finally updating

Apologies to the 2 or 3 people who regularly check my blog, I have let you down. Haha. But in all seriousness sorry for the lack of updates, but its been a pretty crazy month. Some very frustrating times at work, coupled with health problems, freezing cold, a girlfriend I haven't seen in 6 months, and no Pac-10 basketball to watch all did their part in making me really depressed for a few weeks. Wow, I just realized i've been here 6 months already! But I really felt that I wasn’t doing much good, I was in physical pain (herniated disc in my back), and I just really wanted my mommy. I spent as much time as possible in bed and I couldn’t imagine that I had another 20 months to go.
And while it has only gotten colder (-17 last night), more painful (waiting on the MRI results), and well… worse (Stanford got swept by the Arizona schools last weekend), I have crawled back out of my hole and am feeling a lot better. I really appreciate all the support from my friends and family at home and those who have had those tidbits of wisdom that made me re-evaluate my situation in a more positive/humorous light.
Last week another volunteer and I worked together to submit a SPA (small project assistance) grant in for approval. This money comes from peace corps it self, to help volunteers jump start lasting additions to the quality of life in our communities, and the perspectives of our community members. Our project involves working with the current high school seniors to put together a mini-library of sorts with a variety of texts that are useful to graduating students as they prepare for college. The college entrance system here is pretty dang tough, seeing as just about the only thing that counts is test scores, and space in the good universities is VERY limited. The standardized test are anything but standardized, and kids realistically trying to get into a good school need to 5 or more separate exams, one for each of the schools they are applying for. So basically what we’re doing in getting a library of all the texts these tests require, and starting a check-out/evaluation system to keep the most useful books on the shelves and in good condition. We find out in a month or two whether we win the $2500 and change. I’ll let you know.
Also in my desperate search for things to do I came across a situation, again at the high school, where they would be down an english teacher for the rest of the school year, with no replacement candidates as of yet. So I'm going to start taking over their English elective class, about 15 hours of work in total. And while I'm a little nervous about how we'll pass the time (its much less structured than the official english language classes, this is almost like a club for credit), I am exciting about having more to do on a day-to-day, and maybe this new relationship with them will open up other opportunitites. We'll see…

Tales From the Crypt

This is a picture of me taken today... I went with my counterpart in a nearby villiage to help our sattelite business center repair a computer. This guy here was the local Ernesto Guevara (it seems every village in Bulgaria has a hero, no matter how small). Anyways... His house is the local attraction. I know you can't read this... But check the numbers... Dude died at 28... Ill! Take care.

