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

Here's Your 'Andy' Update!

a big cultural difference that's been hard to adapt to
is the way bulgarians nonverbally say yes and no. back
home, "yes" is a nod, up and down, and "no" is a
shake, left to right. here, in bulgaria, a "yes" is
given with a wacky motion that i can only compare to a
bobble-headed doll! it's hillarious to watch, and
difficult to mimic without laughing. some are more
expressive than others. i ask them questions and i see
big smiles with their heads going crazy this way and
that for a response. the less expressive bobbles look
more like a shake, from left to right (what i'm used
to as "no"). and a "no" is given with a short nod up
and down, which is pretty much what "yes" was back
home. so, i always end up asking the same question
several times cause i can't tell if they're telling me
yes or no in bulgarian head language, or if they can
see that i'm american and are telling me yes or no in
american head language! got that? bobble your head if
you understand...

we had a meeting with the local police to learn how
the law enforcement works in krichim and other nearby
cities. we learned that the biggest crime is robbery.
robbery in the home... of the home basically. people
will steal metal from houses to sell to recyclers! i
thought it was kind of a funny thing to steal. and
there was a big issue of pick-pocketers too.
apparently they're very, very good. in fact, some of
the professionals cut off their own thumbs to reduce
obsticles for getting into your pocket!!! is that
insane or what! people are always saying look out for
the 4 fingered gypsies! there's a lot of racism here.
the main minorities in the country are turkish, and
roma (gypsie, but gypsie is evidently a deragatory
term). the turkish aren't liked by the native
bulagrians, but turkey doesn't like them either. and
nobody likes the roma. their reasons for dislike and
separation are very childish, but i'm sure they're
very deeply rooted. they say they don't like them
simply because they're them. stupid.

went on a 3 day site visit of the town i'll be
stationed in for the next 2 years. it's beautiful! the
name is kalofer. it's smack dab in the middle of the
entire country next to a bigger town called karlovo,
an hour north of plovdiv, bulgaria's 2nd largest city.
i'll be situated at the foothill of the highest peak
in the balkan mountains, mt. botev! there's a huge
national park here, central balkan national park, that
includes 9 large protected areas where people aren't
even allowed to go unless there's a trail running
through it, in which case you're not allowed to leave
trails. it's one of only five parks in all of europe
to qualify for the 'PAN Parks' certification. it was
explained to me that this means it's the purest of the
pure as evaluated by an independent organization. the
entire national park is more than 71,000 hectares (716
sq km), and is home to some impressive statistics on
biodiversity: more than 2,000 different species of
plants, including 1900 vascular plant species, 188
species of aglae, 229 species of moss, and 15 species
of ferns. 123 species of birds, 2,387 species and
subspecies of invertebrates, and 256 species of fungi!
in the park there are 13 local endemic species, 10
species of bulgarian endemic plants and 67 species of
balkan endemic plants!

the town of kalofer is 3,600 people, the vast majority
of which are either younger than 16, or older than 40.
there might be a few people i haven't met yet that are
within my age group, my 2 coworkers, elena and nadia,
are 27 and 22! elena has a 4 year old son that adores
me. the kid's name is yanni and he has more energy
than i've ever seen in a 4 year old! he's always
telling people i'm his friend and challenging me to
races! the town's population has declinded 50% in the
last 10 years. this trend is common throughout
bulgaria as college kids, or people with some
education, leave the country for western europe or
elsewhere in search of work. my apartment is cool and
only a short walk from my work. though everything in
town is a short walk from everything else. i have a
bedroom, living room, bathroom, and half a kitchen.
there's even an electric heater, and a boiler for hot
water! hot damn! and... a sit down toilet!!!! i can't
wait! i'll occupy the first floor of a 3 story
apartment. the 2nd floor is my landlord, baba tina
(baba = grandmother) who evidentally takes the
initiative from time to time to come in and clean the
place up a bit. this i learned from the pcv that i'm
replacing. on the 3rd floor, lives elena and her son,
yanni, so i'll have pleanty of noise around to keep me
awake! the small town lifestyle is going to take some
getting used to. before i arrived, the tourist office
learned that i was 26 and did taekwondo. 2 days later,
i went to a restaurant where the two ladies working
said they heard i was very healthy, i didn't drink any
alcohol, and i was a zen master! i don't know if the
gossip will be a source of humor or a source of
frustration...

