en route to somewhere

finally updating

2005-02-08T03:06:00.000-08:00

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

2005-01-13T07:22:00.000-08:00

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

2005-01-03T08:07:00.000-08:00

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!

2004-12-28T01:13:00.000-08:00

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...

2004-12-23T01:09:00.000-08:00

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

2004-12-21T22:47:00.000-08:00

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!

2004-12-14T03:28:00.000-08:00

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:

And THIS little piggy...

2004-12-12T03:15:00.000-08:00

OK so apparently this weekend was the official start of the pig slaughtering season... The holidays are coming, so everyone is sharpening up their biggest knives and (yeah, KNIVES) inviting their buddies over to kill some livestock. I think some people chose to go the more cleanly route and just shoot the damn things, but that so kills true essence. Now I've heard that this stuff goes on around this time of year, and leading up to this weekend I really wanted to participate. Nate told me the time killed a pig in Ghana was one of the most memorable moments of his two years there. Something about having to actully get up the nerve to slice a jugular vein... I dunno, like a right of passage into manhood (yeah... I STILL don't think I've made it quite yet). But now... F THAT! All day saturday I had to listening to the poor things scream their heads off... This wasn't a cute oink! oink! from a perfectly pink pig with a curly tail... This was a blood curdling scream froma filthy, stinky, two hundred pound piece of pork. One by one you could hear them meet there demise...And surely the sound of all their bretheren being killed around them tipped the remaining ones that their time was swiftly approaching, so that just got them all worked up. I almost want to stop eating bacon... But I guess since I haven't HAD bacon in 4 months... I've already paid my debt.

A crazy story almost forgotten...

2004-12-09T04:59:00.000-08:00

So I wrote this down once, but I got lost in a mass email that was never sent out. Shit, this must have been like 2 months ago back in good ol' Perushtitsa. One night I awoke to a deafening rumble. Being half asleep and Californian, I calmly sauntered to the doorway and waited for the earthquake to run its course. But as I wiped the sleep from my eyes I realized that there was only one big fucking BOOM, and that out the window I could see flaming debris in my neighbor’s backyard. Billowing smoke and general chaos. It was like Grand Theft Auto, but wayyyyyy to rural... After that, all I could think was: preemptive strike. I wasn’t sure what the hell I was supposed to do. There is no stopping, dropping or rolling to be done if your ass gets hit by a missile. I snuck down the stairs and asked my host family what happened, but they had no idea. Everyone else seemed to be out to see what happened, so we joined them. On the street there were chickens, cows, goats, dogs, cats running all over the place. Everyone owns some sort of livestock here in Bulgaria, so I guess the idea there’s no need to tie them up or fence them in at night. A donkey is a donkey is a donkey. One man's donkey is another man's donkey. OK I'll stop now... Three houses down, one half of the only taxi in Perushtitsa had been blown away, and the other half was on fire. It was a reasonably big explosion, it even shattered the windows of buildings across the street. My host family tried to tell me that there was a problem with the engine, but that made no sense; It was the newest car on the block, and the back of the car is what blew up. Also, as a taxi, it only ran until 11 pm, so it had time to cool off. The power had mysteriously gone out only on my street half an hour before the explosion. That left only one option: the owner didn’t want to pay up, so the Mafia dropped the hammer to cripple his assets and set an example for the rest of us. Yes! (Actually it turns out that what really happened is that the owner of the Taxi was dating a girl who was dating a different guy before he went away for his mandatory 9 months of obligatory military service. He came back and Taxi boy had his woman ‘on the meter’, so he cut the power, doused the taxi in gasoline, and set it on fire. The car exploded when it got to the gas tank. Not quite as cool as the mafia bit, but drama all the same… Especially when stuff blows up.)

