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

Happy Saturday!

hey gang!

i'm still here! though we have lost a couple people
from our original group of 50. one left on the first
week. the other just recently got kicked out for
having a drinking problem...

we had a cultural assignment to do last week. we had
to interview different people in the community from
different age groups. jack (a buddy of mine from
alaska) and i, interviewed the old people. the first
couple guys we sat down with were drunk off their
asses and didn't give us any serious answers. the next
group, a group of 4 had some very, very interesting
things to say. we asked the standard questions but our
conversation drifted to politics of then and now.
turns out, the general feeling is that they much
prefer communism. in communist times, they all had
jobs because not having a job wasn't allowed. so they
all worked. on top of that, they all worked together.
for example, bulgarians, bulgarian-turkish, and
bulgarian-roma all worked together, talked together,
and had breaks together. not only did they all have
jobs, the cost of living was affordable. they were all
able to provide for their families with only one job.
it was interesting for me to hear, because i've always
heard the dark stories of america's old enemy -
communism. so the picture in my head of communism was
a very bleak and miserable one. so i asked about it.
turns out, they had just as many holidays as they do
now, they could take time off for family and
festivals. they could even leave the country on
vacation if they liked. one guy talked about paying
for his daughters wedding with guests of more than 450
people. he said he couldn't even think of doing that
now. don't get me wrong, i'm not saying hooray for
communism or anything - i just find it fascinating
that all the propaganda that was pushed on me in
school turned out to be false. so then, lesson
learned: don't judge a man until you've walked a
kilometer in his work boots! (that was very p.c. of
me) the next age group down, 40's-ish, all complained
about the separation of the ethnic groups. not that
they wanted integration, but they wanted the roma and
some of the turks to stop raping the country's social
programs. there's a lot of programs in place for the
roma to get money from the government for being
unemployed, unmarried, parents of many children...
blah, blah, blah same complaints in america. but they
were very racist about the complaints which really
took me by surprise. and that's really all this age
group talked about - how much they didn't like most of
the minorities. so, between these two age groups, we
got very differing opinions about life in bulgaria.

and kind of on that topic, there's something
interesting that's been coming up a lot lately and i
don't quite know how to deal with it. in the peace
corps, a lot of our projects, and a lot of different
peoples jobs are to deal with the ethnic separation in
society. we try to design programs or activities to
integrate the minorities (mainly roma and turkish)
into society with the bulgarians. there's a huge
separation of these different people, by neighborhood,
by job, by life style, even the stores or cafes they
frequent. this is totally new for me, being from
vancouver, i've either been oblivious to what's really
going on, or the situation back home is not as bad. or
so i thought... so, as we try to change peoples minds
on the integration topic, telling them that roma and
turkish are people too, just like bulgarians, so
there's no need to not include them and such - there's
a common argument that comes back in our faces: "how
can you tell us to integrate with our poor people,
when you do the same thing and put all your poor
people in separate neighborhoods too?" what?! it took
me by surprise at first, cause back home in grand ole
vancouver, there's opportunities for everyone! but
they say "oh no, i see the news, i see the pictures
coming out of new orleans. all your poor, black people
are put in separate neighborhoods and left behind
either for storms or development of their society. you
do the same thing as us, so why should we change?"
it's a tough one to answer, as i usually think the
best way to lead is by example. and the example that
they see being set, is not one i'm proud of. i'm also
going to be in over my head when i finally start
conversing about global warming and pollution
prevention.

my host family and another host family in town that
i'm particularly close to, all regularly declare that
they're going to cry a lot when it's time for me to
leave. it's a kind of a wonderful feeling to have
impacted someones life so greatly. of course, i'm
close to them as well - but i'm really excited to
start working. guess i shouldn't be, every current
volunteer i speak with says the 3 months of training
are the best part of peace corps. in the end, it's all
what you make of it.

had my first taekwondo class and it was a success.
finally found a time in the schedule to set something
up. 5 people came, but only 3 participated. my
language trainer, another trainee, and one of three
host moms that refer to me as their own son. we had an
audience of people outside looking in! the second
class had one more in attendance and another one more
in the audience! ha! these people are really diggin
it! there's 3 more that say they want to come on
monday too, any more than that and i'll need to find a
bigger training place!

the end of our training is only a few weeks away and
the stress is on. we've a got a fairly significant
project to complete as a group. significant cause
there's a lot of work involved and no time to do it!
we're doing several things: pollution prevention
coloring contest for the kids, and an environmental
awareness and education activity through a volunteer
cleanup day of the city center. this will mostly
involve the kids of our town, and there'll be some
games and stuff afterward. this is what the towns
people told us they wanted when we conducted a
community meeting, so by heck, we're gonna try and
make it happen! it's a lot of work to organize
everything though and i'd rather just focus on
learning the language right now.

our 'graduation day' is quickly approaching and i'm
seeing that i'll find myself quite a bit more alone
that what i've been used to for the past couple
months. i've made so many wonderful friends and i see
them regularly, and now the reality of me being
stationed in a tiny, tiny town, isolated from english
speakers is kinda setting in. but it's a challenge i'm
up for - and my language learning should really take
off! so far, my reputation among our group of 50 (that
i know about) is that i'm always happy, positive and
optimistic! it's cool to be remembered like that! some
people are convinced that i know everything, or at
least a whole bunch of really cool random facts. and
the other one is that i fall asleep during every
single meeting/training we have! not so cool to be
remembered like that, but oh well! ha! i would have
figured with all my "meeting training" with my last
job, staying awake wouldn't be a problem... but for
the life of me, i can't keep my eyes open! the only
ways i've found to deal with this, is to either drink
a lot of water so i have to go to the bathroom really
bad, or keep a healthy supply of pretzles with me all
day, but i still end up sleeping! good thing i don't
snore!

ramadan just started, and i'm living with a muslim
family so they celebrate this kind of thing. i'm not
expected to do anything and that's good cause i
wouldn't know what to do! near as i can tell, their
celebration (and i don't know what exactly they're
celebrating) consists of fasting during the day - no
food, water, smoking, nothing while the sun's out.
then at night they eat stuff. not much to it really,
except that it lasts something like a month! so, i'm
on my own for cooking from here on out! i've eaten
more vegetables in the last month than i have the last
year! they're good, but i'm ready for a break.
unfortunately, since they're a seasonal item, my break
will be quite long.

that's pretty much it for now. i'm healthy and happy
and learning lots!

i posted some new pictures here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/00Judkins/PeaceCorpsBulgaria20052007

peace out,

andy