that is building support structures for small businesses with a focus on disabled people and impoverished women. We will be getting involved with designing micro-credit projects and training workshops. It all sounds interesting now, I'll know much more by next week.

Today I went with Veneta & Stoil to the Monastery outside of Assenovgrad. The Monastery was pretty and interesting. On the way to it Stoil and I played Let's See How Fast A 1985 Lada with three working cylinders, two working gears and one working brake Can Go. The car has linoleum on the floor and hums along at twice the speed of smell. It was a great day with perfect weather and a beautiful ride through the mountains. Veneta's daughter owns a restaurant in Assenovgrad and we had lunch there before hiking up to the Monastery. Bulgaria is a mountainous country and I've begun to notice that mountains go uphill. It seems to be required!!

I'll try to get some pictures of Stara Zagora online next week. Until then, watch out for cows.

Quite a Busy Week!

2004-09-04T03:46:00.000-07:00

We started the week with a Cluster Group meeting in Panagyrishte. This is a meeting of four or five satellite groups and is held in place of a full Hub Meeting, which is a gathering of all the clans and is held in Pazardjik. Now pay attention, there will be a short quiz. During the Cluster Group Meeting we debriefed on our visits to various PCV's, had a session on the Bulgarian school system (it's much like ours) and visited an orphanage. Then we headed back to Saedinenie to study for our first language class in a week. It turns out that I do actually forget everything I know in six days, so language class was somewhat stressful. The head of the language department chose that day to visit our class which put Maria (our language teacher) under some pressure as well. It was during this class that such things were said as, "take me to your brothel, or my dog will drive your car!" We hammered away at language for three days and by Thursday were more or less back in rythym. We also had to go shopping for food, plan and cook a Bulgarian dinner for each other. This was an unqualified success if I do say so myself. We made palachinki, chooshki biyourek, and shopska salad. Palachinki are crepes and we filled them with shredded chicken and mushrooms for the meat-eaters and veggies and rice for the grazers. Chooshki biyourek are peppers that are filled with a cheese and egg mixture, flattened and fried. People from both ends of the food chain seem to enjoy them! A shopska salad is simply tomatoes, cucumbers & feta cheese. The tomatoes are wonderful here, but we'll only have them for another few weeks and then they'll be "over" until next summer. Stoil insisted that I bring a bottle of his wine and another bottle of rakia to the festivities and everyone agreed that "he 'da man!!"

Stoil is truly cool. He looks like Walter Brennan in any old John Wayne film, wears an ankle length pink housecoat with panache, and roars outrageously at any politician unwise enough to appear on TV during dinner. The other night he poured us each a small neat whiskey instead of rakia and I noticed the difference immediately. For one thing my vision never actually blurred and I didn't hear the roar of jet engines that always accompanies a glass of rakia. It's tame stuff this whiskey and I don't feel it's a proper drink for men. We'd best save it for the ladies and small children.

Further to the week. We also had a visit by Carl Hammerdorfer, the head of the Peace Corps in Bulgaria and with site assignments coming up next week, this added to our general stress levels as well. We are always being assessed and this was just one more notch on the site assignment pistol. Then we had to arrange for and facilitate a Community Meeting. That means that we were expected to go out into our community and invite people to a meeting to give us a general idea of what they think we could be doing here to help out. This meeting was held on Thursday night and we had nine people show up. They gave us several ideas and we're supposed to choose one to work on while we're here for the next few weeks. Their ideas ranged from complete the sewerage treatment plant to giving some of the senior citizens a few lessons on the computers. Brian and I are willing to tackle the sewers but I think computer classes are going to win out in the end.

Then on Friday we had a Hub Meeting in Pazardjik. We are usually taken to and from Hub Meetings in a PC van because the bus schedules between there and Saedinenie are pretty bad. The van picked us up right on time but we were told that we'd have to make our own way home. So after the meeting we headed for the bus and got on one going to Plovdiv where we could catch a connection to our town. We were able to catch the last bus out of Plovdiv and found ourselves standing in the aisle. When the bus was completely full, and we were jammed against each other like people who knew each other much more intimately than was proper, the driver said in Bulgarian, "everyone move back" and he let another fifteen or twenty people on. It was one of those adventures that still doesn't seem like fun even a day or so later.

