Howdy from Kalofer!

hey gang!

well gee wiz, a lot has happened since i wrote last.
first, i'm super excited to say that i am now an
official, full on, peace corps volunteer!!! my 3
months of training are finished and we were all sworn
on thursday! it was an exciting moment in my life -
and it was televised - anyone get bulgarian news on
their fancy schmancy satellite tv? after the ceremony
there was a small reception, we met some politicians,
bulgarian and american - but i was mostly interested
in saying goodbye to all my new, wonderful friends.
our ceremony lasted only an hour and people started
disappearing left and right as they headed for the bus
station, the train station, the headquarters office,
or their counterparts picked them up. it sucked! some
of my very close friends are too many hours away from
me! not too happy about that, but i am here to save
the country, not just make a few friends! ha!

with that said, the last few weeks of training were
super stressful and busy. we had all kinds of things
going on, and we had to say goodbye to our host
families and plan a move to a new city.


on the language, i'm doing really well for the time
i've been here. we had a speaking exam at the end of
training to assess how well we're picking everything
up. and you had to be at a certain level to be sworn
in. i choked badly on my exam cause i was way nervous,
and for no good reason really, but i still managed to
be ranked in the highest bracket of our group of 50! i
still have to be careful though, as certain words
sound the same but have completely different meanings:
the verbs for 'wait', 'hear' and 'f#&@!' are only a
small vowel sound apart! the most beautiful word i've
ever heard spoken, in any language, is the bulgarian
word for 'thank you' it sounds like this: 'blagodaria'
but it's hard as hell to pronounce! i must say it at
least 50 times a day and i still haven't got it right!

a couple weeks ago, 30 of our group of 50 took a
weekend trip to 'the seven lakes' in the rila
mountains! it was the most fun i've had in all my 3
months here! our hike began at a mountain hut and was
supposed to take only 3 hours, but our guide was drunk
and we got lost. so we were out for about 4 hours. the
hike started out in a beautiful forest similar to a
northwest forest, but once we got above the tree line,
there was a bunch of snow, and cold and fog! oh the
fog! we had a visibility of about 50 ft - it was a
blast! some people weren't prepared for the cold and
were probably getting annoyed with my upbeat attitude,
but i was having too much fun to keep quite! we were
told that we had to pack for cold, and pack food for
the weekend. expecting to be freezing at night, i
packed extra. when we got to the mountain hut at the
top, it was loaded with a big woodstove and a
restaurant! ha! hiked the next day to see the
magnificent 7 lakes, and all we saw was white... still
fun though, and our guide was drunk again... and yep,
we got lost again too! ha! it was a great, great time,
you can probably tell by the smiles on my face in the
pictures!

oktai, a host father of another volunteer, has bonded
with me quite a bit. so much in fact that on every
encounter he makes a point of telling me that i'm his
biggest, biggest, biggest, best, best, best friend! in
fact, a few weeks ago he started telling me that he
wanted to get a tattoo cause i had one. and he went
and did it! he got 2 even! silly bastard! he told me
he did it so we could be closer, and then he called me
his brother! his wife, ahti, was pissed! apparently
it's against the muslim religion to have tattoos, and
she said she was going to leave him, but she was only
angry for a couple days.

had my final taekwondo class... sucks cause i was
having a lot of fun - and so were my students, 10 of
them in all. they really took a liking to it. one gal
had the nicest roundhouse kicks of any beginner i've
ever seen! it was a fun time.

our community project was a wicked success! the
trainers said it was one of the best projects they've
seen. we did a cleanup day for the youth. about 100
kids showed up! we weren't prepared for that many, but
we handled it quite well. the kids at one of the
schools had drawn up some posters and posted them in
local businesses to advertise the cleanup. the
eco-club made little badges for everyone. we made a
small chart with specific environmental points for the
kids to relate to and posted them in the classrooms of
the 3 schools in the town. after the town center was
cleaned, we moved to the stadium and cleaned that.
then we had games! there was soccer, frisbee,
hula-hoop, and vassi was playing some kinds of
bulgarian games. the kids loved it! we even got the
local supermarket to donate some snacks for everyone!
i had a blast! i was even able to yell at the kids in
bulgarian and they listened!!!

we put on a goodbye party the second to last night for
all our host families at one of the restaurants in
town. we had to pay some money for this, but it was
well worth it. we had a fantastic time! there was a
lot of rakia (the national drink) and i ended up
dancing all night! it was hard to say goodbye when the
day came. in fact, they had a harder time than i, two
people avoided me completely, my host sister took a
bus to plovdiv around 6 in the morning so that she
wouldn't be there when i woke up! and oktai, the guy
that got that tattoos, said he had to work and could
come to say goodbye. he told me he didn't want to
break down in front of me. ha! so what i did was, i
went and saw him at work before i left!

thursday night i got to my new home in the town of
kalofer. http://www.kalofer.com the drive was really
beautiful as now all the leaves are changing and
there's a huge species diversity of deciduous trees
around here! i was supposed to take friday and the
weekend to relax and unpack, but my counterpart is
eager for me to start working. he had me doing stuff
on friday like jumping through legal hoops, which is
important so i don't go to jail. and saturday he has
me helping him with a project that he's been writing.
my new apartment is cool. pretty dirty, and there some
things that really need attention, but in time, it's
going to be extremely comfortable! and it's soooo much
more quiet than the last place - hardly any barking
dogs! and the best, best, best part of the whole thing
is my wonderfully comfortable, full on, 'sit down'
toilet!

i live in something of an apartment building. there
are three stories, each having only one family. i'm on
the first floor, in a one bedroom apartment, maybe 500
square ft. in all. it has a very funny 70's theme to
it. orange shag bedspread, orange and red shag
pillows, orange, green and yellow lights. there's even
hippie flower designs on the walls. on the third floor
is elena and her son and father. she is my co-worker.
the 2nd floor is the landlady, baba tina. a sweet
little old lady that makes her self at home in my
home... right now i think it's cute that she wants to
help out and such - she even calls me "my boy" and
says that i'm a lot better and cleaner than frank (the
last volunteer that lived here) but i have a feeling
that soon she will get on my nerves.

andy/clive/really neat peace corps volunteer