hey gang!
well, i think you're all well aware that today is the
winter solstice! quick make a wish! this is the
shortest daylight of the year, and the sun makes its
lowest arc in the sky! it's fantastic! after today,
our daylight hours get longer and longer! all the way
till june! so, make a winter solstice wish and
celebrate!
my trip down south to nedelino for my first
thanksgiving here was an expensive one because of the
bus tickets alone. alex and i are trying to get his
sponsoring organization, the municipality of nedelino,
to pay for my trip and i think they will on future
trips, cause the mess down there is huge! i thought i
would just be giving a presentation on why not to burn
your trash, but when i got there i found that it was
much more involved than that. i met the mayor and gave
him my presentation and he asked what i propose. so i
said a few things that implied he should let me work
with alex on some kind of education project. then some
of the mayors lackeys took us on a tour of the problem
that they had to deal with - their current landfill
for the town of 5000 is out of town about 5 minutes
upriver. but the landfill had been created on the
river. there's a small mountain of garbage that has
redirected the river and altogether made a disastrous
mess and it's all up river from the town!!! ha! i've
never seen anything so insane! plenty of nastiness
from the landfill is brought back to the center of
town in the river, which of course is also where they
get their drinking water... wonderful situation. so
all of a sudden the focus of my help has changed. i
started pushing for alternative methods such as waste
reduction, recycling programs, composting - in
addition of course, to cleaning up the river and
finding a new home for the landfill. this is a huge
project! and alex would be extremely lucky to get it
completed in his entire two years here. he'd even be
lucky to get a program started that they could finish
after he leaves! standing by the landfill and hearing
my alternatives, they told me that due to the european
union integration, they needed to have the entire
landfill cleaned up, and a new program in place by
march! ha!!! yeah right! i met with some other very
significant people in the regional government there to
talk about ideas and plans and such. they all treated
me like i was an expert... and that's because alex had
told them i was an expert. ha! he did this so i could
treat this like a business trip and not have to use
weekend time or vacation days! in any case, this'll be
a project i'm proud to help with.
thanksgiving in nedelino was fantastic! alex's
language trainer is the english teacher at the school
- she and the mayor organized and paid for the whole
thing at a local restaurant. her 12th grade class was
there and we all had a great party. the mayor sat down
next to me and asked if i liked wine. i said yes and
he told the server to bring out his best bottle of
wine! hot damn! the turkey came out and everyone
chanted for alex to carve it! he was freakin out cause
he'd never carved a turkey before, but he rose to the
challenge. he really struggled with it, and had
managed to cut the whole damn thing in half before he
even got a piece of meat off! ha!!!
thanksgiving in sliven was a fantastic time too!!!
there were 13 of us volunteers there, with two
turkeys, homemade stuffing, gravy, pie, some kind of
rice thing, pumpkin, pumpkin bread, jello, mashed
potatoes, i managed to find some green olives, and as
much wine as we could handle - i mean, the works! and
it was soooo wonderful to see all my friends again! we
swapped stories, and laughed all night. some people
have dream jobs over here and are doing exactly what
they wanted to do. some people are way worse off - one
guy, got stuck with a very crooked ngo. their whole
deal is to write grants to fund projects, but they lie
the whole way through to get money out of the deal for
themselves... i don't even know if there's a project
there to begin with! so the volunteer had words with
the peace corps and is getting things rectified.
another guy, had his counterpart tell him to find him
a project that would allow him to go to america to see
his kids, and if he couldn't do it, he would end is
own life! that's insane! i wasn't there to hear it
first hand, so maybe it was a joke or something. of
course, there are nearly 200 volunteers in this
country right now, so there's bound to be one or two
with some pretty bizarre situations - most people have
very valid and important positions. either way, i ate
until it hurt to laugh and then i went to sleep! it
was wonderful!
a funny cultural thing that i can't seem to get away
from in my daily life is something called "chalga."
chalga is a kind of "music" something like a cross
between britney spears and folk music... technically
it's considered music, though there's no obvious
musical talent involved. all the chalga singers look
the same, and all the chalga songs sound the same. but
from what people tell me, there are certain chalga
singers that are favorites to the locals, and others
that "suck" - but i haven't managed to figure out the
difference between the two yet. it's the kind of thing
that the people here are either passionate about it
being part of their culture, or embarrassed about
it... for me, chalga is a cross between funny and
annoying.
my "name day" was november 30th, apparently the day
they invented the name 'andrew'. in bulgaria, the two
most significant holidays that aren't national
holidays are your birthday and your name day. on both
of these days, the person who's having the day is
required to bring treats to friends and coworkers and
then throw a party for everyone at their own expense.
what i remember back home, was that when it's your
birthday, your buddies buy you dinner or a drink or
something. here, for my name day, i had to buy all my
coworkers dinner and drinks. i don't even really know
what my "name day" is all about, but i do know that on
november 30th and august 28th, i get stuck with the
bill...