Anyway, this weekend is the big Festival here in town. Saedinenie is where the revolution began that eventually led to the overthrow of 500 years of Ottoman rule and we're going to whoop and holler about it all day Sunday. I'm really looking forward to being back in the midst of a crowded square filled to overflowing with sweaty strangers.

By the way, for those of you who are interested, I have added a couple of photo albums that will show something of the area and people I'm with.

On Hiking and Related Activities

2004-08-28T07:54:00.000-07:00

Last week offered a break in the routine of four or five hours a day of language lessons. On Wednesday we were taken to a bigger city, Pazardjik, for a day of technical training and an opportunity to reunite with the whole group of 59 trainees for a day. Then we were split into smaller groups of 4-6 trainees and given travel instructions to get us to various current Volunteers serving in cities and towns all over the country. I travelled south into the Rhodopi Mountains with four other people and we met with the local volunteer and spent two and a half days shadowing him as he did his job. He works for the Municipality of Chepelare and is based in the town of Chepelare. It's one of the prettiest towns in the country and is located in the heart of the Rhodopi Montains just north of the Greek border. The main industry in the town is tourism and Nick is busy constructing a website to catalog every single hotel, guest house, restaurant and tourist site in the municipality. We were given a two day tour of the mountains and saw quite a bit from a minivan and then some more remote areas from a Land Cruiser. It was also necessary to hike into some gorges to see some caves and natural marble bridges. I've taken photos but still have no way to upload them. I'll keep them until I can get them online. From the bottom of the gorge, it was an hour hike straight up to get back to the Land Cruiser. The PC really needs to think about buying a helicopter for just such occasions. In the evenings we went to a local Mehana or tavern to unwind. The four recent college grads I was with unwind by putting a serious dent in the local beer supply and singing "You've Lost That Loving Feeling". Unfortunately, I happen to know the words to that tune and now there's just one more place I can never go back to.

Hiking is a pretty serious tourist activity in the area, at least until the snow starts and the ski resorts open. The trails run for miles through some pretty spectacular scenery and offer very little in the way of amenities. Still, there are a lot of hard core hikers huffing & puffing their way up and down the mountain sides. I suspect that they are all marginally deranged and should be avoided. This opinion was confirmed by the sight of a large bearlike man hiking down the road wearing his hiking boots, his large heavy backpack and his red and white striped speedo. Oh, he had a floppy white tennis hat on too.

We stayed in a beautiful small hotel owned by a man who comes from an Omani family but was born and raised in Zanzibar and then moved to London. He's a great guy and quite a character. Everyone in Chepelare knows Nasser and he cannot drive a block down the street without someone stopping him to discuss one project or another. He's a perfect example of the PC philosophy of integrating into the community and he's been a lot of help to Nick by putting him in touch with people who can help with his projects. We've come away with the hopes of locating Nassers in our own sites, where ever they may be. He's set up a bar in his hotel that is used by many of the local young people. They come in to shoot pool and drink coffee or beer. They like to grab Nasser and shout "Taliban!!" at him. He just pulls back and tells them that he saved them from the Communists and that they are, "goddamned ungrateful bastards". The man's a natural born diplomat.

A couple of things seem to be clearer now. One is that it seems to be preferable to be in a small town site than in one of the big cities because the jobs and living conditions seem to be better in the small towns. Two is that the actual jobs seem to be very unstructured. It's something of a status symbol for municipalities and NGO's to have their very own tame PCV, a bit like the Mayor's Mercedes. So some people end up in places that don't really have a need for them. In those cases the successful Volunteers create their own projects and flourish and the unsuccessful Volunteers wander around, get frustrated and go home. Our group should know in a couple of weeks what jobs and sites they have in mind for us. Based on what I learned this past week, I suppose I'd prefer being a a smaller city or town in the mountains. That, however, can change in a heartbeat.

In the next week or so we go to Sofia - big cities, yeah that's the ticket. It's the only way to spend your tour.?!