New Year

Hope everyone is full and feeling guilty for already breaking their New Year's resolutions. I'm back at work after an great 3-day weekend spent in the Rhodopi mountains. There's a lot more snow up there than there is in Elhovo... Everything looked like the tops of those frosted oatmeal cookies (which i miss so much). Anyways we had a big shindig a small hotel in cheppelare, with our good friend Nasser, this crazy Zanzibarian/British ex-pat who owns the place. During the day on new years eve we walked up to a lookout point, and we uh, looked out over Cheppelare. But that quickly degraded into a snowball fight, which was enitrely Kate's fault. After that we wlked through town and found a man selling home-made wine and rakia out of a radio-flyer wagon... How cool is that? We bought him out and went back to the hotel to start drinking... The rest of the night was full of eating, laughing, dancing, and making a fool of ourselves in front of the other guests. I won't name any names, but we B-16s are a scandalous bunch... Any talk of us not knowing how to party is misinformed. When midnight came we watchted the kids set off about a million fireworks. I missed the countdown i think because i was too busy chasing the little british kids around pelting them with snowballs. Yes, i know that is wrong. After that we headed to the discotech, where I had a blast dancing and watching everyone make out with everyone. Then back to the hotel to pass out around 5... Good times.
The first I woke up around noon. Went to meet Celia and Sarah x2 @ Nicks place. Bummed they watched space balls without me. Got some food and hopped on a bus to Smolian... Where Sarah R.'s site is. She had lost her key (as had I) in the last night's debauchery, so we went to her counterpart's house to chill until we got a hold of the landlord. And of course you can't go to a Bulgarians house without it becoming na gosti.... So we stayed for 2 or 3 hours stuffing our faces. When we got there Sarah's counterparts husband said that we must dry our socks (he was very concerned about that for some reason). He brought the girls slippers and presented me with a brand new pair of dress socks... You might think that is a strange present, but seeing as it is the only thing i've gotten for Christmas so far, I was overjoyed. Then we went to Sarah's place, met Dave, Kalyna, and Rich. They shared their ski injury sotries over a bottle of whiskey, and we watched Euro MTV. Damn, it's sad... But I was so happy to see some recent music video's. Around 11 we went to a bar, drank a little, danced a lot. Celia kept on requesting Britney. Sunday I spent ALL DAY on a bus... not fun... Plus my iPod was out of batteries, so I to try and sleep. And I dont know about you... But I find it impossible to sleep someplace that smells like BO... Started to feel the beginnings of a cold around hour 6 on the bus, headache as well. But then, I had a 2 hour layover in Stara Zagora before my bus to Yambol, so I went to BILLA. BILLA for those of you in the states is like if IKEA did supermarkets. I mean, maybe it wouldn't be a big deal back in the states, but for me right now... It was heaven. You'd never think you could get excited about seeing a box of Uncle Ben's rice on the shelf. And I didn't even buy it! It was just comforting to know that in this country, if i had to have Uncle Ben's rice, I could take a 3 hour bus and get it. I was also happy to see: brown sugar, budwieser, cheddar cheese, pesto sauce, and BACON! I bought 3 packages of bacon.. And I plan on eating it ALL for dinner tonight.

New Year's resolution: just make the most of things out here, i guess. I only have 22 months left.

UPDATE: Got some pics back...

This is me throwing myself off the top of a hill in Cheppelare... There was a second of a half of true bliss... Then about 3 hours of pain afterwards, hah.



Either love us or leave us alone, we came to party!

I'm (not) dreaming, its a white christmas!

Here's a group of kids who go door-to-door singing Bulgarian folk songs. It is for health and goodwill and success.. Basicallly they dance for you... And you give them a special round loaf of bread and some leva. Aren't they cute?

Oh and for Christmas I went to Perushtitsa, my old host site... I'll write about that soon!

Trick Love the kids...

Yesterday, with the help of two awesome girls from the local high school, put on a Christmas concert for the kids at the local orphanage/live-in school for develop-mentally challenged kids. It was by far the most rewarding experience of my time here in Bulgaria thus far and made up for hours of feeling useless. The kids were SO happy, but i think I was smiling more than hey were... You could really tell they are starved for love and affection, and though we didn't have much to work with (about 40 leva collected from the high school and 40 leva from "Santa Claus".. we got them a bunch of balls, crayons, jumpropes, and enough candy to stimulate Bulgaria's economy through growth in dentistry. We sang some songs together, danced, talked about what we liked about christmas, and I answered about 5,000 questions about america (including: "Do you know Mel Gibson?" and "Do you have an airport in America?"). Good times... Good kids. Hopefully I'll be working there on some stuff after Christmas... I'll keep yall updated.

First Snow

On the windoowwwwww, on the walll! Til the flakes come down and fall! Alllll these fri-gid halls... All SLEET! SLEET! in the gutters... All SLEET SLEET on land!! Now lemme see the white SNOW!

We just got our first snow here in Elhovo... It's COLD... Going to have a white Christmas for the first time ever, assuming i don't slip and break my head open on the black ice. Happy Holidays!

now we got pictures and stuff!

Figured out how to post up pictures finally.. I'll put up one every once in a bit...

Here is a picture of the local high school's 10th grade English class, taught by the other volunteer in Elhovo, Megan: