Biodiesel of Peace!

Due to overwhelming and consistent pleas to update my blog, I've decided to toss out a little story for ya. After all, this is easier than responding to the thousands of emails I get on a daily basis.

This Bulgarian heat wave has really let us (Bulgarians and Peace Corps Volunteers) know summer is here and in full swing! For the rest of this heat season, it was my goal to put a lot of extra time into Supercross08 to ensure our success, but as our service in the Peace Corps winds down, I'm realizing that I haven't got a whole lot of "extra time."

Last weekend I had a list of priorities that I really wanted to conquer. Some items on that list were: go for a run, go swimming, remember my sunscreen, feed my fish, but at the top of my list was, "find sponsors and money - hurry up."

Yes, instead of all that, I spent the weekend in a village making biodiesel for my host organization! It was 100 degrees and humid and all kinds of uncomfortable! This was our first run with making a larger batch of the biodiesel and we all had different ideas of how it should be done. I, the only person to have read any of the instructions that I put together, had my idea of how we should proceed. Iliyan, chemist and "my boss," had different ideas. And Iliyan's father, self-proclaimed master of knowledge, disagreed with both of us.

We made some calculations and ran the processor and then sat in the heat to wait. We sat for hours! And it was HOT! I put my chair in a doorway that had a very mild breeze coming through and got yelled at, "you're gonna get sick!" For all who wonder - in Bulgaria, it doesn't matter the temperature, if there's a draft and you're in it - you might die, or at the very least you're going to be sick! On Monday, 92 degrees and our office without AC, Iliyan yelled at me for opening the window, "What are you doing? You know I'm already sick!" I explained that Americans don't generally believe in течение (techeni-ay: the Bulgarian Draft of Death) and one of my other colleagues piped up and explained to me that her father has had a shoulder injury for 16 years that was caused from the течение!

Apart from just sitting in the heat, while we waited for the reaction to finish we also spent time eating enormous meals that Iliyan's mom kept making. I ate more food over the weekend than I did all last week! It was great food, but the combination of the heat, being stuffed, and suffering from the Bulgarian Draft of Death made me one uncomfortable Biodiesel Maker.

In the end, our biodiesel turned out just like it was supposed to. A little dirtier than we would have liked, but success was ours! And to celebrate - we all went inside, closed the doors to keep out the flies and the cool, refreshing breeze, and continued to eat and drink!

The good news is - while Iliyan was distracted with the flu from a gentle wind, I was able to find some time to send off a few letters to potential sponsors! Finally! Of course we need to send a lot more, but the important thing is - it's beginning!!!

Integrating with Hippies!

I had an opportunity to represent Bulgaria in Germany with a group of real Bulgarians at a youth exchange/eco-conference/hippie seminar for two weeks! There were groups from Portugal, Poland, Bulgaria, and of course a group from Germany. This was held in a town called Bad Oldesloe, just outside of Hamburg.

The idea was to go through several environmental workshops all based on new environmentally friendly construction methods. And when I say "new" I mean "newly fashionable in our western culture" as we were learning techniques that are hundreds and thousands of years old.

As part of the official seminar, the different techniques we studied were: straw bale insulation and construction, clay construction, green roofing, resources from waste, and solar energy. These aspects of our gathering were phenomenal! I learned so much about green building and I was really inspired to apply what I'd learned in my future... at some point.

We started out with a three day workshop from a fantastic guy named Steffen Klauke. Steffen was able to appreciate anything made, no matter how hard it made me laugh. He was one of the finest teachers/leaders I've had the pleasure of learning from. We gathered "waste" from a nearby forest (my ecology professor would have kicked my ass for calling this material waste) and he demonstrated/inspired us on what to do with it. There's a picture there of the chair I made from eight different kinds of tree species! I used only screws, nails, glue, and brute force to assemble it! Next to my magnificent chair, in the picture, is a less magnificent but also impressive table someone else threw together.

