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.  

Writers Block

I have not forgotten about my blog, I am just not sure what to write. Every time I sit down and try to write an entry I grow flustered because I don't know what to say. My life has grown so complicated and packed full of events or things I want to talk about, but for some reason I just not been able to pull them out of my head and pour out onto my computer. Just know that I am doing well here in this beautiful country. I am meeting amazing people everyday who both inspire me to do for my fellow human being as well as remind me how lucky I am to have what I have back home in the U.S.. So without mentioning one particular event I see my experience thus far like having always lived in a valley overlooked by tall mountains. Even though the valley is beautiful it grows familiar and ordinary, so slowly, the splendor loses it's effect and thus taken for granted. Until one day I leave the valley to climb the near by mountain. After struggling through the difficult climb and finally reaching the top, I am able to see the valley from a very different and very dramatic angle. With this new view the magnificence of the place I have lived my whole life comes back to life for me but I can also see other places of equal beauty and figure why stop now, my valley will always been there to return to so I set off to discover new things keeping in mind that my home will be there waiting for me, if or when I run out of places to come across.

First three months in Bulgaria

Road between Vrastsa and Pleven

 

Pleven

 Rila Monastery

 Rila Monastery

 Vrastsa

 Vrastsa

 Vrastsa

 Dimitrovgrad

Roman ruins in Plovdiv

Roman ruins in Plovdiv

 

Old City in Plovdiv

 Waterfall near Lovech

Where the water flows out of a cave

From a gloomy day in April to a gloomy day in June Pre-Service Training was a time when I was constantly tested on my commitment to live in Bulgaria for the next two years. Between intense schedules of Bulgarian language and teaching English, and living in a new country with a Bulgarian host family I had a pretty interesting 12 weeks. But they are over, I made it and now I am a full fledged Peace Corps volunteer. Congratulations to those who have endured this before me and to everybody who endured it with me. Now the real work beings

Time stands still and I grow older

I went to Sofia for the first time and it was great to be in a big city again. Sofia really is nothing like the rest of Bulgaria, it doesn’t have the same feel to it as Kneja or Parvomai has. I did not get to see many things because I was only there for 3 hours but I did get to see something so remarkable that it needs to be experienced to get the full effect. June 2^nd is a holiday in Bulgaria celebrating a Bulgarian liberation hero. At noon a loud siren is sounded for two minutes at which time everything stops. Taxis, cars, people, the streetcars, everything stops. The city went from a loud bustling place to an eerie ghost town in a matter of seconds. Looking ahead at the people they just stopped and never moved an inch, it just felt like time had stopped and only you were still free to move around. The only thing you could hear was the sirens and birds flatting their wings. Simply put, it was incredible. I am going to plan of being their next year and either film it or bring somebody from home to experience it

On another note, today I have been alive for 27 years. It feels like just yesterday I turned 26 and only a week ago I was 16. This will be the first of three birthdays I will have here in Bulgaria and I have to say that today was a great day. My host family surprised me with an awesome birthday gift. Then I spent the better half of the day at a High School here in Kneja helping kids paint some rusty playground equipment they have in from of their school. It is difficult being away from my family and friends. I wish I was there to have dinner with my family. I picture my nephew running around a table at in a restaurant my parents take me to for my birthday. While my dad and brothers talk about sports my sister-in-law and mother would be talking about future plans for the weekend while I would be entertaining my niece and enjoying the pleasance of my company. Or my friends and I in a nice restaurant eating a fancy dinner over a nice glass of wine and after dinner we would ride our bikes to their house and listen vinyl records. Sadly all of this is happening without me and it tears me up on the inside that I can’t be there but at the same time I am so happy to be here in Bulgaria experience things that very few people will ever experience. The only gift I ever really want or wanted in life is the ability to travel and see new places and new cultures, and that is exactly what I am doing, and I could not be happier about it. It defiantly has been a rollercoaster ride of emotions, but it is good because that is how you grow as a person. It is days like today that you can mark that growth. I hope that next year I can look back at my 27^th year and think about how different I am now just like I am doing with my 26^th year.

Summer Storms

           It is a stormy night here in Bulgaria and I am sitting at my desk watching the curtain dance from the air the rain is pushing into my room as it makes it’s way to the earth. Every minute or so my room is illuminated by the bright electricity striking in the distance, which is followed by that sound that never fails to make my soul quiver a little every time it hears it. I can’t help but remember an evening of the same caliber not too long ago; only this one was in New Mexico. I could not of been older than 10 and I remember lying down to sleep when a storm rolled through as they often do that time of the year. At this time I had a hard time sleeping without a light on in my room, so when this particular storm knocked out the power and left me lying in total darkness I could not help but feel slightly panicked. I remember sitting up thinking that I had to cross the house and get the sanctuary that was my parent’s room. With my hand against the wall I slowly groped my way to their room, but I did not get very far when my path was completely illuminated by a flash of light and I stopped dead in my tracks. The sound of the rain pouring against my roof, the sweet smell of wet dirt, and the earth shaking from the powerful bolts completed this scene and it made me feel so alive. It was a moment that is so engrained in my memory, not because something significant happened. It was one of those moments that you see or feel something so beautiful and you begin bursting at the seams because your body cannot contain how big your soul becomes.