Learning the Language

2004-08-21T07:51:00.000-07:00

Our little group has been in concentrated language lessons for an entire week and we've made some progress. We're in class for four hours a day and then have an assignment of one sort or another to complete. We've walked through the community and found the hospital, post office, police station, etc. We've found strangers to try to talk to and interviewed our poor host families until they've taken to drink. Tomorrow (Sunday) I have to make a map of the town with landmarks and street names. This is all part of our training for integrating into our permanent communities. The training program is very thorough and next week we'll be sent off on a visit to a current Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) for a couple of days. Every experience helps and we're moving toward sites of our own very quickly. We find out where we'll be stationed in two or three weeks and then begin receiving more specific training toward the jobs we'll be given. I spent the day in Plovdiv and wouldn't mind being there for the next couple of years. It's the second largest city in Bulgaria and has a great open public square.

This week I got home from class to find Veneta, Stoil & Baba Veltchka hard at work bottling tomato juice. I got plugged into the assembly line and we put up three or four dozen bottles of juice for the winter. Stoil washed the bottles, Baba Veletchka peeled and cut the tomatoes into chunks, Veneta put them through the grinder and I poured the juice from a large plastic pan into the bottles. Stoil recapped the bottles and put them into boiling water for 15 minutes to completely seal them. I enjoyed the opportunity to lend a hand. I was also allowed to cook dinner on Wednesday. This was quite a generous gesture on Veneta's part because it has been made exceptionally clear to me that she will do the cooking and cleaning and I will not!! So I made eggplant parmigiana (sp?)or the next thing to it when you don't have mozzarella cheese or an oven. We did, however, round up some delicious homemade tomato sauce, a couple of eggs, sliced eggplants, breadcrumbs and feta cheese. We (there was no way I was going to be allowed to do this myself) dragged the eggplant through the egg, the breadcrumbs and then the tomato sauce and fried them on one side, we flipped them, covered them with feta cheese and let them cook for a minute or two before removing them. When they were served at dinner Veneta, Stoil & Baba Veletchka oooh'd and aaaah'd, they each held up a piece for the others to admire and all exclaimed that this was the finest food to ever grace a Bulgarian plate. They smelled the dish and glowed with pleasure just being near it. They, in fact, did everything but actually eat the stuff. On a positive note, I won't be required to make dinner any time again soon.

Stoil and I have reached an understanding on the subject of his Rakia. We understand that if I refuse to have a glass of the Rakia he makes himself, I will be insulting him beyond tolerance. In the beginning of the week I had a "mnogo malko" or "very small" Rakia before dinner. The stuff grows on you and by Wednesday I had advanced to a "malko" and last night I became a man and had a "normal" Rakia. Later that evening I discovered that our pig speaks english. Rakia is a wonderful drink, and can be taken in modest quantities for its medicinal value.

The people of Saedeninie are very friendly and our tour of the police station was enlightening. We were supposed to find out what the dangers were in town and which parts of town to avoid. We were told that the danger was 'possible' pickpockets in the Sunday market and that we had the run of the whole town, day or night. It's a small town with a Midwestern flavor. We're in the valley and it's hot. Today was over 100 degrees and you could have cooked an egg on the sidewalk except as they say here, "the egg is missing and the sidewalk is broken!" I will upload photos of all and sundry when I get my own internet connection, but that probably won't be until November.

So until next week, "Ciao"

Hello from Saedinenie!

2004-08-13T23:50:00.000-07:00

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?

All Systems Go

2004-07-27T21:04:00.000-07:00

Less than two weeks now and it's all coming together. I've moved over 100 boxes into the storage site, moved Ian's furniture into his mom's house, donated or tossed tons of old stuff and pulled everything off the walls. I've worked my way down a formidable To-Do list and dealt with insurance issues, cancellations of services, change of address, and automobile registrations. I've worked out a set of contingency plans for the possibility that the contract on my house may not reach closing. The folks who are trying to buy the place still haven't received an offer on their home and that's a contingency in our deal. One way or another it will all work out. Tomorrow morning the Radon Mitigation will be done and some new folks are coming over to see the place. Because of the contingency on the original offer, I can still show the place and a new couple are interested in it. On Monday, the movers will come to move my heavier furniture into the storage site and I'll spend the rest of that week cleaning my house. On Friday, August 6th, I depart for Philadelphia.

