Brace Yourself, It's a Long One!

hey gang!!!

well, i guess i'm sorta settled in. the town i'm
living in right now, krichim, is the envy of all the
other volunteers. there are 10 sites, and this one is
the best, on account of character, beauty, people,
resources, and surrounding landscape. a river runs
through town and it separates the bulgarian people
from the turkish people. the roma (gypsies) live along
the river in a camp of sorts. they call themselves
turkish because of descent, but near as i can tell,
it's religious separation with the bulgarians being
orthodox christian, the turkish being muslim and the
roma having their own religion that's unknown to me.
in any case, i live with a "turkish" family and
they're fantastic! the only drawback is that i'm one
of only two volunteers out of 50 that have to use an
eastern style toilet. that is, there's no other option
available. an eastern style toilet, aka turkish
toilet, is basically a porcelain hole in the ground.
so i haven't been able to sit down to take a dump for
almost 3 weeks now! and the flusher isn’t even
connected to the porcelain hole. there's a measuring
cup sitting underneath a spigot that i have to fill up
to “flush”. i tried to make it fun at first and just
pretend i was camping... but sometimes i just wanna
relax - know what i mean.

other satellite groups come for visits and never want
to leave! so i'm lucky in that sense. i'm having a
hard time remembering people’s names. i met a guy the
other night who was kind of offended when i said it
was nice to meet him, because he said he's seen me and
said hi, nonverbally, many times before! oops!

my family knows everyone in town. of course it is a
small place. my host father, mustafa, still tries to
get me to go hunting with him and i won't be able to
avoid him for long. although i just learned the
typical hunting technique - get drunk, send one guy
into the brush to flush out whatever prey is in there
while the other guy shoots at whatever comes running
out! great! ha! according to my superb comprehension
skills, my host father works 15-day weeks, he works 15
hours a day, makes his own wine and drinks 2 liters in
a single sitting. used to be a wrestler and a boxer.
i've also learned that the men here are
extremely macho. it's probably the only thing i really
don't like about the culture (that and the toilet) -
every guy walks around looking like he has something
to prove. my host mom, ozhgyoon, is an out of work
teacher. she has connections within the city
municipality that rival ken lay's connections with the
bush administration! she knows everyone! only she uses
her powers for good - she frequently writes projects,
the most recent that was completed was the
construction of an eco-trail in the hills that i have
yet to explore on account of my messed up knee. it's
driving me crazy! i'm only going to wait till this
weekend, then i'll hop up the hill if i have to! right
now, she's trying to start several projects, one for
eco-tourism, one for a youth group, and another for
environmental education. i'm going to help her get
grants for them, if i can. she's a real hoot too – she
tries to teach me new words all the time. she often
breaks out an old russian picture book and says all
the words for all the pictures. the other day, we were
walking down the street and she pointed to a goat
walking in the opposite direction and told me the word
for “goat”. She waited for me to repeat it – after a
moment, i pointed and said the word for “dinner” and
she about died laughing! the oldest of my younger
sisters, vildanae (villi) is 17, but she tells
everyone that she's 15 (?). she cuts hair for an
income. nice gal... sometimes... but she has a very
short temper and gets mad at me when she can't figure
out the right english words to say. last week, i came
downstairs for breakfast and she was all dressed up. i
told her that she looked very nice and asked if there
was a special occasion today. she didn’t understand
so i tried several other routes to tell her that her
and her sister looked nice today. finally she said
“uno momento” (she gets a kick out of spanish) and
she ran upstairs, changed her clothes, then came back
down to continue cooking... i have no idea what she
thought i was saying, but obviously we were both very
confused! the youngest sister - 15 but claims 14,
gyoolchen, is the workhorse around here - she takes
care of all the grunt work. i often try to help with
dishes or something, but i get yelled at "turkish men
don't do the cleaning" they communicate to me. they
won't even think of letting me do my own laundry! ha!
and so far, me cooking is out of the question as well.
not that my cooking would score any points with anyone
in the first place compared to what they're giving me.
i had read that this was a meat and potatoes type of
place and was excited because that sounds good. but
vegetables seem to reign supreme so far. so many
vegetables... i think it's cause it's the season
though. canning is quite popular too. people really
don't have much money here. one of the guys in my
group lives with a family whose income is roughly 40
USD per month. and half of that goes for electricity!
so if they didn't have their garden, they wouldn't
eat.

my language classes are going well. my language
trainer has pulled me aside twice to tell me to be
patient with the other people in class. they're
really slow and i'm eager to know the
language, so i've been going ahead. this week, maria,
my teacher, ordered a backup teacher to work with
everyone else and she spends more time with me one on
one, which rocks cause now i can pull ahead of the
other groups!

next week i find out where my permanent site will be,
and which program i'll be working with for the next 2
years!!! i'm pretty excited! we find out, and then go
visit for a week. i won't actually move to my new site
until october 28. 2 more months of language first!

the other day, me and 2 other volunteers hung out at
another volunteer's place for something called
nagosti. a nagosti is a very, very bulgarian thing for
the purposes of socializing. and it can last for hours
- snacking and drinking! what a wonderful thing! in
any case, the host mother of my friend reads fortunes
in peoples coffee cups. she reads the grinds left over
at the bottom. for my two friends, she was dead on! it
was really amazing! she picked out "architecture" as
the profession of my buddy alex's brother without
having any kinds of clues - how random is that! and
for my friend christin, she
told of a guy in her heart whose name that started
with "t". her only long-term relation ship was with a
guy named troy! that's a one in 26 guess... or
prediction rather. i thought it was all hogwash, but
there were too many, too accurate statements that kept
coming out of her mouth. for me, she told nothing of
my current life or past, only my future -
apparently, i'm going to india at some point for some
time. i'm going to climb mt everest. traveling is
going to be a big part of my future (i already knew
that), i'm going to end up working in a small, secret
company in the u.s. with only 2 or 3 other people. oh
yeah, and i'm gonna be really, really happy! that
rocks cause i like being happy!

well, if nothing else, it was good coffee.

thanks for reading. write back and tell me hi.

- andy
- clive
- or however you know me!