time flies....sometimes

Can't see the clock behind me but that's me in Gorna at midnight at the train station :)


host mom Katia

Well, since December when you last read my two bits of life in BG I have:
traveled to Romania over Christmas, spent New Years in the gothic style city Veliko Turnivo in BG, have taken up knitting while listening to any random podcast from National Geographic to NPR or 60 Minutes to brushing up/or learning Spanish :), crashing at multiple sitemates apartments for 5 days while my electricity was out, having lunch with Peace Corps Director from D.C. and beginning prep for our annual youth summer day camps! My how winter seemed like it would never end and now we have warped into flying-by time zone.

Backing it up a tad - Romania: So my good friend Mel and I seemed to be one of the very few volunteers (of our immediate group of friends or network) that wasn't going home for the holidays we had decided to go somewhere. Romania it was. I made the journey up north about 6 hours by train after work on a friday to Melanie's city where we hung out that night before setting off the next night for the "midnight train....from "Gorna". Yeah good ol' Gladys and her Pips were our theme for our infamous train due north. (note: Mel's town is Gorna Oryahovitsa, аnd is always shortened to Gorna)
We caught that last bus in the center that goes to the train station just 15 minutes away around 11:30 and jumped on that train. It was considerably colder up in Gorna than here in Plovdiv. So we hop on and nap all the way to Ruse, the Bulgarian border city. There the border check and train hookups took about an hour. As we sat at the checkpoint our first guard comes by, opens the door uses his flashlight since he knew we had been sleeping, takes our info. He goes into polite conversation with us; he asks if we know Romanian, we say no, he asks why we live in Bulgaria, we say we work here, he says, "you're problem", and we just had to laugh. I think it was more how he said it, that made me chuckle. But he was nice polite man who wished us a safe and happy trip and maybe we'd see each other again in life or another, lol. One check down, one to go. After a while, another suited and younger guard comesin, swings our door open, flips on the light, grunted the demand to see our tickets and passport, looked them over called it in to the office, very loudly unlike the Romanian guard, and left abruptly without a "thank you", "here you go", "ciao" nothing, and leaves the light, we didn't even have on in the first place, on and the door open. We look at each other and say, "yeah, that's more what we're used to".
Aaanyway, we make it into Bucharest early in the morning as Mel is still trying to sneak a peak and I'm up and getting my bag down since I am convinced we are approaching the station...she was adament that there was one more stop, lol. We hop off and head to the nearest bathroom to freshen up. Down the stairs a large and flamboyant woman sits among a random array of large plants and her radio playing the countries traditional folk music full blast, while taking our money and handing out tissues.
It was FREEZING but we walked around Bucharest between cafe stops, to see some of the sights. Pretty city and rather large. US embassy wasn't much to look at though. After a bite of lunch....pizza unfortunately, since our hours long search of a highly recommended tavern restaurant turned up fruitless....we headed to the train station again to go to Brasov the city where we would spend Christmas. We stayed there two nights. We had great food, great drinks, good service and a nice Christmas service at the famous Black Church (the largest Gothic church between Vienna and Istanbul, destroyed by Mongol invasions in 1242, given its new name after disaster struck again in 1689, when the 'Great Fire, set by Hapsburg invaders, leveled most of the town, heavily damaged the church, blackening its walls.) It's a Lutheran church so the service was in German. It was beautiful. Two large Christmas trees with real candles lit stood at the front, people piled in and there were candles resting along the sides on the seating benches. At the end the lights were turned off and the congregation sung Holy Night...really cool. We proceeded afterwards to one of the only places that we knew would be open, a Scottish pub. grabbed some food and some hot spiced wine, along with a Romanian beer, Ursus.
Next day we headed to Sinaia where the Peles Castle sits in the Carpathian mountains...the castle with Neo-Renaissance, Gothic, Saxon and Baroque architectural influences. Due to money and time we opted to sit at the cafe on the grounds and drink hot cocoa or coffee instead of paying the entrance fee. We hiked back down to Sinaia grabbed lunch and off to Bucharest we were. Had dinner in Bucharest, where our efforts to find that same raved about tavern was fruitless, and jumped on what has been our worse train experience yet. The train was atrociously dirty, smelled horrible, AND the heater was never turned on. After wiping down with disinfectant wipes Mel always carries with her, our seats we sat shivering for hours before our Bulgarian ticket takers came and when they came, a man and woman, the man had the audacity to say, you look cold, i said "YES, and why is that?! Why the hell aren't the heaters on?!" i asked. He said oh well the heaters up in our wagon work, laughing, you have to come up there. i said no the heaters need to be on. He of course was referring to first class. So there we sat, Mel trying ever so hard to sleep so she couldn't feel or think of how miserable she was and across from her there i was coat, gloves, hat, hood and scarf over my face, boiling inside and furious. Of course the area of where the two wagons we were closest to connect was extremely loud of metal scraping and banging around. Multiple times I would get up storm down the hall to shut all of the doors that people had left open allowing the cold and snow to come in AND the noise. We hadn't even crossed the border back into Bulgaria but we were back.

