The Family

Hello there!!! Sorry about the long time in between post. I have been so busy with things here in good old Bulgaria. Any way, I think I left off last time talking about meeting my family for the first time. What a big event! I have been in Bulgaria for about 4 weeks now and have been leaving with my family for about 3. Man, time does fly. I can't believe I have been here that long already.

Well, I guess I can start off talking about my host family since it has been so long. My host mother's name is Cameila. She is a wonderful person that loves to work in her garden and loves to cook. She is a Bulgarian teacher at the local school, which affords me the great opportunity to always be corrected at home on my grammatical errors. She is a very fun person who loves her cats. Yes that is right cats. For those who don't know, I am very allergic to cats. No worries though, I get tons of free meds from the PC office. My father's name is Rosen. I don't get to see him much because he is always working. He works on the mountain top as a cook in Panichiste. He is a really good cook. That is good because I love to eat. He is very proud of his homemade Rakeia (our equivalent to moonshine). This can be made of pretty much any fruit etc.. Plums, Grapes. It is pretty strong stuff; the proof on the alcohol can vary from 50% to 80%. It tastes like brandy. It is tradition in Bulgaria to have Rakeia at most meals where people gather to visit. This is called Na Gostie. There is no word close to this in English. A Na Gostie is something that people do when they visit other peoples house. They sit around for hours ( and I mean hours 4-5) eating and talking about different things going on in each others lives. These "na gosties" happen several times a week and I think they are great. It really does allow people to talk and build strong relationships within the community. Any way, Rosen is great. I do have a brother as well. His name is Nikolus (Niki for short) who is 18 years old. He works as a car mechanic somewhere in the area. My room is right next to his and he loves to blast techno music. I feel like DJ Tiesto lives next door. I did feel at home though the other day when all of a sudden I hear," Quit Playing Games with My Heart!!!" from Niki (who doesn't speak any English) singing along with Backstreet boys. I was laughing because I remember when my roommate Jeff (DLO) would do this before we went to Moe's. That is my family. Oh, I forgot the other members of the family.First the dogs, Jackie, "the dog that barks at 5 in the morning for about 30 minutes straight", and the new addition, 1 month old Gina. The two cats, the 4 rabbits and the one huge Pig (From what I can understand, is going to get "fired" in October) We all live in the quiet village of Sapareva Banya. There are about 4,000 people leaving here.



















So I guess I give you a run down of my daily schedule. On a normal day, I have language class from 9 until 2. After that, our group gets together and works on our Community Development projects. About our community projects, we currently are being posted in a small community for 3 months. Here we will get our language training as well as prepare the necessary technical tools for when we are assigned to a permanent site by ourselves. All the assignments for the community development project are aimed at showing us what to do to evaluate needs and provide solutions with limited resources. For example, the other day, met with the Vice Mayor how is in charge of European Integration (a person responsible for intigrating there community into the European Union way of doing things) and talked about projects that she may have in the pipeline that we could bring to the surface and work on. We interview people for the community and get a gage for what is going on in the village (Needs based Assessment). Tomorrow, we have a meeting with the town folk. We listen to what they feel is wrong with the village and work together with them to come up with a solution. There is more details to the Community development project but will not share all of them. After that, we all go home and study with our home stay families. All in all, there are long days. It's not a nine to five but more like a 24 hour work shift.


Today I had my site placement interview with the PC business staff. It is the last interview I have before I find out where I am going to be place for the next 2 years. I have reviewed some of the potential job descriptions and I am pretty excited. I would of never of thought of some of the potential jobs entail. Raising privatized funds from sources abroad and providing management training to small and medium size business. This are things I never would expected to be doing in the Peace Corps, but I am really excited to get started.

Ok I have to go. There is a ton more to talk about but I will do this later. Cubs are 2 games up on St. Louis and the Bears are having a good preseason (minus Lance Briggs trashing a 300k car and leaving the scene of the crime, real smart). I have attached some random pictures (the Rila Mountains, some of our training group, My bed room, and a picture from a Bulgarian Dance concert (Its no SoBE).


Let me know how you all are doing. I would love to hear from you guys and gs.
And remember, You stay classy Chicago (Lance Briggs).

Oh by the way, I have a cell phone.

011-359-884-973-220

If you guys do want to talk to me (who in the right mind wouldn't) you should get SKYPE. You can download if for free of the Internet and cost about 3 cents a minute to call a cell phone internationally. Read more!

Meeting the host family

Do bur Den!!!