I received a call today from the Balkan Desk and after a very pleasant chat, learned that they didn't have the two surveys I emailed to them in the beginning of the month. I sent them off again tonight and I'll check with them tomorrow to make sure they have them now. The woman I spoke with had just returned from a trip to Bulgaria and told me that the country is beautiful and the people are really excited about our group's arrival. Actually, I'm not certain that all the Bulgarian people are excited but, apparently, those who know we're coming are mildly pleased. She had an opportunity to meet with the language training staff and warned me that the workload would be daunting. Thanks. She also told me that there are 60 people in the group so, it seems that misery will have a lot of company. But it won't be all study and whippings, there are several tours planned to see many of the cultural sights of the country and, of course, the mandatory Rakia (homemade brandy) and wine familiarization evenings.

I hope to begin updating this journal once a week starting after I arrive in Philadelphia.

Get Set

2004-07-11T20:53:00.000-07:00

My farewell tour is over and I'm back home. Ian and I had a great time and even went whitewater rafting on the Kennebec River in Maine. We hit the river on the day of the highest water release and tore through the gorge on twenty foot waves. It was a cold rainy day but we were wearing wetsuits so we were relatively comfortable. Ian left the raft at one point and went through one set of rapids as a swimmer. I held onto the ropes with a grip that left my fingerprints embedded in the nylon and, when we caught up with him, I helped haul him back in. It was the least I could do.

I got three estimates for storing my stuff and can't afford any of them. I've looked into the self storage units and have found one that's relatively new and affordable. I think I can squeeze my stuff into a unit that's 10x20 but it'll take some creative packing to achieve that. I'm practicing by staging stuff in my garage. The first thing I need to do is sort out all the stuff that's going to the Catholic Charities. I hope to have them come in at the end of the week with their truck to pull out my donations. Then there's a smaller batch that will go to Ian's house and we'll haul that batch over there in the truck. Finally, I have to begin boxing and packing my 'keeper' stuff. Once it's all ready I'll hire someone to haul it over to the storage site and that'll be that.

I received my packet of information and forms from the PC. A questionnaire that will be used to help match me up with an appropriate 'homestay' family in Bulgaria and another one that was designed to evaluate my language learning abilities and tendencies had to be filled in and emailed back to the Balkans Desk. I have my marching orders for the Staging Event. On August 6th I'll go to Philly and spend two days in orientation meetings and covering administrative details with the rest of the group. Then on the 8th we'll be bussed up to JFK to leave for Paris with a connecting flight to Sofia. We arrive in Sofia on the 9th and go right into meetings. We spend four days in more orientation meetings and then meet our 'homestay' families. These are the people we'll live with for the next three months while we're in training. After living alone for the past years, it'll be strange to have to share the bathroom.

I've received a cd with a huge amount of information on Bulgaria. It also has a language unit that plays through my computer and a letter from the head of training outlining my homework assignment. I guess I'll be pretty busy for the next three weeks.

Reflections From The Beach

2004-06-29T20:17:00.000-07:00

Everything is going well here at the beach. There is a contract on my house (finally!) and nothing has come up that should present an insurmountable obstacle to its sale. Mari has firm control of the business and I am certain she'll continue to grow it bigger and better than ever. Most of the major things have been taken care of and now I only have to take care of the 'details'. I am working on my Bulgarian every day and can now say, "Could you please speak more slowly", that and "May I photograph the face of your Grandmother?" will probably be the most important words I'll speak.

I spoke to a fellow at the Balkan Desk/Peace Corps today and he told me that he would be sending out a new packet of information this week. In it will be a cd with PC language lessons. I hope there aren't two versions of Bulgarian. I've been putting in a lot of work on the "Teach Yourself Bulgarian" version of the language and will be very disillusioned to learn that it isn't quite the same as the PC version. I have seen many responses from current and former volunteers addressing applicants' concerns about the language requirement. They all carry basically the same message, the PC wants you to succeed and will do everything in its power to ensure that you do. If you apply yourself and show that you are willing to work at it, you'll be fine. The PC will even hire tutors to assist those who are struggling. "Hello, Larry, this is your tutor Vladimir (Cat O'Nine Tails) Molitov. He'll beat you until your pronunciation improves."

I've just finished reading a couple of books on Bulgaria. "Summer in the Balkans" is a journal recounting a summer spent in post-communist Bulgaria. It is an interesting and positive account of the country and people written in 1991, just after the fall of the communist government. The author talks about the warmth and generosity of the Bulgarians, their living conditions, their meals and social events and their determination to effect positive changes in their country. "Voices from the Gulag", on the other hand, is an account of life under a totalitarian regime and more specifically, life in a Bulgarian concentration camp. It is written about Bulgaria in the 1960's and 1970's and goes a long way towards explaining why cultural disparities exist and why simply saying, "Presto, you're a democracy" hasn't been a magic answer to everyone's problems.

