New Volunteer Training Sessions

The new group of volunteers arrived in Bulgaria at the end of March. There are about 40 of them (my group had 80) and they will be in training until mid-June. My second time meeting was on Wednesday this week. It was strange being at a pre-service training event as a speaker. My arrival doesn’t seem that long ago, but, at the same time, I feel so different than I did then. The first session I participated in was on PACA tools and Bulgarian municipalities. PACA – participatory analysis for community action – tools are what the Peace Corps uses in training us for development work and the government stuff I shared was mostly anecdotal. This time I talked about tourism development.

Afterwards, I rode the old, green bus with the mildewy seats and heavy gasoline odor to Kravoder to visit my host family. I feel bad, they are so wonderful, but I don’t get to visit nearly often enough. I had these illusions that I’d have all sorts of free time in the Peace Corps during which I’d knit gifts for friends, visit my host family, write essays, and perfect the conditional mood cases of Bulgarian grammar. This, alas, has not come to pass and I hardly feel that I have time to keep up with my normal tasks at site. Kravoder was great, of course.

On Thursday, some of the volunteers from my group who work on tourism related activities held a tourism workshop in Vratsa. Our goal was to try to define what our role would be with the new group and as a volunteer ‘taskforce’ in the year to come. I think it was productive. We came away with a few really good ideas and plans on how to combine and streamline our efforts to make tourism development at our various sites more effective and collaborative: sharing brochure templates, creating a database for online tour vendors, combining eco-trail maps for a hiking book, etc. Hopefully some of these will work out. 

Easter weekend: 22-25 April

Egg painting at Tsetka's

It was a great weekend! Friday and Monday were official holidays so Chiprovtsi was full of visiting family and friends visiting. I exchanged a lot of eggs, ate a lot of Kozunak (special Easter sweetbread), and danced horo, a lot.

I dyed eggs with Tsetska and her kids on Saturday. To prepare, she woke up early and hard boiled 75 eggs! According to tradition, she dyed the first egg red then touched the wet egg on the foreheads and cheeks of Mitko, Eli, and I, leaving dye marks on our skin. Cracking of eggs against each other is another tradition. Whoever has the egg that lasts the longest will be the healthiest in the coming year. 

Kozunak picture from: The Mini Food Blog

On Monday, I went on a hike and picnic with friends to a place in the mountains near Zhelezna. There is a fire pit, water spring, and a few tables-everything we needed. We grilled sausages, ate leftover lamb offal casserole, and made s'mores. 

View from Bunara: Zhelezna is the village in the foreground, then Chiprovtsi, then the mountains that border Serbia.

Building a fire and s'mores

Holy Thursday

Egg Painting at Katerina House

What a crazy busy day! After running-love love love that spring is here and I can run again- I went to work, then to Elsa’s for piano lessons and lunch, then to the school for an Easter Recital, then egg painting at Katerina Kushta (the Ethnographic Museum), then tree planting near the Cultural Center, then home for a skype meeting about law school, then church with Yulka. And, the holidays haven’t even really begun. 

Easter Recital at Petar Parchevich...they look so happy :)

Attending church Thursday evening was interesting. The services aren’t like the Catholic or ecumenical Christian services I’ve attended before. It is much more mystical and enchanting. I entered church with Yulka and her friend; people were already standing inside and appeared to have been there for a while. There are no pews, but some chairs had been placed near the sides for the elderly.  The smell of flowers and incense is strong. In the front, is a gold trimmed screen that acts as a sort of room divider between the church and the altar. It is decorated with elaborate icons: Jesus, angels, saints, demons, dragons, etc. Dozens of beeswax candles (you purchase these when you enter) are placed on stands near the screen. The effect is very beautiful.