My official Pre Service training has begun. We spent 3 days in Philly doing some staging stuff. Paperwork, security training and other stuff. It was a really good time and it was comforting to know that there were 40 other people that were about to embark on the same journey as myself. Everyone is really cool and everyone has their own uniqueness to them. I think that we all get along pretty well. Maybe it is because if we look around, we realize that these are going to be the only Americans we can talk to for the next 27 months. We departed NYC at around 6 o'clock and were headed off to Frankfort, Germany. I have never flown Lufthansa before in my life but I have a feeling I will again. Though we tried to sleep on the plane, a group of 40 Americans in a plane for 8 hours just doesn't afford you the opportunity to rest. All of us were trying to get to know each other as much as possible. I think we ate about 3 times on the plane and the flight attendants kept walking around giving out free wine for everyone. I think a few of us took advantage of this. We finally arrived in Frankfort at about 10 o'clock in the AM and prepared to board a flight to Sofia, Bulgaria. We were all very tired but could not find any time to sleep. The excitement maybe was just to much. We kind of made it a game to not let each other sleep. As the clouds parted in the sky we finally saw it, Bulgaria. The place we all would be spending the next 27 months together. It was a little overwhelming. We landed down in Sofia about 1 o'clock and was greeted by the wonderful Peace Corps staff on hand in Sofia. I was really impressed in the way that Peace Corps was organized. Signs everywhere. We all piled on the bus and started to head off to Panichite, a mountain resort in the Rila mountains. Though the day was pretty rainy and cloudy, we were able to see the Sofia surrounding areas. It was very surprising to see so much construction going on in the city. High rise condos going up everywhere. For those that do not know, Sofia has been accepted into the European Union. There will be a lot of opportunity for the country of Bulgaria in the future. We readied ourselves for a 2 hour bus ride to Panichite. The ride up the mountain was quite an adventure in itself. Imagine a huge bus trying to navigate up a one way road. I thought a few times we were going to fall off a cliff. We finally reached the resort and were greeted by Bulgarian women in tradition dress. It was really kind of neat. All of the staff was there. The women gave us a welcoming tradition.

They gave us some bread and we could either dip it into a salt and pepper mix or honey. It was a pretty good feeling to know that here you are, an American that knows no Bulgarian, someone that is strange to this land and you are greeted like this. I was really happy.




The next 3 days we had a lot of intense meetings. Medical meetings, Security meetings, Community meetings, and last but not least Language meetings. The 3 days enabled us to come together more as a group and let us try to get adapted to the new surroundings. The language lessons, WOW, I didn't think it would be as hard as it is. Imagine that you have 3 days to learn as much as you can about Bulgarian before you meet your host family that speaks little to no English. It is intense. Every word you try to memorize but there are just too many. The language teachers were great though. Very patient and very helpful. We were first separated into two groups: Youth Development and Community and Organization Development. My group was Community and Organization Development (COD) and was again split into 3 groups: COD, Evironmental Education and mine, Econmic Development. There were 20 people in each group which made a total of 40 volunteers. It was very exciting learning about what you were going to be doing for the next 27 months.







A picture of the a mountain pass in Panichite.




On the last day we were split into groups based on what village we were going to live in for the next 3 months. I was blessed with a great group: Elizabeth (from the Boston Area), Thomas (from Penn) and Rajun (from North Carolina). We (along with our language trainer Nina) were off to a town called Sapareva Banya. This village was just down the mountain in the valley. We were all excited. So this Friday (08/10) we prepared to load the bus to go and meet our host families in Dupnitsa (our HUB site). I was probably the most scared/nervous I had every been in my life. Think about it. It would be nerve raking enough to be moving in with a host family in the states let alone a foreign country. I think we were all pretty nervous and also excited. We arrived in Dupnitsa and grabbed are bags and walked towards a Cafe that had tons of people, along with a news crew.

So here goes nothing. I walk up to women named Carmelia and say, "Do bur Den" and she says "Do bur Den". Then I freeze. All of that language material I been studying for the past 4 days just vanished. Nothing. I felt like a complete idiot. You should of seen the look on my face. BLANK. After a few phase and a lot of pointing, we headed to the car. Carmelia is a very nice lady. Very, Very patient with me which is good seeing how every time she points to something and says what it is, I forget 10 minutes later. We arrive at a beautiful house on the side of a mountain. This is amazing. As I walk into my room there is a bed, desk, closet and couch all for me to use. Awesome. I get settled in and head downstairs for dinner. Chicken (Pila), Tomatoes (Domati) and Bread (Hulb). I started to show pictures of my family and then I met the rest of the family: Rosen (the father) and Nikolia (the son who is 18). The warmly greeted me. I am so grateful to this family for taking in a complete stranger and treating me like one of there own. We headed down to the center to see some of the sites. Sapareva Banya is a beautiful city. It is know for its geyser which is in the town center. There is a mineral bath (Turkish style bath) that is in the city. I don't know how I feel about that now, but I will probably go later. Well, that is all for know. There will be more later. Thanks again to all for the emails back, I appreciate them very much. Oh, I just found out that Sorinano is hurt and Ramirez my be as well. Hopefully the Bears are having better luck.

Thank you and You Stay Classy Chicago. Read more!