in any case, my job will be working in the tourist
information center for an eco-tourist association
(NGO). when i found that out i was quite bummed. i
hate tourists. and my new boss, mitko, works 361 days
a year. great... good news is, i'm not just stuck
greeting ungrateful tourists everyday. most of my job
will consist of writing projects. this means that i
need to come up with ideas for project proposals so
that our association can get various grants from
different EU donors or elsewhere. once we get the
projects rolling, the idea is that more tourists will
come to kalofer to appreciate the towns rich culture
and natural beauty of the park, and leave a bunch of
money while they're here, in turn boosting the local
economy. the fun part is our partner organization is
the national park itself. so, i get to work on many
environmental education projects within the park,
instead of just staying in kalofer. that means, i get
to spend quite a few work days "researching" up in the
hills! anything for a nice hike! there's another pcv
in town, sara from minnesota. she's an english teacher
in the school here. i'll probably hang out with her
once in a while. the association i'll be working for
has a website: http://www.kalofer.com and website of
the national park which i'll be doing many projects
for is: http://www.visitcentralbalkan.net both are
available in english, so find the icon that says
switch to english or something like that.

the itenarary has me in krichim, learning the language
and minor other trainings until october 26. on the
27th, if i pass my language test, i get sworn in as an
official peace corps volunteer (now i'm just a
trainee). then, moments after swearing in, we all get
shipped off to our permanent sites, in my case -
kalofer. the closest good friend i have will be 2
hours away by bus. but that's considering the bus is
on time. when i tried to leave kalofer and come back
to krichim after my site visit was completed, the
12.10pm bus didn't come until 5.40pm! so my two hour
bus ride home turned into a full on 8 hour travel day!

hope all's well on your end. thanks for saying hi on
my last email. say hi again!

andy

Brace Yourself, It's a Long One!

hey gang!!!

well, i guess i'm sorta settled in. the town i'm
living in right now, krichim, is the envy of all the
other volunteers. there are 10 sites, and this one is
the best, on account of character, beauty, people,
resources, and surrounding landscape. a river runs
through town and it separates the bulgarian people
from the turkish people. the roma (gypsies) live along
the river in a camp of sorts. they call themselves
turkish because of descent, but near as i can tell,
it's religious separation with the bulgarians being
orthodox christian, the turkish being muslim and the
roma having their own religion that's unknown to me.
in any case, i live with a "turkish" family and
they're fantastic! the only drawback is that i'm one
of only two volunteers out of 50 that have to use an
eastern style toilet. that is, there's no other option
available. an eastern style toilet, aka turkish
toilet, is basically a porcelain hole in the ground.
so i haven't been able to sit down to take a dump for
almost 3 weeks now! and the flusher isn’t even
connected to the porcelain hole. there's a measuring
cup sitting underneath a spigot that i have to fill up
to “flush”. i tried to make it fun at first and just
pretend i was camping... but sometimes i just wanna
relax - know what i mean.

other satellite groups come for visits and never want
to leave! so i'm lucky in that sense. i'm having a
hard time remembering people’s names. i met a guy the
other night who was kind of offended when i said it
was nice to meet him, because he said he's seen me and
said hi, nonverbally, many times before! oops!