Geoff introduced me to his Bulgarian friend in NYC and when I tried to say good-bye (doe-vizh-da-nay), she said, "We all just say 'ciao'" So, Ciao.

R & R

2004-06-21T19:03:00.000-07:00

We've made it to Maine. After leaving Andy in Hatteras, Ian and I headed north to Washington DC and then on to New Jersey to tour my old home town of Cedar Grove. It must have been tremendously exciting for him to see the house I grew up in, the house Doug grew up in, the school I attended, the streets I walked. Wow, the lucky guy. Then we visited NYC and he got to see 'places where I spent my youth'. This time I had to bribe him with a side trip to JR Music but we still enjoyed the visit. A few great farewell meals with old friends and we were on our way north again. My realtor called and told me that there is finally a contract on my home...Yippee!! Now all that has to happen is for the sale to go through and for me to find storage space for all my stuff. My Mustang is safely harbored in the garage here in York Beach and so I guess that, technically, the road trip is over. We still have white water rafting to look forward to on July the 5th and then the flight back to Illinois on the 9th, but the driving is done. We logged almost 2,500 miles with virtually no serious disagreements. I still don't like "Alice in Chains" enough to listen to them for more than five miles, but it wasn't a serious disagreement. All in all it was a great trip and we make a great team.

We arrived in Maine early enough to help Mom & Don open the house. That meant putting in the screens, pulling the porch furniture up from the garage, putting the air conditioners in the windows and generally hauling and lifting. It only took a day and it made us feel useful. Now I'm going to sit porch, when I'm not walking the beach, smoke my cigar and study Bulgarian with a vengeance. After all, I've got to be able to say more than "Please, where is the toilet?" and "Those are very nice melons." Although I'm certain those two phrases will be useful, I hope to add several more in the coming weeks. I'll also work on my packing list and my list of 100 Things To Do Before One Moves To A Foreign Country For Two Years. With the house sold, my only problem is the disposition of my stuff. Sure it's just stuff and not at all valuable, but it's my stuff and I've had some of it for decades. The books alone are so attached to me that it would break their hearts to be sent away. These, however, are problems for another day.

We've made it to Maine and we're doing fine. I want to take full advantage of the next few weeks here to relax and enjoy the beach. At night I can sit up on the Upper Deck and watch the moon light up the sea, it's wonderful here and you should really see it for yourself.

So Far, So Good

2004-06-15T18:31:00.000-07:00

We've (Ian and I) made it to the Nation's Capitol. Well, actually we're in Waldorf, MD, but that's very close to the Nation's Capitol. We spent two very nice days with Andy and left when he had to go back on duty. His place is too small for us to hang out with his roommate and we weren't going to see Andy again until the weekend. So we headed north towards Portsmouth and Yorktown to see if either of my two old high school buddies were around. Neither answered their phones which leads me to believe that they both have caller id. When we couldn't raise them, we changed plans on the spot and drove straight on up towards Washington. We've avoided all the hassle of driving in an unfamiliar city by finding a motel in Waldorf, MD and taking the train downtown. It was almost 100 degrees and the humidity was easily in the high 90's today so it was a perfect day for walking around to see all the touristy sights. We hiked up and down the Mall, going in and out of museums, sweating and seeking shade, seeing the sights and generally enjoying ourselves and finished off the day down at the Lincoln Memorial. I've heard that Bulgarian summers are very similar to this weather. Today we had the luxury of ducking into well airconditioned buildings all over the city, it'll be interesting to see how well I cope with the heat when I can't escape it at will. I wanted to try to find the Peace Corps headquarters but Ian put one very tired foot down and refused to join me.

The driving is going very well with each of us alternating in two hour shifts. We listen to book tapes and encourage each other to remain open minded while listening to our very different cd's. I don't like everything he plays, but he's introduced me to a group or two that I'll add to my iTunes collection. 'Flogging Molly' is an Irish Punk Band that's worth a try.

We're currently in the hotel room with the airconditioner blasting out an artic wind that threatens to induce frostbite. After a day spent marching through a sauna, it feels great.