The second most significant workshop we attended was a week long clay construction workshop in a tiny village that didn't even have a store! The gal leading the group was a character. No body, except the German group, understood a word she was saying and yet that didn't seem to phase her as she went about instructing as if everyone understood perfectly! I think her name was Julia. She showed us this massive house she's been working on for years. Different parts of her castle were in different states of construction. It was a perfect model to show us what to do at different stages when working with clay. We learned to mix the clay with sand, water, and horse/cow shit, or straw depending on what the clay was to be used for. It was a good workshop, but we were coming from warm Bulgaria and the rain, and the cold, and the no showers for a week made the final day there a welcomed one.

The content of this seminar in Germany was amazing! We learned a lot of cool stuff and it flowed very nicely. The people there were great too! Super friendly, interesting, smart, and curious. I enjoyed talking and getting to know all of them. In fact, on a personal development level, my biggest gain from this seminar came from the people - but not in a way I was expecting or would ever hope for.

Generally speaking, these people were hippies. I use that as a term of endearment as I often refer to myself similarly. The separation I found, though, came from their outlook on society. I've been surrounded by environmental scientist hippies for the last seven or eight years of my life and it's what I'd like to say that I've become. These guys were more on the political activist side of hippie and I came to realize I've changed A LOT! They have good goals of saving the environment, cutting pollution, reducing waste, and everything else you would think of as environmental. But they use their goals only as a means to challenge authority. It's true, they're doing wonderful things for the environment, but only as a protest. Eight years ago, I would have been in heaven to be with these guys! But today - all I could think was "What are you thinking?" Society isn't changed by extreme protests from a few, it's changed by education and awareness! Hippies chaining themselves to gas pumps or throwing rocks through McDonalds' windows is the wrong kind of awareness - it just lets people know that you're a crazy hippie! The picture there of the flyer made me laugh hysterically. It says, "Thursday 24 May - Knallhart - electro acid psychedelic trance rave festival against the capitalistic stupidity and the state violence"! It's marketed as some kind of freedom rally, but what kind of societal development could ever come from it? My money's on 'NONE,' but I bet it was a good time! The picture of us dumpster-diving was another action that had me wondering. In a protest on food waste, we had to rummage through supermarket dumpsters and collect all the expired food that was thrown out that day. This was what we ate for the two weeks we were there. It sounds gross, I know, and in general it was. But I will say that there were some fruits and vegetables in those dumpsters that most definitely didn't belong there. My digestive system wasn't too happy about this lifestyle, but in an integration effort - I went with the flow of things.

Our hippie seminar in Bad Oldesloe was timed to finish the day before the G8 summit. The hope of the organizers was that upon completion of the eco-conference, we would attend the G8 protests. I would have rather been a part of the summit! Someday. My ultimate point is - I learned some amazing things over the course of these two weeks, most importantly about myself, but also some hippie things about the environment or whatever.

Politically Correct? Never Heard of it...

spring is in the air! we had an oceanographer in the office the other day! i told her the word for hello in bulgarian and in perfect english she responded with, "oh, you're not bulgarian!" i said with a smile, "what gave me away?" "well i thought you were, but now that i can see you better, it's obvious." she told me. "what if i was wearing bulgarian clothes?" i asked. "nope," she says, "bulgarians are known for being beautiful." great... thanks... maybe her english wasn't that perfect...

