What I did on my summer vacation.

Well, it's still going on, but it's passing by quickly!

I spent the last couple weeks rewriting a grant proposal for an addition to our school. That was a fairly stressful experience. I spent all of last week rushing around the town trying to get some documentation from the city officials. It was a pain in the ass. I needed to get a bank statement from the municipality to prove that we had enough money to pay for our portion of the proposed project, but no one would give it to me, because "the amount in the bank account is a secret". I eventually got them to write a letter promising to pay the specific amount mentioned in the proposal, but I had to go back four times and beg and plead and finally, be really pushy. In some ways, this experience sort of exemplified the problems in Bulgaria. The money exists, largely through the European Union, to make a lot of improvements all over the country, but people are generally not very savvy about how to go about doing this. I've never written a grant proposal before, so it's not like I'm some kind of expert, but my jaw practically fell out of my head when the man at the municipality told me that the bank account was secret. I hope he never tries to apply for some kind of credit line. (The whole idea of credit is kind of new here in Bulgaria. Credit cards have only been available for a couple years here. I was with my host mom last year when she bought a new TV on credit. She was amazed!)

So on Friday, I took off for Varna. Here's a little map of Bulgaria to show you where it is:



I live just above the "g" in Stara Zagora, so you can see that it's quite a distance, especially since there's a mountain range running across the middle of Bulgaria from east to west that I needed to cross. It took so long to get there that about nine hours into the travelling, I was beginning to wonder if it was worth it.

It WAS. I had a great time. Varna is the third biggest city in Bulgaria, and really nice. It's the most touristy place I've ever been in Bulgaria, though. Not just backpackers and travellers, too, I'm talking lots of British and German tourists on beach holidays. I'm not much of a beach person (too much sand, inevitable sunburns, I can lay around and read a book at home anyway), but sitting on the tree-lined promenade above the sea was lovely. Really peaceful - I could feel the stress melting away.

I stayed in a hostel full of travellers from all over the world. Interesting bunch. On Saturday, after walking around town for a couple hours, I was hot and tired (the weather was dreadful - really humid), so I went back to the hostel to chill for a little. The owner of the hostel, who's Irish, was doing some accounts in the sitting room, and was just putting on The Big Lebowski. So we sat there and recited the movie together, cracking ourselves up. People kept wandering in, but no one else wanted to watch it with us. Can't imagine why. Afterwards, the whole lot of us went out for drinks. (Mike, the hostel owner, and I had White Russians.) Then we all went dancing at a club on the beach.

Now I'm back at work, which is probably a good thing; Varna is not good for the bank account. My new project: writing an intermediate-level textbook for adult students. I'm collaborating with another volunteer on this project, though, whew.