december in the balkans

2004-12-07T06:47:00.000-08:00

After 5 weeks in my permanent site, my sojourn in Bulgaria 5 months old, Southeastern Bulgaria has supplanted the bay area’s lifelong claim to my definition the word home. I fall asleep with my iPod every night on the fifth floor of block #34, one of the ugliest surviving remnants communism. Elhovo is great, population in the low-teens (thousands, not hundreds, don’t worry), only an hour from the Black Sea with its sunny shores and hairy Western European tourists; I couldn’t ask for more. But summer has faded some sort of a permanent arctic chill, as if Jack Frost had taken to kicking people in the teeth. But my California bones are beginning to adjust. Work is great, I was selected to work at at the municipal Agro-Business, funded by UN Development Programme (no spell check, this is Europe). I’m somewhat disappointed that I do have a desk job with occasional Internet access and heat. But the lack of structure forces me to go out and find work, or risk certain perma-bore. I’ve met or attempted to meet every member of the municipality’s dozen-or-so departments, and endured the traditional 3-hour cup of coffee. The great news is that has improved my Bulgarian tremendously, and I’ve started to find leads on some exciting projects. Bulgaria is scheduled to enter the EU on January one 2007, so there’s a good amount of incoming-Euros for funding. After the holidays, I will start a number of projects with varying degrees of enthusiasm whether or not they will fly. For example, I will be assisting the local kindergarten, which doubles as a free-of-charge state soup kitchen for infants. Thing is the 4 nice ladies who work there had no mechanical appliances with which to make their purees and scary-looking soups, which they spoon out to hundreds of local ‘bay-beechkos’ daily. We’re asking for a couple thousands of dollars for mixers, slicers and all that jazz, which we’re coupling with a seminar on food safety. It’s at times exciting and discouraging, rarely is there an obvious course of action or local Home Depot. Some people see me just as a checkbook, or Bulgarian-English dictionary, but I am neither fit nor instructed to serve as such. My job is to go out into the community, find out what they are excited about, give them some suggestions culled from my American education, and serve as a member of the team. Taking the lead on external funding obviously falls to me, as I am the only one who really speaks English, but for the most part I just have to help them do it for themselves. What I do here is useless if a year after I leave the youth computer center we build turns into candy stores that sells cigarettes pre-teens. But couple days I meet someone that is excited to start something new, to make his community better, and if I can remember his name, who is his cousin, and when they want me to come over for Shopska Salata and the house ‘we-fermented-the-garden,’ you can be successful. It will take a time to fully earn their trust and give weight to their valuation of my opinions, but I’m just starting to understand how I can help these people.

Goood Morrrnannn' Elhovoooo!

2004-12-02T01:23:00.000-08:00

Tuesday afternoon when I was at work I was introduced to a tall, grey-toothed guy by my counterpart Ivan. He started talking to me about something, but his Bulgarian was coming out at about 3 times the speed I'm used to. I swear some Bulgarians forget that it takes more than 4 months to become fluent in a language and acclimated to all the regional slang and contractions and all that stuff. Now I'm not afraid to tell people that I have no idea what they're talking about. I actually kinda of enjoy making people rethink what they want to say in simpler terms, don't ask me why. But I wasn't getting anywhere with this guy. Each time I'd tell him to slow down he'd get this frustrated, confused look on his face and then keep going on at the same pace. Haven't these people ever talked to a baby before? So anywyas, he asked me something about talking to him the next morning at the TV station. I thought maybe he wanted my help in translating something, maybe he wanted to talk about doing an interview at a later date.
Boy was I wrong. I guess I need to go back and look up how you say 'live television interview', because I sure didn't catch that the first time. I show up at the TV station, pay my internet bill, and the receptionist hands me a list of questions that will compose this interview. She said that we would be going on the air in 20 minutes. After a slight panic attack I took out my dictionary, got a basic idea of what the questions were about, and thought about skipping out before this guy came to met me. When he came I told him that I had no idea that I was going to be doing a live interview, and asked how he expected me to be able to carry on a conversation with him in front of cameras if we couldn't do it the day before. He just kinda shrugged and led me into the one room studio. The place was sooooo ghetto. I guess that's what to expect from a local television station in a south-eastern bulgarian town of 12000, but i was still surprized.
Despite nealy going into cardiac arrrest, the interview went fine. I just talked about Peace Corps, what the goals are, what I want to do with my time here, what I think about Bulgarians, etc. etc. There was even a live caller to the show (which I guess means some people were watching at 10:30 am... It was some baba (old-ass lady) who wanted to know if peace corps was a religious organization. I'm trying to find a tape of the interview to maybe watch later, but since I hate seeing video of myself, I'm not trying that hard, haha...

Yeah Yeah Yea....

2004-11-18T01:03:00.000-08:00

I know an update to my blog has been forthcoming for quite some time... But I think I finally am ready to start posting regularly... I'm getting settled in Elhovo... Found photo hosting and all that... So if you care... You should be able to keep up-to-date with my comings, goings and doings. Real soon... Do skorro!