as my time in bulgaria continues, i'm feeling more and more busy. my first year here felt like vacation! it was great! but now i'm working my butt off! there are projects going this way and that - presentations today and tomorrow - and on and on. don't get me wrong, the accomplishments i'm making feel great too, but i'm really looking forward to a little break or something! i'll be going to germany for 2 weeks at the end of may for a business trip - i get to learn how to make hippie houses from mud and hay! should be just the break i'm looking forward to! i was invited to partake in a human trafficking conference during the first 4 days of april! the group was 20 high school and university kids, the youngest being 15, and the oldest 20. everyone was from varna, but the conference was put on in a resort town to the north called balchik. this was my first experience participating in a bulgarian classroom setting and it completely blew me away! the teacher, svetla, was the school psychologist that organized and facilitated this whole shin-dig. she opened each session with some kind of "ice breaker" activity. back home i remember doing similar kinds of things like passing a ball around a circle and when you get it you have to repeat all previous names that were said plus your own. normal stuff like that. we played all sorts of wacky games that would have had svetla thrown in jail in any of the 50 states! we played a version of duck-duck-goose, but we stood in a circle, and instead of patting the person on the head as you passed, you grabbed their ass! another, and i don't know if this is still played in schools back home - the game where you hold a ball with your chin and neck and pass it to another person who could only use their chin and neck? well we did something similar, but with a condom on our mouths. we had to inhale so that the condom (still in it's package) was stuck on our mouth via pressure as we passed it to the person next to us! another ice-breaker was to pretend to be passing a bunny to the person on your right, but before giving it up, you had to say which part of the bunny you would kiss. this was a good language exercise for me cause i learned lots of body parts. after the imaginary bunny made it around the circle, we then had to kiss the person on our right, on the body part we had said we'd kiss the bunny! haha! lots of awkward places got kissed... svetla's daughter attended the conference - it was her 17th birthday and svetla had organized a party for the group of 20 in one of the hotel rooms. all the kids bought beer and svetla gave her daughter, radost, a bottle of whiskey, which was shared among the group! the legal drinking age in bulgaria is 18! svetla stayed at the party most of the night, but not as a chaperone, more of a "you're my kids and i love you" type of figure. despite the under age drinking, and all the sexual implications, none of these kids were immature or irresponsible about any of this. no one was inappropriate or shy about any of the wacky games we played. and not even one kid got out of control with the drinking. it was simply a good time had by all. i absolutely couldn't believe what i was seeing! no one got offended during the 4 days of these hi-jinx! every time we'd start a new one of these activities, ice-breakers or parties, my eyes would bulge and my jaw would drop because i know damn well that if that happened back home, kids would lose control, get offended or be offensive, parents would complain or fly off the handle and probably even sue, and poor ole svetla would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law for organizing an educational conference at which everyone had a good time and no one got out of hand! what a different culture, eh?! a few weeks later, i spent the day at my buddy tim's school, helping him teach english. the day was full of sexual jokes, immaturity, kids getting thrown out of class, refusal to participate, and even refusal to learn! no discipline at all!!! i guess i still haven't figured this place out...

another cultural shocker was when i was telling my landlord about my recent trip to macedonia. i had a great time! they speak a dialect of bulgarian and call it "macedonian" and it was funny to hear everyone speaking with an accent. so my landlady went on a tangent about how crappy macedonia is. she described it as a "country of villages" with uneducated people. she also described how everything was grey - meaning all the buildings are built with either stone or concrete and went on to say that everything is crumbling from neglect over the years. i thought to myself "that's the same way i describe bulgaria!" then i laughed as she turned the conversation into a competition between bulgaria and macedonia and kept saying that bulgaria was so much better, but never really saying why.

so, i kinda got hit by a car the other day while i was on my evening run. it really messed up my left knee for a few days. i would feel excruciating pain at random times and for random reasons. my knee went out on me as i was leaving the office and going down the stairs with my coworker - a french gal named helene. so i was hobbling about and holding on to stuff and putting my leg/body in all kinds of weird positions to get down the stairs in as little pain as possible. we went out for a drink after that, and on the way home i complained that my knee was hurting again. helene laughed and said "when you go down the stairs in this way, i think you have something in your pants and enjoy of this feeling." hahaaa!

my time in the peace corps is winding down now. i have less than 6 months left and the looming question of "what comes next?" is on the horizon. my counterpart/colleague/boss, iliyan, is stopping just short of begging me to stay in bulgaria for an extra year. we're making tons of progress for his organization, but i have other passions that i feel i have to chase for a while. at the moment, a buddy of mine and i are pretty into a post-peace corps project maintaining the peace corps ideals. we're planning a year long motorcycling expedition to implement various youth development/education and cultural awareness projects across northern africa, eastern europe, and all of asia. the details are here: http://www.supercross08.com! this project is still in the making and we've got a lot of work to do on it, especially with the funding aspects... we've been talking with several organizations at various locations along our route about partnering for potential projects and every thing's falling into place nicely - so as it stands, these are my "life after peace corps" plans! tell me what you think! and also with my limited days remaining, i'm realizing that i get to come home soon! this makes me quite homesick! man, i miss friends and family and american food - A LOT! it's gonna be great to see everyone again, even though i'll only be home for a short time. still smiling, andy!

The search for partners begins!