"rakia" is the name of the national drink here. i
don't know if it exists back home, but it's something
these people are nuts about! it's usually pretty
strong, anywhere from 80 to 100 proof, and it's used
for drinking (of course), cleaning, medicine/health,
luck, tradition, and one guy in our group even got a
"rakia massage" when he wasn't feeling well! it's
normally made from grapes, but my favorite is the kind
from plums. people make it from anything really. and
that's another thing that's interesting. everyone
makes their own! you can buy it in stores and such,
but the homemade stuff is always lots better! at the
restaurant in town, i always ask for plum rakia,
hoping they'll have some. they never do. but this last
time i was in there, the owner came to my table and
told me he bought a bottle of plum rakia for the
restaurant cause i keep asking for it. he wanted me to
try it, and if i liked it, he was going to buy more. i
told him it was really nice tasting, cause it was, and
then he said, "well here, this bottle is for your
apartment then!" how cool is that!
work for me started off with a bang, giving me the
impression that i'd always be working without any time
for fun. but the last few weeks have been dead, and
i've had a chance to travel a little bit and focus on
my language lessons. they're going well, i guess. my
tutor doesn't speak any english, and so when there's a
word or a concept that i don't figure out, it takes
forever to explain it to me. so i figure my perfection
of this language will be quite slow. good news is, i'm
here for a long time! have been able to go see a
couple different towns - vratsa in the northwest and
chirpan, just southeast of me. it's neat to see the
new places and meet new people but i'm amazed at how
different the language can be only a couple hours
away. in vratsa, i could understand very well what
people were saying - but in chirpan, the dialect was
so thick i had to say 'what' over and over again. and
eventually i just used my 'pretending' skills - i
pretended to understand so that the conversation could
move on. that can create some very interesting
situations!
i just received a new honor! i'm now the 'regional
director' of the trafficking in persons (tip) project
for the bourgas region of bulgaria! my job is to
oversee the education of eleven other volunteers in an
effort aimed at the prevention of trafficking humans.
it's a huge problem here: 200,000 women every year are
trafficked out of the country/balkan area to be sold
into the sex or labor trade. the way it usually goes
is like this: there's a lack of jobs in the
country/community and high school kids are looking for
some kind of opportunity. they think there's nothing
in bulgaria for them so they look for opportunities in
another country. well, eventually they meet someone
who 'knows of a factory job in another country' so
they go with them. but in fact, whoever offered them
this job usually ends up taking them somewhere else,
stealing their passport to make escape more difficult
and then selling them, generally for around $1500, to
work in the sex or labor trade. they're beaten,
threatened and intimidated to give up the idea of
escape, and even if they did, they feel a shame that
we couldn't comprehend and feel that they couldn't
return to face their families in the first place. it's
a horrible situation, and apparently it's not rare...
which is an absolute shame. so i'm happy to play my
part in preventing it. and that's done through various
education campaigns in high schools and in the
communities to tell people that this is a reality.
200,000 women every year is definitely a reality!
for the next month, there is party after celebration
after holiday! it's gonna be a busy month, with lots
of headaches (rakia is at every gathering!). it just
started off with the traditional slaughtering of a
pig. i'm not too sure of the tradition behind it, but
there was fresh pork on my plate at dinner, and that's
something to be happy about! there's a few more name
days coming up, and someone will find a way to know
someone else with the particular name that's forced by
tradition to throw a party. there's also a few peoples
birthdays coming up. and of course christmas - which
is a huge deal in this town, but it's not the same
over-commercialized, buying-fiasco that it is back
home. kinda nice to see it. fact is, i'm hosting a
christmas party for some peace corps volunteers. right
now, i've got about 10 people coming for the entire
weekend. it's gonna be chaos as my apartment is less
than 500 square feet. should be interesting. these
volunteers are all going to be bringing all kinds of
food, cause the selection in my town is horrible. i
think we're even going to have a ham for christmas
dinner! then sometime in january, there's a special
name day that involves a big ceremony. the night
before, everyone stays up and drinks themselves crazy
and in the morning, all the men jump into the river,
waste deep, (after they've chipped the ice away) and
do some kind of crazy dance for 5 to 10 minutes. i've
been telling everyone that i'm going to participate.
i've done this so that when the time comes, i'll feel
obligated to jump in with the rest of the crazy
people. if i had left it up to a decision at the
moment, there's no way i'd do that! they're nuts!!!
i'm trying to keep a good running schedule going,
though it seems the only day i have available to run
is on sundays. this last saturday night it snowed
about 4 to 6 inches and it was a little intimidating
to get out there and run in it. but i'll be damned if
i'm gonna let the stupid weather stop me! so i put on
some clothes (thin, black long-underwear, really
short, bright yellow shorts, and a t-shirt) and headed
out. people normally look at me like i'm insane... and
i don't know whether it's because i'm running or
because i look ridiculous. the local animals freak out
when they see me. every goat and sheep run away from
me, and every dog chases me barking like they think
i'm a free meal! last sunday, running in the snow, i
was getting the normal stares of "what the hell is he
doing?" and then i came upon some kind of procession.
there were a couple of priests walking down the middle
of the road. i gave them the 'howdy' nod and then a
big russian van pulled around the corner behind them.
it was followed by about a hundred people, and i was
caught in the middle of them. i didn't realize what
was going on until i saw the back of the van. it was
an open casket funeral march. i felt like a jerk cause
i was cutting through people to keep running and in
addition to the "what the hell is he doing" stare that
they gave me, some people looked generally offended.
oops. good news is, i got a nice run in, and now i
know that the snow won't stop me!
tonight is the ecotourism association's winter
solstice party! well, they call it a christmas party,
but whatever. there'll be more than 50 people somehow
associated with this association. and there'll be
plenty of cheer! and probably plenty of smoke... this
is something that's driving me nuts! people smoke like
there's no tomorrow, and you can't get away from it!
and nearly all of them say they're going to give it up
come new years... i wonder if they say that every
year? we'll see!
i've sort of lost the thrill of taking pictures of
everything, but i did post some new pictures. and i
received some pictures from my friends that were of
the past, and have posted them according to a time
line as best as i could - so everything's in order
now:
http://picasaweb.google.com/00Judkins/PeaceCorpsBulgaria20052007
well, i hope every one has a damn fine winter holiday
season! i'll be with plenty of friends and plenty of
food - hope the same for you!
happy winter solstice,
andy
