Andy Kind of Excited!

zdrasti vsichki! (that means "howdy everybody!")

the other night on the way home from work i stopped in
at a tiny shop to get some food and such to make
dinner with. as i was leaving, a well dressed man came
in and asked where i was from. he introduced himself
as the mayor and asked to buy me a drink. so we drank
and chatted. him and the guys working at the store
were really impressed that i had come to bulgaria to
volunteer for 2 years. they asked the typical
questions i get: are you married, do you have a
girlfriend, why bulgaria, do you know anything about
bulgaria, what are you doing here? stuff like that.
eyes lit up when i told them about my biodiesel
project, which i'm pretty excited about myself. except
for one guy. he wasn't excited at all. during the
silences he would quiz me: where's winston churchill
from? who invented the telephone? and other ridiculous
things. he was the first one to point out that my
project wasn't really that cool. "people have been
doing that for 150 years" he told me. i told him that
i was trying to show the community how to do it
themselves and more importantly try to instill some
kind of environmental consciousness in the community.
"yeah, but people have been doing that for 150 years"
he told me again. so i said, "well, do
you know how to do it?" to which he responded, "no,
nobody knows how." ha ha ha!!! i had to hold in my
laughs! it wasn't till i got back to my apartment that
i realized he was thinking about the process of
converting oil to fuel, rather than converting dirty,
waste cooking oil to usable, clean biodiesel. oops -
another mistake in communication. i explained it to
him a few days later, and now he thinks i'm neat.

went half way across the country, to vratsa, for st.
patty's day. one of the volunteers was having a
birthday party and there were a bunch of us that were
going. i always like getting together with people from
my original group. the peace corps did a
fantastic job with activities to form bonds between
everyone and we all became friends really quickly. and
it's really nice to see everyone again and find out
what they've been up to and how they're doing and
such. we were gonna go to an irish pub, but instead,
we didn't. we went to a few different places and ended
up at a dance club and danced the night away. it was
nice. took a night train home with my buddy tim - we
live in towns that are close to each other. i went and
pulled down the window of the train to blow a snot
rocket out of, cause i didn't have any tissue and this
was a chance to use one of my boy scout skills. well,
the windows are spring loaded and when the train
rocked the window somehow came free of its friction
grip and sprung closed at an incredible speed! before
i knew what was going on, the handle caught me square
in the chin and knocked me back a
bit! it was pretty funny despite the pain. then i
learned that it had torn me open! i bled for a while
and then went to bed.

my running schedule is getting more regular and i'm
getting excited for this marathon in november! i've
still got a long way to go to be marathon worthy, but
i'm on track! i'm really not happy about the roads
around here to run on. well, more it's the drivers on
these roads. i have about one close call per week or
two weeks. it seems that looking both ways before you
cross a street just isn't enough! i can't believe it -
if someone drove like this back home, they'd either be
arrested or shot by another driver (or walker). and
everyone here drives like this! it really sucks!

as i walk to work, i share the sidewalks with many
people and one of the things i do is try to make eye
contact with everyone i pass. i do this to hand out
smiles and potentially meet another local, but also i
enjoy reading peoples faces to see what they're all
about. not too many people will make eye contact with
me, but as i'm watching what they're watching i often
see confusion and a little bit of fear when their eyes
study me. it's all due to the nalgene bottle i carry
with me everywhere. i figure it's nice, convenient and
healthy to always have good drinking water available
whenever i want it, but the locals
stare and ponder at what it could be. evidently
nalgene hasn't hit the european markets yet. the few
people that have had the guts to ask what i keep in
the bottle, ask like this: "is that vodka?" ha ha
ha!!! they see me with this thing everyday - who
can imagine someone drinking a liter of vodka every
day! maybe they're just hoping i'll share!

went to a fundraiser soccer tournament the other
weekend even though the locals called it football. it
was a blast! the money raised went to a foundation for
at risk youth. we all paid to enter this tournament
and picked 4 or 5 person teams and then
had soccer matches! i rocked! unfortunately it wasn't
enough to match the skills of the other players that
were there! we did some kind of a double elimination
tournament and in the end a group of local kids won!
they were fantastic!!! and the kicker was that they
were a team of roma kids that go through life shunned
by the rest of the community for being roma (the 1st
or 2nd largest minority group in bulgaria). the
bulgarian kids that they beat were really, really
upset, and i'm sure it wasn't just because they lost
but who they lost to. after the awards were handed out
we all just kinda played around - there was a
frisbee and an american football and it ended up being
a great tool for integration after the competition
aspect was finished. there was a newspaper reporter
there (the only one in town) and he took several
pictures of my tattoos and interviewed me for a story!
funny that there's this incredible fundraiser going on
and this guy wants a story on tattoos!

i'm on another committee!!! this one i had to apply
and qualify for through a series of rigorous essay
questions! it's the volunteer support network -
basically a small group of volunteers that help other
volunteers out when they have problems. not only
offering guidance and advice, but also planning morale
boosting activities. i'm pretty excited about it! in
fact, i've seemed to develop another reputation! this
is a poll that someone put up on our new yahoo group
to discuss issues about the marathon - training runs,
training schedules, travel and accommodations,
fundraising and such:

POLL QUESTION: how awesome is it we have a yahoo group
page?

CHOICES AND RESULTS
- really awesome 0%
- really really awesome 9%
- andy excited kind of awesome 91%

and people have started using that in conversations:
"i'm 'andy kind of excited' to see you!" and things
like that! i'm a new catch phrase!

i did my "survival camp" training with the bulgarian
scouts 2 weekends ago. i was super excited because i
was told we would be given a knife and 500ml of water
and had to survive in the forest for 4 days! what a
challenge! what an adventure! but as it turned out it
was just a camping trip that included a 24 hour
endurance test... big deal. i mean, i love camping,
but what a let down. so we had to build a shelter with
only an axe for tools, make a fire with some flint,
sleep in shifts in the cold (got down to about 40
degrees), and various other tasks... we didn't receive
any special training or anything, i just had to rely
on my superior primal survival instincts and the scout
i was partnered up with. so, now that i survived, i'm
"qualified" to help be an instructor or at least
"helper" for different scouting activities.

was wandering around varna with some other peace corps
volunteers last weekend and we decided to go check out
the port and see if we could go for a boat ride. we
ended up in some ticket office staring through some
locked glass doors at a submarine.
a turkish military officer was looking at us, so a gal
we were with waved at him and he asked if we wanted to
visit the submarine! cool! so we walked around the
building where we were stopped by some bulgarian
military guards until the turkish officer told them it
was ok. the bulgaristanis (as the turks call them)
confiscated our cameras, phones and bags and allowed
us to pass. we then got a full on tour of this
submarine, chatting with the crew and playing with the
periscope! it was really cool!

a friend from home is visiting, which is really nice!
her, i and another volunteer who's from salem are all
going to egypt in a couple weeks! i'm pretty stoked
for that! i've wanted to go there for quite some time!
will try and get a picture site going for some
reliable picture presentations!

hope everyone's doing well!!!

chow! (that means "peace out!")

andy!