It was a dark and stormy night, and by “dark and stormy night” I mean that it was another gorgeous sunny morning as Tim and I arrived to Varna on the night train from Sofia after a two day training session of the support group we were a part of. We made it to my apartment around 8 am and wasted no time in beginning our full day of work! We started out making a few tweaks to our website to get everything current and then we began our search for NGOs in the countries that are to be on our route. We researched NGOs that shared our same ideals and goals and then constructed a bunch of letters and sent them out. Being that Tim and I live in different cities, at best we can only meet twice a month to work these things. So we pushed ourselves to the limit. After 14 hours and about 300 emails our brains finally shut down. Tim looked as if he was in the middle of a “dark and stormy night” story. Good news is, we’re now in contact with more than 30 organizations spread out over our route! We have yet to solidify specific events and projects but it’s still early!

Every time Tim and I are able to get together for another superwork session, we lock ourselves inside and this supercross08 adventure becomes less and less like the vacation I had wanted. Instead, I'm developing a liking and a passion for spreading goodwill and helping others through direct service.

Nothing makes me smile more than making someone else smile!

This Is How We Do It in America!

dear favorite people, the last few weeks/months have been busy! here's your winter update: for thanksgiving, i helped organize an event that 10 other volunteers attended. we went to a very small mountain town called stoikite, in the southern part of the country. in stoikite, there is an orphanage for truants where one volunteer works. we decided to get together and cook them up a big ole thanksgiving dinner to share a bit of our culture with some very underprivileged kids. we got a bunch of food donations from the embassy, like turkey, cranberry sauce and other goodies these kids had never had. all of these kids were in this orphanage because they'd broken the law to some extent - the ages ranged from 10ish to 18. some kids were good kids that had just made stupid mistakes, others needed more help. one gal, 14 years old, had had an abortion one week before we got there. that blew my mind... and then i learned that the reason she had the abortion was because she had gotten raped - because her parents forced her into prostitution! i was speechless! and now she has to live in an orphanage for truants! it was a super sad place and i don't know if i could handle working there as my primary assignment like the other volunteer, sarah. despite the sorrowful state of the orphanage and the kids' lives, they lit up like little balls of energy when they learned that 12 americans who spoke "funny bulgarian" were gonna spend the day with them! more than anything else, i think their biggest problem is just being attention starved. we ran a ping-pong tournament and played frisbee while we cooked, everyone rotating positions of course! one kid latched on to me like glue! he was obnoxious and had found a new best friend... me. all he wanted to do was talk about cars, which wouldn't have been all bad - except i know nothing of his chosen topic! he was crazy for the modern day street racing cars that he'd seen in the movies. he even had a collection of drawings he'd made of his favorite cars - i think he used a stencil though cause they all looked the same, only the emblems of the makers like honda and toyata were different - ha! i had nothing to contribute to the conversation so i just let him talk and pretended to be interested until he caught on to that trick so i told him my favorite car was the old style volkswagen bug! he couldn't stop laughing! he thought i was out of my mind =) dinner came and they all waited patiently for me to make a speech on the history of the thanksgiving holiday and what it means to be thankful for what we have and such. i got stuck on the last word of my speech (good fortune) and tripped over it several times before a teacher stepped in to silence the laughter! it was a good time! the kids all wanted to know why we ate turkey, "are you guys poor or something?" they asked! all us volunteers had stuffed oursevles, keeping with thanksgiving tradition, but the kids didn't really understand that. after the first round of food, they wanted to have a dance party. sarah had her laptop and played some of their favorite songs and we all tried to dance with them - ha! it was a great day, and seeing their smiling faces felt pretty rewarding! my counterpart/colleague/boss, iliyan, invited me to his family's village (kaspichan) for the christmas pig slaughter two weeks before christmas!!! i had heard about it last christmas, but never received an invitation. so i canceled my other plans and got really excited to partake in something traditional and cultural that i haven't seen yet. it was my assumption that a family that raises pigs would kill one of them every christmas and have all the family, neighbors and friends over for a huge winter party!!! so i was expecting a party, when in route iliyan tells me, "the reason all those people come is because it's a lot of work to slaughter a pig." well crap, that's