I feel this now, but not because there is a storm of the same magnitude but because it is bring forth many memories of home and the people who are there. As I mentioned it reminds me of my childhood and the nostalgic sensations of summer storms, but it also brings forth a flood of other precious memories with people whom I love. I remember getting caught in storm under a porch with my best friends, I remember my dad pulling my brothers and I out of the house and into his truck so we could watch a storm. I remember being in Philadelphia running through the streets soaking wet looking for an umbrella. The point of all of this is that even though I am very far away and in a foreign place I am still surrounded by things that remind me of where I came from and who I left behind. My mind is always looking for something that can reconnect it with the world it left behind and this is one of them.

Say What?!

 I am not a stranger to taking foreign language classes. I have had several Spanish classes throughout elementary school and high school. In college I also took some French classes. Unfortunately none of it really stuck in my head, so I was really excited that joining the Peace Corps would mean that I would learn a new language and that I would really learn it because it would be an important part of my work in the country. Here I am two months into living in Bulgaria, two months into intense language lessons and... I still feel like I hard hardly know anything. I still cringe when I buy something and the seller says something outside the normal, simple script that only involves ‘hello’ and ‘how much.’ Most of the time I just throw down more money then is needed because I don’t understand what is said when the total is told to me. I get so frustrated when my Bulgarian friends try to help me and I understand nothing they say because I have learned everything they are saying before but it gets so mixed up in my head and what comes out is a mixture of French, German, Bulgarian, English and whatever else is floating around the depths of my brain. I know I will learn more as time goes on and that I have only been here two months. I have a strong desire to learn Bulgarian so bad that it blinds me to the progress I have made. I just need to remember 'споко' (relax)

Where I come from Part II

 

South of Albuquerque

         Nob Hill/UNM area Albuquerque

White Sands. Southern New Mexico

Outside Taos, Northern New Mexico

 Mountains in Northern New Mexico

Highest Peak in New Mexico 

13,161ft/ 4,011m above sea level

Buglarian dinners.....

I can honesty say that until I came to Bulgaria I forgot about how wonderful sitting down for dinner with my family was. Eating dinner in Bulgaria is an important event, one that every member of the family is required to attend. I don’t mean this in the negative sense because gathering for dinner is something that is looked forward to and is by no means a dreaded mandatory occasion. It is a time when the family collects together and discusses, argues, and converses about anything and everything important in their lives. Lately when I sit down for dinner with my host family I am reminded of days long ago when I sat down with my own family for dinner to do the same.  Looking back I never really valued these times and I regret that. Until very recently I could not identify with any part of my family. I felt this to the point that I didn’t see any physical resemblance or feel any emotional obligatory identity with these people. I imagine that I had the same connection to my family as an adopted child feels to his or her family. I don’t mean this because I was neglected or mistreated by my parents. On the contrary, I could not of had a better up bringing. Even though my parents split during the first years of my secondary education there was never a vacuum of attention or love. I had, so called, internal demons to deal with that hindered my emotional development beyond the shelter my family could provide in the current society, but the important thing is that they were there and that is more then a lot of people can say. The problem was that I was the one who couldn’t be there, at least with my true self. To a great degree I still feel this, the very few times of the year that we do gather around a meal I cannot be myself. I feel that I can never walk into our Christmas gatherings with my own family and be on the same level as my brothers or cousins, and it hurts. It hurts so much that I recoiled and to the best of my ability disconnected myself from it all.

Bulgarian society pretty much slapped me in the face with that nostalgic feeling of family and meal times with them. I remember a time when I felt on equal footing with my brothers and didn’t feel that dread deep down difference with them. I remember a time when we all sat around that table eating and laughing and just being simple. I don’t think life will ever feel that simple again but at the very least I can spend time with the people who I can call family and melt into a place sheltered from the trials and tribulations life constantly volleys towards us. I know I just got here but I can’t wait to gather with my family after my service in Bulgaria and settle into a meal where the conversation will quickly be forgotten but the warmth from the familiar interaction will live on for so long that it takes a foreign event to recall that nostalgic feeling of belonging to a loving family

Growing pains perhaps

 

Today was the first time that I thought, “what am I doing here?” My first attempt at teaching an English lesson did not go well at all, my lack of Bulgarian was made painfully obvious, and I found myself craving a hamburger. Normally in situations like this I could always find solace in the fact that it is temporary and that I will be returning to my normal routine eventually, but today I felt that is not going to be the case this time. I am not going home soon and that suddenly seemed very real. Before I crashed and burned teaching that lesson I considered myself to have a great grasp on teaching and that it would transfer Continents with the same ease as the rest of my luggage. Don’t get me wrong I was never under the impression that it would be easy but somewhere deep down I thought that I would be good at it and that I could rely on my profession as the corner stone of my time in Bulgaria. I am sure I felt this because everything around me would be different but I knew that classroom dynamic of teacher/student would be the same or at least familiar and I could find a home in that but when it came time for it, that dynamic felt as foreign as the grocery stores here.

Today I also found out that one of the other volunteers in the group I came over with decided that he had enough and would be going home and I felt a bit envious of him. I thought, “soon he will be back to his life, to his family, to his friends, and to what felt comfortable.” That is when the stronger half of myself spoke up and said there is a reason you left that comfort, that normalcy, and it was so you could grow and be a stronger person. It is suppose to rain tomorrow, that always cheers me up