Instead of sleep

I should be asleep right now, but I can’t make myself go to bed. Tomorrow, well I guess today now, is my first day at school, kind of. Here all teachers start going to work on the 1^st of September, but the students don’t show up until the 15^th. I know it is a little strange to me right now. My nerves must be getting to me. I am not sure why. I have met everyone at my school already. Our English course has been going well. Everyone wants to continue the course during the school year. My counterpart, coordinator, and director are all VERY nice and willing to help me anyway that they can, but I have to ask (most of the time). That is hard for me right now. I know I need to work on this skill to get me through the next couple of years. This morning I had to tell my school that I could not teach all of the levels of classes that I was scheduled to teach. My agreement says that I can teach up to four levels of classes, while I was scheduled to teach seven levels. I hated having to tell them something was wrong and needed changed. I feel that everyone has done so much for both John and I and I don’t want to offend them. Well, everything worked out well in the end, but I still didn’t like doing it. Sorry, that I have been rambling on. My excurses are that it is 12:25 am here and I am tried.

On a different note, last night we went out with a colleague of mine and her boyfriend. It was our first time going out at night with all Bulgarians. We were not sure of our language skills, my colleague doesn’t speak any English, but lucky her boyfriend spoke some. It was a lot of fun and I can see becoming friends with them. John and the boyfriend have lots in common, COMPUTERS. Enough said.

Well I need to try to sleep before work. Leka nosht!

FOOD

For some reason I have been thinking about a lot recently. I guess it’s because I have to cook twice a day and everything takes at least twice as long here. Maybe it’s because family and food are so closely related. Another reason maybe that I have already gotten into ruts of what I cook. Who knows? Bulgarian food seems to be a mix between Greek and Turkish with a little surprise here and there. They claim that a lot of foods that we think are Greek are Bulgarian, like feta cheese is really cirene, the Bulgarian word for cheese, and what we would call “Greek” yogurt is really Bulgarian and was invented here. What can you say? Bulgarians are very proud of their culture and heroes. As I said before I have gotten into a rut with my cooking, but I don’t cook any Bulgarian food, unless you consider making shopska salad as cooking. I try to cook foods that we ate at home; you know working the comfort thing. I make a lot of Mexican inspired dishes, so spices from that family are great to throw into packages. I usually make fajitas, stuffed peppers, rice dishes, that kind of stuff. I have also expanded my pasta repertoire. It now includes Cajun chicken pasta, a pretty close recreation of a dish we liked at Starliner Diner. One of the things that I like and don’t like is having to go shopping at least every other day. One way it is great I don’t have to plan out my meals that much, but I have to go shopping too much. There is a market in my town that is open everyday. I shop there 3 or 4 times a week. At first I was excited to market get fresh fruits and veggies, but it has turned into a search. Who has the best tomatoes, the freshest cucumbers, and the crispest peppers? I never know. Here is a picture of the produce that I bought at the market on Monday. It all cost about $2.50, but remember we get paid in Leva. We both feel lucky to be in a place where we are able to find great produce and frozen chicken breast.

Crazy Last Week

This past week has been kind of crazy. We had two guests helping with our English class over the past week. It was great spending time with other volunteers, but I am glad everyone has gone back to their sites.

Our first guest was Mike. He is originally from Twinsburg, OH, so he and John know some of the same places. We first decided to show him around town, off to the hotel we went. On the 16^th floor of the hotel there is a discotech. There we can go out onto a balcony and see the whole city in front of you. We had never been up there, it was a great site and we were happy that we went. We then decided to show our City Park and zoo. Our City Park is pretty big and has a nice playground, but our zoo leaves lot to be desired by American standards. While Mike was here we also went back to a village nearby that has a 9^th – 10^th Century site on a hillside. We walked around and looked for pieces of pottery, did not find much. The next day he went home and our second guest came.

Our second guest was Jeremy. He was at our training site with us and consequently a good friend. Unfortunately, I was not felling well the first couple of days he was here. So, he and John went to explore the city by themselves. On Monday, I was feeling better so off we went to Varna, the largest city on the sea and only two hours from us. We had never been to Varna or the Black Sea. It felt great walking along the beach and letting the water splash over my feet. Early on we decided not to go swimming that day, but somehow I still got soaked. All we wanted to do was get a good picture with the wave behind us, oh well. It was fun and we dried before we went home.

Sorry this blog Took SOOOOOOO LONG to get written. I well try to be better and faster at getting them up.

The Start

So, I finally thought it was time to jump off the bridge and join the Bloggers.

I guess I will start by telling everyone a little about what I am doing. My husband, John, and I are Peace Corps Volunteers, PCVs, in Bulgaria. We have been in country for almost four months now. Wow, time flies when everything is new. We both lived with host families for the first two and half months. It was a great experience. More to come about that later. Now we are living in Razgrad, a town of about 35,000 people. We like it here and are excited for school to start in September. I will be teaching mostly primary students at a general school while John will be teaching secondary students at the language school. We just started an English class for teachers at my school. The first day we had only four students, but it has been growing ever since. Last class we had twelve students. We started with the ABC’s and introductions last week and are moving on to simple verbs. We repeat everything a lot, but they seem to be catching on and learning. It is good to feel like I am finally doing some helpful. I have to start dinner, write more later.