not what i thought was going to happen! ha! we got their early in the morning and we walked out to the pigs. they selected the biggest one and said it was around 450 pounds. they walked it out onto the street where about 5 big guys tackled it and held it down while another guy slit it's throat. i kept asking "how can i help?" cause i didn't know what to do. they just laughed and said "take pictures!" it fought for a while, but in the end - the five guys with the knife won. they tied it to a tractor and dragged it through town - on back to their house to begin all the work - yee haaawwww! there i got to help a little bit more. it's a dirty job, and we spent a few hours doing it, but in the end they found a use for just about every part of that pig! i would say they threw away less than 5% of it's entire mass! some other neighbors came over to buy large chunks of fat, which were still warm, for cooking and eating. the technique i helped out with for dealing with the fat was to cut it into cubes and then throw it all into a big pot. the cubes of fat would half melt making some kind of oil, which got poured off and will be used as lard for cooking during the winter. the leftover parts of the cubes were essentially deep fried, then bottled and eaten just like that - all year round. some kind of delicacy that just doesn't appeal to me. "here, have a piece of deep fried fat!" when the pig was all in pieces and all the organs had been sorted out we all had a drink. i thought it was time to relax, and then they said "ok andrew, you get to help hold down the next one." ha! we went for another pig, but it was only half the size of the first one. we spent the last 7 (yes, seven!) hours of the day eating and drinking and laughing! it was a long, exhausting, and eye-opening weekend. it was great to participate in something so traditional, though i felt quite uncomfortable the whole damn time. in the end, they sent me home with a bag of about 15 pounds of pork and a few apples! i started an environment discussion group! i had to advertise "a chance to practice your english" to generate interest, but i was quite surprised at how interested the participants are in the environment to begin with! it's a diverse group - 2 student council members from 2 different universities in town, a naval academy kid, a couple moms, the ecologist from the municipality, a construction worker and a couple other students. we get together twice a month to discuss current environmental topics led by different volunteers who i've invited. we have a conversation and teach about the environment for an hour or two, then we all go out to the pub! it's kinda fun. and 3 of them have already started volunteering with our organization (this was the ultimate goal)! they're helping me find and collect oil for this never ending biodiesel project! for christmas i headed back to southern bulgaria to celebrate with two of my favorite people over here, alex and emily. alex lives in a small town called nedelino, where i've been a few times to help him out with work and such. the town's not super special, but the southern part of the country is my favorite - it's beautiful and the landscape reminds me of home! for new years i went back to sofia like last year, but without the crowd of other peace corps volunteers. it was me, alex and a guy named tim who lives close to me. we went to the center of sofia where there was a huge gathering! we decided to go to sofia because it's the capital city and this is the date that marks bulgaria's accession into the e.u. there was a concert and fireworks that looked like they were going to burn down the parliament building and they rained down ashes into everyone's eyes! that was funny. people were pretty excited and you could feel something of pride in the air for having been accepted into the european community. when i got home to varna, about 10 people told me they saw me dancing in sofia on tv! january 6th marked "jordonov den," which is one of the most famous name days in bulgaria. tradition has it, that a priest blesses a wooden cross and then throws it into the water. to prove their bravery, the men of the village all dive into the water and race for the cross. whoever gets it, gives it to the youngest person in attendance. i did this last year in kalofer when it was snowing and had some mild frostbite on parts because we stayed in the water dancing and then danced again when we got out! this year, i went to a coastal city called burgas to celebrate with seven other volunteers. we went down to the pier where a couple thousand people were gathered to watch the "brave" men race for the cross. there were only 50 or so swimmers. the police had blocked off the pier and were requiring some kind of medical document to be eligible to 'take the plunge.' as we didn't know about this beforehand, there were eight frowns on our faces... we were all ready to participate, but even more ready to swim in the cold sea water in january! so in front of all the onlookers, we climbed on down to the beach, drew a line in the sand, stripped down to our bathing suits, counted to three and ran into the water like a group of eight screaming lunatics! ha ha! it was a blast! all for now. wishing you a week full of smiles, andy!

thoughts of the day

this is my favorite blog, ever!!!

