Burzo, burzo Nyama Vreme! Hurry, hurry no time!

I believe I haven't written in a while, so I'll try to catch you up to speed. First of all, we got internet in my house! Very exciting, and I don't know if it takes away from the Peace Corps experience or not, but it will certainly help me keep in touch.

Second, there was Easter holiday in Bulgaria at the end of April. It was kind of strange because most Bulgarians aren't very religious, except maybe the older generations, yet many people celebrate Easter quite seriously. Part of the tradition is to go to church the night before Easter and circle the church three times with a candle and a priest. If it goes out, you will have bad luck/bad health/bad something. I went but didn't circle anything. It was very historic, almost mystical inside. The more important part of the holiday for most Bulgarians is the food. Bulgarians dye Easter eggs, like Americans do, and later on Easter morning they have competitions by knocking two eggs together. Whoever's egg isn't cracked wins. Almost all families eat Kozunak, which is a fluffy sweet bread that my Baba made at home. It was pretty amazing, and she made six loaves for five people (me, Baba, my host mom, and her son, Sasho, and daughter, Rali, who came home from Sofia for the vacation), so we were eating it like it was going out of style. It is also typical to eat lamb. I had previous enjoyed lamb, but this time it was more symbolic since they slaughtered the lamb in our yard on Easter. I don't eat meat anymore for various reasons.

So after Easter weekend, the citizens of Bulgarian had much of the week off, but we went back to lessons. I went hiking in this amazing park behind my house where Roman ruins still stand. Yup, in my backyard practically. It's kinda nuts. I also took a day trip to see other volunteers in a smaller site where I was able to have more of the Peace Corps experience, and I got to see a young calf, lots of sheep, chickens, rabbits, and of course the stray dogs that are everywhere. On my way back home, we stumbled upon a men's volleyball game that was mnogo (very) random and fun. The home team won and sent Sofia packing.

This week has been pretty busy with getting back to teaching and preparing for interviews. We had our site placement interviews this week, along with an oral language proficiency exam. It's hard to believe, but we are almost halfway through our training and will be moving to our permanent sites in a little over a month. Tonight was the 35th anniversary of the school where I'm training to teach, so there was a concert with a short film about the school and it's legacy, lots of musical acts (from Horo to techno) and mini-interviews with teachers on stage. Afterward, the teachers had a celebration at a local hotel. We had a great time, eating and dancing and eating and dancing. The teachers plotted to find me a boyfriend by Monday so that I could stay at their school. It's funny, but at the same time, not too uncommon to be set up once people find out that you are single. Even some of my American friends who have been here long enough start to try.

Tomorrow we will be having a cultural day with the Roma children in my town, so there's pickup basketball, football (soccer), and frisbee in store. On Sunday (weather permitting) I'm going to head out of the town for a day to help out at a friend's farm. It'll be a good way for me to stay occupied until we find out our placements on Monday. I'm also reading an interesting book called "Voices from the Gulag" about the concentration camps in Communist Bulgaria. It's interesting because it tells the story through accounts on all sides of the camp, prisoners, guards, doctors, and the director of the camps. It's also sad to see how the blame never really finds a home.

Okay, so now that I've written a small novel, write me back! Or I'll Fed-Ex stray dogs to you (we have plenty!)!!

Adventures

These views are my own and do not reflect the Peace Corps.

I knew that when I signed up for the Peace Corps I would try new things and learn more about myself as I struggled and adapted. I learned one very important thing about myself this weekend.

I should not be left alone in a kitchen, and especially not in a Bulgarian kitchen.

I am challenged in the cooking department. There, I admit it. This is not one of my strengths. I also made things worse by trying to prepare an American meal for my host family using Bulgarian ingredients and recipes that I’ve only “sort of” tried. It got to the point where my host mom put something back in the oven and I felt like I could never try it again. Not everything bombed, however. Aunt Claire, your recipe for deviled eggs is foolproof because it worked for me (aside from the fact that we have unnaturally large eggs in the U.S., which threw off the proportions a smidgen). However, my potato salad and lemon pepper chicken were disgusting, and the lack of baking chocolate turned my cake into toffee (not bad, but I’m glad I didn’t know how to tell them what I’d been trying to make for lack of a stronger vocabulary). I followed up the meal by nearly flooding the kitchen and calling it a day (since it took me about four hours to prepare the garbage that I served). My host mom and Baba were such troopers, though, I am incredibly lucky to have such supportive women living with me. They are also amazing cooks, so make some of it will brush off on me (fingers crossed).