my family knows everyone in town. of course it is a
small place. my host father, mustafa, still tries to
get me to go hunting with him and i won't be able to
avoid him for long. although i just learned the
typical hunting technique - get drunk, send one guy
into the brush to flush out whatever prey is in there
while the other guy shoots at whatever comes running
out! great! ha! according to my superb comprehension
skills, my host father works 15-day weeks, he works 15
hours a day, makes his own wine and drinks 2 liters in
a single sitting. used to be a wrestler and a boxer.
i've also learned that the men here are
extremely macho. it's probably the only thing i really
don't like about the culture (that and the toilet) -
every guy walks around looking like he has something
to prove. my host mom, ozhgyoon, is an out of work
teacher. she has connections within the city
municipality that rival ken lay's connections with the
bush administration! she knows everyone! only she uses
her powers for good - she frequently writes projects,
the most recent that was completed was the
construction of an eco-trail in the hills that i have
yet to explore on account of my messed up knee. it's
driving me crazy! i'm only going to wait till this
weekend, then i'll hop up the hill if i have to! right
now, she's trying to start several projects, one for
eco-tourism, one for a youth group, and another for
environmental education. i'm going to help her get
grants for them, if i can. she's a real hoot too – she
tries to teach me new words all the time. she often
breaks out an old russian picture book and says all
the words for all the pictures. the other day, we were
walking down the street and she pointed to a goat
walking in the opposite direction and told me the word
for “goat”. She waited for me to repeat it – after a
moment, i pointed and said the word for “dinner” and
she about died laughing! the oldest of my younger
sisters, vildanae (villi) is 17, but she tells
everyone that she's 15 (?). she cuts hair for an
income. nice gal... sometimes... but she has a very
short temper and gets mad at me when she can't figure
out the right english words to say. last week, i came
downstairs for breakfast and she was all dressed up. i
told her that she looked very nice and asked if there
was a special occasion today. she didn’t understand
so i tried several other routes to tell her that her
and her sister looked nice today. finally she said
“uno momento” (she gets a kick out of spanish) and
she ran upstairs, changed her clothes, then came back
down to continue cooking... i have no idea what she
thought i was saying, but obviously we were both very
confused! the youngest sister - 15 but claims 14,
gyoolchen, is the workhorse around here - she takes
care of all the grunt work. i often try to help with
dishes or something, but i get yelled at "turkish men
don't do the cleaning" they communicate to me. they
won't even think of letting me do my own laundry! ha!
and so far, me cooking is out of the question as well.
not that my cooking would score any points with anyone
in the first place compared to what they're giving me.
i had read that this was a meat and potatoes type of
place and was excited because that sounds good. but
vegetables seem to reign supreme so far. so many
vegetables... i think it's cause it's the season
though. canning is quite popular too. people really
don't have much money here. one of the guys in my
group lives with a family whose income is roughly 40
USD per month. and half of that goes for electricity!
so if they didn't have their garden, they wouldn't
eat.

my language classes are going well. my language
trainer has pulled me aside twice to tell me to be
patient with the other people in class. they're
really slow and i'm eager to know the
language, so i've been going ahead. this week, maria,
my teacher, ordered a backup teacher to work with
everyone else and she spends more time with me one on
one, which rocks cause now i can pull ahead of the
other groups!

next week i find out where my permanent site will be,
and which program i'll be working with for the next 2
years!!! i'm pretty excited! we find out, and then go
visit for a week. i won't actually move to my new site
until october 28. 2 more months of language first!

the other day, me and 2 other volunteers hung out at
another volunteer's place for something called
nagosti. a nagosti is a very, very bulgarian thing for
the purposes of socializing. and it can last for hours
- snacking and drinking! what a wonderful thing! in
any case, the host mother of my friend reads fortunes
in peoples coffee cups. she reads the grinds left over
at the bottom. for my two friends, she was dead on! it
was really amazing! she picked out "architecture" as
the profession of my buddy alex's brother without
having any kinds of clues - how random is that! and
for my friend christin, she
told of a guy in her heart whose name that started
with "t". her only long-term relation ship was with a
guy named troy! that's a one in 26 guess... or
prediction rather. i thought it was all hogwash, but
there were too many, too accurate statements that kept
coming out of her mouth. for me, she told nothing of
my current life or past, only my future -
apparently, i'm going to india at some point for some
time. i'm going to climb mt everest. traveling is
going to be a big part of my future (i already knew
that), i'm going to end up working in a small, secret
company in the u.s. with only 2 or 3 other people. oh
yeah, and i'm gonna be really, really happy! that
rocks cause i like being happy!

well, if nothing else, it was good coffee.

thanks for reading. write back and tell me hi.