Supercross08

During my service in the Peace Corps, a fellow Volunteer and I set up a project for an international mission of peace. For seven months I traveled across Europe, Northern Africa, The Middle East, Eastern Europe, Russia and Asia. In the countries through which I passed, I set up discussion groups with youth and community organizations. The purpose was culture exchange: propagating peace through direct dialogue. Project details can be seen at www.supercross08.com.

Amazingly gorgeous pictures, captured frequently during the implementation of this project, are posted at www.picasaweb.google.com/supercross08. Be careful, though, they might just be the best pictures you've ever seen!

Below are the links to the individual projects, stories, and other pictures of my Supercross08 adventure.

Spain
Introduction to Gay Life

Morocco
Marrakech 101
Morocco Integration Success
Children of a Moroccan Village
Project #1: Stereotypes
Islam Meets Sustainable Development

Tunisia
Project #2: International Politics
Project #3: Values and Goals
Dangers of Travel

Egypt
Project #4: Volunteering in Egypt
Project #5: Understanding Islam

Jordan
Team Awesome

Syria
Project #6: A Bridge Between Islam and Christianity

Turkey
Travel Through Turkey

Bulgaria
Project #7: Bulgaria and the EU
Fundraiser for Youth
Follow Up Report from My Peace Corps Service
Project #8: Corruption and a Beach Clean Up
Project #9: Alternative Energy and Easter

Romania
A Romanian Birthday Party

Moldova
Project #10: Volunteering in Moldova

Ukraine
Election Politics and Glimpse of Ukraine

Finland
Russian Visa Blues

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania
Project Couchsurfing

Russia
Stereotypes in Russia

Mongolia
A Night with a Mongolian Family
Project #11: A Library in Mongolia

Conclusion
The End

Tim Wade, the buddy with whom I worked, also created a list of stories about our work and adventures. Visit his blog at www.timwikoff.blogspot.com to see a different perspective of our project.

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!

Your Tax Dollars Hard at Work!

zai-yek! (that's howdy in arabic, but in bulgarian it
means rabbit!)

been making some accomplishments and decided it was
time to take a little holiday down to egypt! it was
fantastic!!! i've never traveled with having favorite
places before, it has always been about meeting
people, other travelers. but egypt may have changed
that. i went with goals of seeing the pyramids and
learning more about the mystery that is egypt. but
after arriving, that stuff took a back seat to modern
day egyptians and their culture! crystal somehow
managed to pick up the chicken pox a day before our
arrival into egypt, which was hilarious and
unfortunate at the same time. we decided to go to
egypt without a tour group to allow for more freedom
and also to save some money. we stayed in hostels and
took local transportation and we pretended to be
egyptian even though it was impossible to convince
people of that... even when we said we were from the
far north of egypt. ha! anyway, the first hostel we
got to, in cairo, had some superb people working
there. we befriended them immediately, and the one
guy, amir, took us to the hospital and translated so
crystal could get some help. the whole hospital visit
was less than a dollar! they gave her some kind of
topical medicine to help relieve the itching but it
turned her skin bright, bright purple! oh man! it was
really funny! while she stayed in bed for 2 days, alex
and i explored cairo. it's a neat place! 20 million
people and only a handful of traffic lights! it was
insane! drivers constantly honk to let other drivers
know where they are. intersections were big messes of
merging cars. pedestrians just jumped into the mix and
waited for chances to hop from one lane to the next in
between cars that were within a foot of you on either
side and cruising along like a real life game of
frogger! and in all this chaos - people get to where
they need to be! i can't believe they manage under
these conditions, but they do! the pyramids were
great, of course. but the hoards of tourists really
took away from their magnificence.

headed out into the desert on a 5 hour bus ride to the
bahariya oasis! there was some kind of natural hot
springs that allowed there to be life in the middle of
the desert, and there a small town existed. it was
great to get away from busy cairo. the beauty and
quietness of the desert were something far more
amazing than the overcrowded pile of rocks i had come
for. we hung out with locals, having tea, watching the
sun set, dancing and listening to their music. one of
the things i really appreciated early on from this
culture was the absence of western music! there were
no britney spears, madonna, backstreet boys, 50 cent
or any other horrible sound-atrocities that get sold
around the globe. nope, in egypt, they listen to
egyptian music - and it was wonderful!!! next day we
headed off into the desert for a camping excursion!
spent a good hunk of the day without roads, just
driving along in the sand - it was cool! saw the black
desert, which was created from the erosion of volcanic
rock and now there's a black dusting of rock covering
everything. we climbed a small mountain and the view
looked like it went on like that forever! but of
course, we drove for another hour and we were in a
completely different place called the white desert
with just as beautiful a landscape, and also looked
like it went on forever! i liked this place very much.