Following Yulka’s example, I bought two candles, lit them, placed one in a stand, and held the other until it burned down. We stood to one side and faced forward. The priest chanted prayers nearly the whole time, occasionally with replies, sometimes not. It seemed to be a very private sort of affair, not like a sermon. People came and went throughout. Some made large displays of placing candles in the front, bowing and crossing themselves repeatedly, others just stood holding their candles and listening. After about an hour, we left and sat on a bench outside church to people watch and gossip. 

Month of Cleaning

April is the month of cleanup events: the Mayor published an announcement requesting residents clean the streets in front of their homes prior to town holidays, my coworkers in the municipality cleaned the center of town last Friday, Bulgaria declared the 9th as a national clean up day, Earth Day is this Friday, and other various clean up campaigns are going on throughout the country. Today, I helped a the 6th graders from Petar Parchevich School collect litter from a mountainside east of town. 

Church bells

The church bells of Vaznesenie Hristov Orthodox Church can be heard all over town and act as a sort of announcement system when someone dies. People hear them and then ask around to find out who has died. This week, they’ve been ringing a lot. Demographically, there are going to be quite a few funerals in Chiprovtsi, but we’ve had one every day this week, with two on Wednesday.

When I was at Yulka’s on Saturday for Lazarovden, I sat wither her mother for quite some time and listened to her describe her Lazarovden memories from childhood. She didn’t make complete sense all of the time, but also didn’t seem of particularly bad health. She told me how excited she had been for the holiday and was so happy the weather was nice enough for her to sit outside and watch. On Tuesday, I attended her funeral. It was such a surprise. My condolences to her family and friends. 

Lazarovden: 16 April

On the Saturday before Easter, Bulgarians celebrate Lazarovden (St. Lazarus Day). On this day, young girls (Lazarki), wearing traditional costume, go from house to house carrying baskets decorated with flowers and sing the traditional ‘Lazarki’ song. In return, they are given eggs, coins, and candy. I spent the morning of Lazarovden with Yulka, handing out eggs to the Lazarki. 

Belasitsa

I spent this past weekend helping at a camp organized by PCVs from Bansko and Kolarova. The camp was at Hizha (hut) Belasitsa in the far southwest corner of Bulgaria—about 8 hours by bus from Chiprovtsi (if a direct one existed).

Learning about their national parks

There were about 40 kids, aged 8-12, at the camp, half from the ski-resort town of Bankso, the other half from a village near Petrich; plus, a group of 11th grade students from the Eko Club in Razlog, adults from Bansko, National Park Pirin, and Koloravo, and 6 PCVs. Everyone except for the PCVs slept in the “Hut.” We slept in tents a couple hundred yards away. Although much warmer than Chiprovtsi and comfortable during the day, it became very cold at night. I slept in all of the clothes I’d packed, plus two sleeping bags and a liner.

With some of the kids from the village near Petrich

Matt and Grant did a great job with the camp. We helped start things off the first day with an America parks and outdoor activity presentation. Each of the PCVs had prepared a few slides on a national park and an activity we enjoy to do outdoors: Atchafalaya Swamp, Appalachian Trail and Grand Canyon, ultimate Frisbee, rock climbing, and fishing.

Риболов was my unorganized outdoor activity

The first night was  “American night.” Held around a campfire near our tents, we made s’mores for all the kids and then made our best attempt at singing with Ben on the guitar. The next night was “Bulgarian night,” where the kids sang traditional songs—two even had costumes—followed by Horo dancing around the restaurant. 

Huts & Villas

Mountain Hut "Belasitsa"

The commonly accepted translations for mountain accommodations in Bulgaria are, in my opinion, seriously misleading. The mountain “huts” have little in common with what I think of when I hear “hut.” The one in Belasitsa had an outdoor play area, bus parking, rooms with in suite bathroom/showers, a restaurant/café open all day with plenty of presentation space for 40 kids, and wireless internet. Villas, on the other hand, are typically small, family owned, rustic, cabins used for storing supplies for summer picnics or garden work, especially if cultivated land is located a distance from town. They might have tables, chairs, cutlery, etc and space for a few people to sleep in case of rain, a long day of work, or an especially draining na gosti. 