- andy
- clive
- or however you know me!

A Quick Note from Bulgaria

hey gang,

gee wiz, i'm having a blast!!! within a weekend i had
50 new, very close, friends! it's so great! then we
went to bulgaria and things got better! food's good,
people are nice, temperature was great, blah, blah,
blah...

spent 5 days getting some rough intro's and whatnot in
a tiny town that doubles as a mountain resort.
borovits, or something like that. i was bursting with
so much positivity and excitement, and i couldn't
contain it! most people responded well!

went to pazardjik to meet my new family. it went well.
they're nice. i'm staying in a town of 9,000 called
krichim. since my arrival my stomach has been in
knots! i went from 50 friends to not having a clue of
what's going on. my new sister kind of speaks english
but not really. they shout at me when i don't
understand and i try not to laugh! they're feeding me
lots and lots! too much even.

i think my internet time is going to expire soon.
follow this link for a few pictures so far:

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

i'm trying really hard to understand things, but i've
been here for 4 days and today was my first language
lesson. i gathered my host father likes to hunt, as he
keeps bringing out his gun to show me. he implies that
he wants to take me hunting, but i'm not allowed to
touch a gun in the peace corps. i told him i'll go
with him, but i won't need a gun! ha! he was showing
me pictures of him hunting - standing next to his
kill. he looked so proud in the picture and so proud
to show it to me. so i asked what it was. 'dog' he
responded! ha ha ha!!! oh man! i laughed really hard!
turns out it was all a misunderstanding, he was trying
to tell me 'doe'!

in anycase, misunderstandings have been a wonderful
source of laughter!

my host family haven't been giving me much 'andy-time'
i'm always being shown around town, introduced to who
knows and whatever else they have planned. i had to
sneak over to the internet cafe after my language
lessons today. but they're probably worried sick cause
i'm not home for dinner. so away i go.

super excited, and having lots of fun,

andy

Peace Corps - About to Begin

hey gang!

well, it's early, early in the morning and i've still
got stuff to do. this last week or so has been
extremely hectic getting everything in order. and my
adventure is beginning a little bit roughly. i snuck
in a camping trip with some work buddies and came home
today, my last full day at home, with a big list of
things to do. the first thing on my list was to sell
my car to a friend at work. but as luck would have it,
when i got back from enjoying the forest - i found
that someone had stolen my car. nothing really
significant in the car except for my checkbook. oops.
so i spent the better part of the day filling out
police reports and closing accounts. fun, fun.

although it bummed me out quite a bit, tomorrow i'll
probably remember none of it as i'm stepping on to the
plane headed for a great journey.

i'm starting out in washington d.c., where i'll be
going through an orientation for a couple days.
sunday, a bunch of other hippie volunteers and myself
will fly to sofia, the capital of bulgaria for another
orientation. we're there till friday, at which point
we get bussed to the the southern town of pazardjik.
this is where i'll be doing my 3 months of "training"
but the training is mostly just the language course.
in bulgaria they speak bulgarian, in case you were
wondering. i've already kinda learned the cyrillic
alphabet - it's a start.

at the end of the training (october 28th) there's a
swearing in ceremony and site announcement. this is
when i'll learn which city i'll be doing my service in
for the following 2 years.

then, the environmental education begins! don't quite
know exactly what i'll be doing yet, but they've told
me that i'll be working with municipal governments,
small businesses, schools, and the local community.
should be great fun! but they're making me dress
business casual... that's a much smaller hurdle than
figuring out what to do about a stolen car in one day!
ha!

if you didn't get this email and would like to, let me
know. if you got this email and don't want to hear it,
let me know.

peace out all - i'll write when i can.

andy