The Happiest Peace Corps Volunteer, Ever!

hey everybody! gee wiz, it's been a while since i've written, sorry. i'm still alive - just doing other things. know what i mean. over the summer i had a spell of bad luck. went swimming with some friends on a very stormy day - we had the beach to ourselves! the waves were about 2 to 3 meters high and we were having a blast! unfortunately i chose to ignore the fact that the water smelled like sewage and that i was gagging every 10 minutes or so and i ended up with a nasty eye infection that later moved into my lungs. i developed a nasty cough where i choked every time i coughed and i couldn't breathe in or out. it sucked. the doctor thought i had asthma, but after several tests, it was determined that i only had bronchitis. we were having so much fun playing in the waves, but now i know not to swim in water that smells like sewage. since then, i've found some beaches that are away from any tourists and direct sources of pollution - so i only swim there now. this summer got pretty hot, and one thing i just can't get over are the superstitions here. for example, it's common belief (mostly among older folks) that a draft will make you sick. i can see the logic in that, if the draft is cold, right. but in the heat of the summer people were giving me dirty looks and actually arguing with me cause i open the windows on the bus to get a breeze. "close the window! do you want to get sick?" they asked me in disbelief! i mean, we're talking 95 and 100 degree days, on a packed city bus with no ac! one minibus even had a screw drilled into the latch on the window so it couldn't be opened at all! ha! i took the month of july off from running cause i couldn't breathe or anything on account of swimming in sewage. and breathing is important when you run. but i started off strong in august and on september 6th, i ran a half marathon from a town called sedinenie to a city called plovdiv. it was an organized run on one of bulgaria's national holidays. this particular holiday is "unification day" marking when bulgaria's two halves were united into one whole bulgaria! there were about 200 people that showed up for the 23 kilometer run and as we were lined up at the starting line they were doing some kind of tradition or something. i didn't notice cause i had race jitters and i was just plain excited. i popped in my music and turned it on to wait for the starting pistol. well for some reason i felt the need to announce to everyone what i was listening to and in the middle of a 'moment of silence' to observe all the people that had fallen during the fight for bulgaria's independence, i yelled out "hey guys, i'm listening to creedence clearwater revival right now!" ha ha!!! oh man, people kinda gave me dirty looks and i didn't understand why till later when someone explained to me what i had done! on the work front - it was a slow summer. i've mostly been involved with planning events for peace corps volunteers and training sessions for new volunteers. i had gotten all of my biodiesel project written and was ready to submit it to start receiving funds to implement the project when i learned that the whole damn thing needs to be written in bulgarian! ha! so, i had to start over. this is slow going because i don't know most of the technical words, but i'm getting lots of help from my bulgarian counterpart and we should have everything squared away soon. i hope... while waiting for that to develop, i've started an environmental club to get university students involved and just plain aware of environmental issues in their country! my group had our mid-service conference, which means my service in bulgaria is half over! i can't believe i've been here for so long! it went by too fast and having only one more year in front of me doesn't seem like enough. it was really great seeing my friends again! some i hadn't seen for almost a year! of our original group of 50, there are 39 left. people have left for various reasons but all my close friends are still here, saving the world! at this conference, i debuted my new hair style! a comb-over! i was inspired a year ago by a teacher who had the most amazing comb-over, ever! and i decided to grow my hair for a year so i could have one too! i kept it for a couple weeks and it got a lot of laughs from a lot of folks! my bulgarian counterpart laughed for a solid 10 minutes!!! then someone in the office came to one side of me and blew my hair as if to be the wind to see my hair get all messed up! they laughed for another solid 5 minutes! they even brought out a fan to mimic wind! it was fun, but i shaved and i'm back to being my gorgeous self again. traveled to greece for the athens marathon that a group of us had been training/planning for since last fall! i had sooo much fun!!! 15 volunteers ran the race and 3 volunteers came down to support us! only one guy had run a marathon before, so this was all very new to us. did a bit of sight seeing, but mostly took it easy. on race day - november 5 - we piled into buses that took us to the town of marathon, where the starting line was! there was so much excitement in the air!!! i ran with my buddy tim for the first half when his injuries got the better of him and he had to slow down. we had been running with some other volunteers too - running's never been so fun! i was on my own for pretty much all of the last half of the marathon. it was brutal! the landscape had changed from beautiful mountains and sea to boring, typical big city. around 3/4 of the way through my legs and feet were killing me, but i persevered and finished strong! much stronger than i had anticipated! my time was 4 hours 10 minutes and 15 seconds! i was shooting for 4 hours 30 minutes, so i blew myself away! the course was mostly uphill, though not too steep. and i ran the whole thing in a pair of $40, 3 year old running shoes that i had to cut toe holes in because they were too small for me! i rock! at the end, i was overwhelmed with excitement! i started congratulating everyone around me, and hugging people - even people i didn't know!!! every time i got to watch one of my friends finish the race, i would get overloaded with excitement again! what a day! i ended up with only one or two small blisters, 4 black toe nails, a knee that doesn't want to bend any more and a smile that just won't go away!!! my results are posted here: http://www.athensclassicmarathon.gr/results2006/html/?index.asp?lang=English (i'm on page 32) our fundraising for the bulgarian scouts didn't go as well as the marathon. we made it to $2,500 of the $10,000 we were aiming for. but we have some months left to continue raising money and there are some plans in the works for local events to raise the rest of the money. bunch more going on - but for now, i'll let my pictures do the talking: http://picasaweb.google.com/00Judkins/PeaceCorpsBulgaria20052007
hope everyone's happy as a bag of wigs! love, andy/clive/favorite peace corps volunteer in bulgaria/happiest marathon runner ever!