Villa

This past weekend I went to Tsetska’s villa for a day of eating, chatting, and playing with Mitko and Ellie. It was great. I introduced them to the awesomeness of piggy back rides and spinning (where you take their hands and spin so they are lifted off the ground) and they kept me busy most of the afternoon

Salads and Rakia

During the day, the men grilled a ton of different types of meat-not just the kebabches and kyufteti. There were also several types of salad dishes and sides. I brought a wheatberry-chickpea salad. I was pretty pleased with myself about it.  I’d been looking for chickpeas for a while, but had been unsuccessful in any of the grocery stores. I found them by chance for 4 lev/kilo at the bazaar near the bus stop in Montana. FYI: 1 kilo of dried chickpeas=A LOT of chickpeas.

Visitors during lunch

After soaking and cooking, I had plenty for a huge salad as well as about 4 cups of hummus. I discovered that if I put them through a juicer, they won’t turn to juice, but be ground up super fine. Twice makes store quality hummus. It was the first time Tsetska and her friends had eaten chickpeas (except for the one who worked in Spain for several years, he immediately recognized garbanzo beans). 

Svrachi Dol and Degeneration

Illian, Palma, 11 kids from Petar Parchevich, and I hiked to Svrachi Dol, a rest area of covered picnic tables, drinkable spring, and stone fireplaces built by a group of volunteers from Chiprovtsi—a very cool example of local initiative and volunteerism. Along the way we picked up trash and chatted about plans for Earth Day.

Rest time at Svrachi Dol

While taking a break in one of the shelters we played Degeneration, an awesome game Raf, a volunteer in Bregovo, introduced me to after the 20 Day of Service Project. I’ve played it in Bulgarian with a group of 6th grade girls, in English with my very mixed (in ages and abilities) adult advanced class, and in a funny English/Bulgarian mix during a na gosti with volunteers and Bulgarians.

The rules of play are super easy. To play, you need to have medium sized group of people (even numbers are best), scrap paper, a pen, and something to watch time on. The best number is 6 or 8 participants partnered into three or four teams of two. If there is an odd number, pair people up to make 3 teams. Each person should write different words or phrases on three scraps of paper. Without showing anyone, these should be folded and placed in a hat or bag in the middle.  

There are three rounds. In the first round, a player draws a slip of paper and tries to describe the word to his teammate/s to guess without using the word itself (kind of like Taboo). Each team has 90 seconds to guess as many words as they can. Each word successfully guessed is worth 1 point and the paper on which it is written is left out of the hat until the end of the round.

Then, the paper slips are placed back and the second round begins. The second round proceeds in the same fashion except each turn lasts only 60 seconds and now NO words are allowed, only actions, like charades. The third round is also 60 seconds, and allows only one word explanations.  During each turn, a player can ‘pass’ if they don’t know a word or don’t have faith in their partner’s ability to guess. This is placed back into the hat for the next player’s turn.

For example, if my word is airplane, in the first round I might say, “I flew in this to Bulgaria;” in the second round I might put my arms out and make flying motions; in the third round, I might say “Lufthansa.” 

Instead of kissing babies...

Local elections will be held in municipalities and villages around Bulgaria this autumn. The ‘all politics is local’ phrase seems to apply quite well here. Chiprovtsi is politically active and I’ve found many people ready to talk politics, already analyzing who the potential candidates will be and giving me summaries of past mud-slinging election seasons.

The super-affordable (3 Leva—about $1.70) Veselin Marinov concert held in the auditorium of the cultural center last Friday was one of what I’m told will become many sponsored events in the lead up to the elections.

Whatever the reason or sponsor, it was great to see the auditorium in use (the last time was during the 5-6 September celebrations); and, of course, to go to a concert in Chiprovtsi! Between songs, one of his dancers brought him a basket of flowers. He read the attached card to the audience: well wishes from a political party in town…