headed back to cairo to catch a night train to aswan.
had a quick dinner, which crystal and i both got food
poisoning from. the train was 13 hours long... pure
torture! we arrived at 2pm and i slept for a solid 24
hours once we got our hostel. we both went without
food for the better part of 3 days. so, we didn't see
much of aswan or luxor. alex says they were pretty
cool places. all i can say is that they have crummy
hostels that cost less than 2 dollars.

from luxor, we took a night bus to dahab. our bus
broke down twice before we finally switched to
another. in all, it was a 20 hour bus ride! dahab was
great though, and more than made up for the bus ride!
some damned terrorist bombing had been there a week
before we got there, and as a result the town was
quiet and quite mournful. the water was gorgeous, and
felt great! alex went diving and crystal and i
snorkled! i'd never done that before - it's really
cool! there were some great reefs with all kinds of
fish of all kind of colors!!! it was amazing! and now
i have a new hobby!

took a quick jaunt to alexandria and wandered the town
for a day. we were followed around by children and old
folks alike who were keen to ask us where we were
from, our names, and then would quickly follow with
"welcome to egypt!" they were super friendly people!
the more bold children would see us from far away and
make a b-line for us to shake our hands!

finished up our trip back in cairo. said goodbye to
our new friends, and took one last crazy ride in a
taxi! our favorite taxi driver, who had on a previous
occasion almost plowed over a lady pushing a stroller
to park illegally so he could run into a mosque and
pray really quick - all the while we were en route to
the hostel, took us to the airport and sang and danced
while he did it. he gave me his favorite cassette tape
and told us all "life is delicious, i'm not rich but
i'm happy, what can i do?" what a holiday!

there's a new group of peace corps volunteers in
bulgaria now. group 19! one of the committees i'm on
has to deal with introducing them to the peace corps
lifestyle and be there for them if they have a
problem. so lately, we've been working on that a lot.
the biodiesel is still going... but not nearly as
smoothly as i wanted it to... i wanna just jump into
it and do it and have it be done and functioning!
however, that's not how things work here, and i'm
having a difficult time adjusting to a new way. they
want plans and budgets and partner organizations and
applications for everything! so paperwork is taking up
a great deal of the time that i would have been
getting my hands dirty... guess it's a learning
process for me too.

the other weekend i participated in an orienteering
competition! i've never done this before. the
"Varshets Cup" was held in a small town that attracted
bulgarians from all over the country. my particular
route was 17 markers, spread over a 2.8 kilometer
course. i saw other people using compasses and maps to
navigate their way through the town and the forest
that it bordered, but i wasn't given a compass - they
told me i wouldn't need it. no problem, 2.8km is
short, i thought. i got a map as i left the starting
line and i was running and having fun! up till marker
4. it was far into the forest and my map sucked. i
went way passed it, and ended up off the map and
completely lost! i had almost made it to the
neighboring town before i got my bearings... people
were getting times of 17 and 18 minutes for the
course. i never found the 4th marker, or any other
markers. i did however find my way back to the
starting line only an hour and a half after i had
left! i arrived just as the search party they had
assembled was setting out to find me! it was pretty
funny, and now the entire town will remember me as the
guy who got lost...

here are some updated peace corps pictures:

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

and here are my egypt pictures:

well, the summer is finally here and the weather is
fantastic! i'm gonna try and take advantage of it and
start a running club! would be cool if it worked, but
i have a feeling it'll be difficult as people here
aren't into health so much. last wednesday was a
national holiday here to celebrate the cyrillic
alphabet! alphabet day, they call it. so everyone had
the day off! i spent it on the beach and now i'm
beginning to appreciate my newer position in varna!
the peace corps rocks!

lots of love from bulgaria,

andy!

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!