Almost time for school...

First off, my project proposal was approved! I am so excited. This is going to be really great for my school. I put in a LOT of work (not to mention dealt will a LOT of frustration), so it's kind of a relief that it wasn't all for nothing.

Speaking of projects, if you feel the need to help out in Bulgaria, check out this project, which is soliciting funds through the Peace Corps Partnership Program (tax deductable for US citizens). The volunteer involved, Dan, is in my group and he lives in what's probably the most remote and...well, let's say, unfortunate village of any of us here in Bulgaria. Basically, they need a lot of help up there. Every time I see Dan he's got some new bizarre tale of woe of life on the Serbian border. (The best was when he got tapeworm. Tapeworm! Can't beat that story, sorry.)

Summer is winding down. I can't say I'm too sorry - I am looking forward to school, which starts 15 September (which is a Saturday...yes, the Bulgarian school system is so committed to starting on 15 September that we have school on a Saturday). I have lots of plans for my kids!

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.

Still alive!

Yikes, I haven't posted here forEVER. Sorry.

I spent the first couple weeks of the summer teaching English at a conversation camp in Blagoevgrad. It was a lot of hard work, but also a lot of fun. Probably about a third of the kids were Bulgarian, most of the rest were from Montenegro, and there were also kids from Serbia, Russia, Kazakhstan, France, and Italy. It was so neat to have an international group - I learned a ton about their countries, especially Montenegro. (Montenegro is the world's youngest country - it's only been independent from Serbia for a little over a year, and the kids are all really patriotic in an endearing way. They were all happy to show us pictures and tell us about life in their country.) All of us Volunteers who worked at the camp want to go to Montenegro now.

Then I came back to Pavel Banya. It was crushingly hot for awhile, that wasn't fun. I started up my summer classes for my kids and I've been working on a grant proposal to remodel a room in my school. Last weekend I went to Veliko Turnavo, which I'd always heard was one of (if not the) most beautiful cities in Bulgaria, and I must agree! It's absolutely lovely. Of course I forgot my camera. Oh well, an excuse to go back. I met up with some other volunteers there and we had dinner and that was nice.

The new group of volunteers, the B22s arrived on Monday. The next group that arrives, next spring, will be the group to replace MINE! That seems almost impossible.

Today my stupid cat tried to run out the door when I opened it and I reached down to grab him and pulled something in my back. It's fantastic. I'm getting a taste of what it will feel like to be a baba, I suppose.

The Turkish Invasion!

Okay, it's a welcome invasion, to the citizens of Pavel Banya, who are happy to have the business, but if you want to pop by our town ploshtad (square) right now, you'd swear you were in Turkey, not Bulgaria. I have no idea why, but it seems like a lot of Turkish people come to PB for their summer vacations, and they're all sitting in the ploshtad right now. Lots of stout women with headscarves and skinny men with moustaches chatting in Turkish.

We have our own local Turkish-Bulgarians here in town, but these visitors are noticeably different. First of all, the women are wearing headscarves, which I never saw during, say, the winter, when we don't have so many visitors. Second, they're actually speaking Turkish. Now, I know my Turkish students speak Turkish because they have told me so, but I have literally never heard any of them speaking anything but Bulgarian (and English, of course!). I guess they must speak Turkish at home, but I've seen my kids speaking with their parents in public - in Bulgarian. I don't know why they do this. I know volunteers who live in all-Turkish villages and they say that everyone speaks Turkish in their daily life, but here in PB, where the Turkish are a significant (and well-integrated) minority, Bulgarian is the language of choice.

In other news, it's painfully hot, and my summer English classes were supposed to start today, but no one showed up. I was hurt and puzzled by this turn of events, seeing as 24 students told me they wanted to come, but when I talked to one of my adult students (who's the mom of two of my kid students), she told me that everyone seems to think that classes start NEXT week, and everyone is off in their villages this week. And probably everyone who isn't in the village was at the pool or the river. Can't say I blame them. We'll get classes started eventually.

HOT.

Blech.

That's how I feel today. Blech. It's not all that hot, but it's humid and it's just beginning to rain...everything is sticky and yucky. School ends on Friday and my kids are out of control. Today my seventh graders whined that we should have class at the "beach", by which they mean "pool". (It sounds funny in English, but in Bulgarian, a pool complex is called the beach.)

They crazy.

And on Saturday, the first day of my summer vacation (ha!), I have to go to Blagoevgrad to plan the camp that I'll be working at in July. Then it's off to Dupnitsa for my Mid Service Training Conference. I'll be back in Pavel Banya on Wednesday, and my summer classes start on Monday. No rest for the wicked Peace Corps Volunteer.

I have gosti.

Last weekend I had three gosti (guests) over - members of the new group of Volunteers, the B21s. They have been in Bulgaria for a couple months now, and they haven't had the chance to see much of the country besides their training sites and immediate surroundings. They had to go through Sofia, which made me very nervous - I was like a frantic mom! There are two bus stations in Sofia, and I knew that they would arrive at one and leave from the other, and it was the trip between that made me nervous. Sofia is a pretty big city and it isn't particularly easy to get around. But they arrived safe and sound and bearing avocadoes. So we made guacamole, which was awesome.

Sometimes I feel like I just got to Bulgaria, and sometimes I feel like I've been here forever - and my old life back in the US seems awfully vague and unreal. Talking to the new volunteers gave me a good sense of perspective, I think. I've learned a lot in the last year and I feel much more confident and sure about the coming year. I had summer classes last year, and I remember floundering around, trying to find appropriate lessons, which was hard because I didn't know the kids or their language abilities. I'm planning my summer classes now, and I have all kinds of ideas. I'm finally figuring out what I'm doing, which is feels great. Of course, this is the last week of school, so it's kind of frustrating that school's ending just as I'm learning how to do my job.

In other news, I got cable! Shiny, shiny television.

I am famous!

I finally started the community English course I've been wanting to do for month. We met for the first time about three weeks ago now. I have around seven students, all adults who live in Pavel Banya. (Several of them are the parents of my kids, who want to learn English so they can help their children with their homework.) It's going fairly well so far.

The funny part - last week I got an email from another Peace Corps Volunteer, in Gabrovo. She wanted to know if some acquainances of hers, who live in Kazanluk, could attend my "famous" class. That's right - within two weeks, people in other cities were already talking about the free English class for adults in Pavel Banya. Ha! And here I thought my actions were only being followed by the people here in town.

Today is the last day of class for the second through fourth graders. From here on out, I only have school with the fifth through seventh grades. During the summer...I don't know. I have some ideas, but the only fairly concrete ones are that I'm going to have summer classes for my younger kids, and I'll continue my class for adults. I'd like to have a project that doesn't have to do directly with teaching - I don't know if my plans to translate the town's website into English really counts, though. Also, I'm going to work at a summer camp for advanced English students at the American University in Blagoevgrad for two weeks in July. I want to go to Romania, too.

That's what's up. Everyone keeps asking me if I'm going to the sea this summer. I don't know if I'll have the time!