Oh well, for the downs there are the ups. I’ve been able to use Skype (whohoo!) to communicate with my immediate family, so if anyone’s interested in getting it too, shoot me a message. I also had an amazing time last weekend hiking near the Struma River, where the day was long and temperate and there was no shortage of foliage, mountain views, and random animals to take pictures of (at one point we a boar following us). This week was busy with a prep class of teaching Bulgarian students and lots of Bulgarian lessons. This weekend we’ve done a tour of the city (all six of its museums), and I’ve had more time to interact with Bulgarians at Horo class (Bulgaria’s national dance: think Riverdance but slightly less intense). Once I get past introductions, I don’t have too much to say at this point but malko po malko (little by little) I’ll get there. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I didn’t know the Bulgarian alphabet two weeks ago.

Next week I teach my own class, yikes! 8^th grade English, wish me luck! Keep me posted on your whereabouts and wellbeing. Oh yeah, the pictures are from hiking and the tour around town. I particularly like the one where one of the hikers uses what looks like a machete to cut hard boiled eggs. That’s talent!

Staging/Orientation Fun

Again this blog does not reflect any of the views of the Peace Corps organization, purely my own.

We just finished up orientation/staging at a small mountain lodge with an amazing view. After some late night ping pong with the locals at the hotel and lots of late night cramming, we survived. We had an intense week of learning the policy ropes, studying some of the cultural differences between Bulgaria and the U.S., and briefly taking in some language lessons (Bulgarski is definitely more challenging than the romance languages for an English speaker, so this will be quite a trip).

I’m getting a little ahead of myself. The trip from D.C. to Bulgaria itself was quite a trip. We flew Lufthansa, so everything was in German with English translation. This isn’t the first time my 1001 Deutsche Klasse came in handy though, just wait and see. After 7 ½ or 8 hours when we landed in Frankfurt, they were experiencing some inclement weather. We had expected to go from sunny sixty degree DC to sunny sixty degree Sofia, Bulgaria. Surprise, less than 30 degree, snowy Frankfurt! If they didn’t have the best service and show Juno on the flight, I might have been disappointed with Lufthansa for taking us there.

You might be wondering about the pictures I’ve posted. Well, they are photos of the celebration that we enjoyed on Thursday night. We saw a dance troupe dance the Horo, which is a traditional Bulgarian dance that people do at weddings, family events, and in their homes. Although most people don’t dress that way; those are traditional costumes. Everyone got up and tried it later, and some of us tried the more challenging ones. Later over ping pong, I met one of the Bulgarian girls who worked at the hotel bar and found out that she worked at the Wisconsin Dells for a summer before returning to Bulgaria. Small world, eh?

Anywho, so after the more sheltered experience of learning Bulgarian amongst Americans, we went to our training site where we met our host families. My host mother is Emilia. Her sister in law that lives upstairs is also Emilia. Yup, there’s three of us with (almost the same name). Since Emilia and her brother Rumen, who helped pick me up from the training site, don’t speak any English, we relied on gestures and my very little Bulgarian to entertain ourselves on the ride. Oh yeah, and that 1001 German helped also since Rumen spoke about as much German as I did.

Not being able to express oneself can be frustrating and at times scary. Like the first night when I locked myself in my room on accident and Emilia told me instructions on the other side to help me get out. Only they were in Bulgaria. It was confusing, but I think it makes for a good metaphor. A lack of a way to communicate can make you feel trapped (and for the clumsy ones among us, literally may keep you that way). Luckily for us, we can get by more and more each day, and there will be many, many hours of classes to help us prepare.
I miss everyone very much, and I hope everything is going well!

Staging/Orientation

The views expressed in this blog do not represent the Peace Corps.

Also Staging went well in DC. I appreciate all of your supportive messages and will do my best to keep in touch. I had the opportunity to see my friends in the DC area yesterday and am becoming closer with the 38 others with which I'll be traveling. I'm learning a lot and keeping busy. I won't have internet access for the next couple of weeks and I have to condense my packing a bit before the international flight, so sorry if this is brief. I'm happy, healthy, and ready to start the adventure of a lifetime!

Also this is what it looks like here now. Yea for cherry blossoms.

My First Bulgaria Blog

Hello all! I’ve never done a blog before, but here goes. I am leaving on Friday for Washington DC where I will do my orientation for the Peace Corps in Bulgaria. After that, I don’t know when I’ll have internet access, but I’ll try to keep you guys up to speed on my adventures. I take the GRE (grad school admission test) the day after tomorrow, so this’ll be brief. I’m going to send out e-mails to people who are interested, so please write me with your e-mail address if so (I’m EmilyGroene@gmail.com). I just said goodbye to three Erins in two days, so it’s been pretty busy here already. It feels weird, like something I just talk about a lot that isn’t ever going to happen, but I guess it’s starting to hit me now for real. Whew! Here we go!