Wonderful Bridges

Recently I had a chance to go on a camping trip with my Bulgarian counterpart (the Bulgarian teacher who I will be working with the most during my Peace Corps service). We went into the Rhodope Mountains to a place called Wonderful Bridges. Wonderful Bridges are naturally made rock bridges carved from stone by a mountain stream. It truly was a beautiful place and even though it was a cold foggy and rainy day, somehow the weather only ended up only adding to the magic of this place. We slept at a small inn next to bridges. My counterpart’s family and I ate Bulgarian food and drank Bulgarian rakia in the common room of this inn with the owner and his family. While I was sitting there eating I could not help but reflect on how beautiful this simple moment of eating a meal in an inn next to this amazing site was. I often have moments like this, where I sit back and think about how lucky I am to be experience them and how I wish that everybody else I know could somehow experience it too because there is no way to describe it

The next morning we prepared for a daylong hike along an old Roman road that has since been used as hiking trail. It is called the Roman Road and it is an actual cobblestone road through the mountains. Even though a lot of the road is in disrepair a great deal of it was still perfectly intact and while I hiked along it I started to wonder about the people who built this road and about all the people who traveled on. I wondered about what their stories were, about what their life was like and if they ever stopped in the same place I did and look across the mountains in front of them and wonder what was beyond them like I was doing at that very moment.

Once we got back to the car and headed back to Parvomay I sat back and stared at the world pass by and realized how lucky I am too have such a great counterpart. I hear a lot of other volunteers talking about how unhappy they with their counterparts or how they have a rough time with them, but mine welcomed me into her family and made me feel at home which has really helped in alleviating the pain of missing my old home and most of all, my family.