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.