I hung out at Mel's until the after New Years. I was lucky enough to go with her to her work's Christmas banquet. She works at City Hall. So there we were hanging out with a ton of her Bulgarian co-workers and where I was "approached" by a city official, a much older man, ugh...i could have done without that part. I will give it to Bulgarians when they celebrate. They dance, and sing, and eat and drink for hours and it's a blast, all ages too! It's nothin for Grandma's and Grandpa's to be up until 2am with everyone else. They love to see us Americans, or foreigners in general, dance their traditional dances.
We then spent New Years Eve in Veliko Turnovo, the big city just outside of Gorna. It was great to watch the fireworks from a balcony over this city that is situated on a mountainside and very medieval styled.
Next day I was back to Plovdiv. I was home about a week or so before I had an electrical fiasco. I won't get into the details but I was without electricity for 5 nights. Needless to say this spurred my depression that hit me January into the beginning of February...oh how i was fed up with it all, as to be expected during a cold blistery winter. BUT things picked up come February and back out of the darkness I arose and to the grindstone. In the meantime I had picked up knitting from my friend Grace who learned from her village Baba's (grandma's) and visited her for her Birthday and had a bbq in Burgas with other volunteers to mark the beginning of bbq season.(the beer glass in the sunset:) It's March now and I have made myself two scarves and I have a third in the works but lack time now to work on it.

Amazing how spring always ushers out the bad and ushers in the good. Moods change abruptly as well as the increase of holidays. Except for the birds that come to town and nest in my overhang and my balcony...i hate it!!February and March take place the Kukeri festivals which is where they dress up in these oddly fascinating very old traditional costumes that were used to scare away the evil spirits of winter for the new spring planting/harvesting season. Then March 2nd is Baba Marta Day. Everyone buys these red and white twisted yarn like bracelts to give to everyone that day while wishing them, "life, health, luck or success and much love", or whatever you want to wish someone. :) The walking street in the center and pretty much every sidewalk in the city has tables of these Martinitsi to buy. I always love the beginning of March here.

Also, I and my counterpart have been working on applying for funding for our annual summer day camp for our students. The project proposal was sent out a week ago and is now up online for anyone to donate towards. Pretty exciting! So I have a lot going on right now with starting to prepare for camps, still tutoring an 11th grade girl Slavka, have taken on tutoring a boy outside of my work Vesil and starting to plan last out of country trips. Vesil and his family are really nice. His mother is a friend of a teacher at the H. School. This teacher approached me about Kamelia wanting Vesil to get some extra help in English and wahlah, here I am. So I go over to their apartment every Tues & Thurs and help him in English, chit chat with Kamelia and her father and then with Ismet her husband comes in from work, we all eat dinner. Then they drive me home. Sooo, we're talkin about 4 to 5 hours two times a week!! They're really nice, but 4 hours can be a lot sometimes.

So that's where I am now, thrilled that spring is here, busy with work, and can't believe that I'm only 6ish months away from my time here being done! My how time flies...I made it through the cold dreary winter caked with cold snowy/foggy weather, lack of work, motivation, health problems, electrical problems....things can only go up from here :)
I did manage to make it out to the slopes in January. I had a nice long weekend visit with my host family and skied with friends in Borovets.

Next excursion....GREECE, first week/weekend of April and I am pumped!!! :) After I make it to Macedonia for a quick long weekend trip at the end of April I will have been to every border country...well except for Serbia but that will have to wait unfortunately.

Be back soon with more pics and updates....Ciao za sega :)

*PS: Like I mentioned I am STOKED about my camps this year! My last year of camps and I am really excited and hopeful. We are going to try and do more things this year and change it up so I hope it all goes awesome and the kids have a great time AND gain valuable information/tools!
check it out at http://www.areteyouth.org/ "Roma Day Camp 2008 - Plovdiv".
Go check out the other two as well. The volunteers that are at those two organizations are also from my group and one of them is who I will be traveling to Greece with. Awesome girls and awesome camps!!

PSS: pics for those of you as interested and possibly anal about details as I am :)
top to bottom: Sofia, Jelly and I in sofia - am wearing scarf #2
self pic of scarf #1, Burgas sunset, Grace & I for her bday, Plovdiv walking street and all the martinitsi stands, Kukeri festival, Me in Samokov at the river or in Borovets with some peeps, my apartment building in Jan, when i ventured out for food and came back only with bread!, city hall dinner with Mel, New Years in VT and the next 5 are in Romania or on the way to, and the last two are in the village Bele Iksar where my host mom's parents live.

Ok, im out....