I Love Banana. This Banana.

I have no reason to title this blog post "I Love Banana. This Banana." since it has no revelance to this past week, but it did remind me of a funny story.

The first week of living with my host family, the only things we knew in Bulgarian were how to say what we loved and different foods. Therefore when Tom came over he proudly told my host mom, "I love banana." We have found this funny ever since, and we try to use this phrase (or a similar phrase- like "I love this banana" since we learned how to say "this" recently) as much as possible. As I'm writing this I am realizing that this may not be as funny to you as it is to us. I have found this quite funny just writing this, but then again I haven't gotten much sleep recently and my be losing my mind....WHICH BRINGS ME TO THIS PAST WEEK!!!!!

This Past Week:

Permanent Site Visit/Let's go see where I will be Living and Working for the Next Two years!

Ok, I think I am allowed to say that I will be in Svishtov (it's a pretty big place).

The Good: Svishtov is an amazingly beautiful city with great parks, lots of statues, beautiful buildings, and an outdoor Roman theatre (built on actual Roman ruins). I have already discovered my happy place there, in the theatre, where I can easily see the Danube and Romania (which I can't get over that I can just see Romania from my town), and it is quiet, beautiful and on the top of a hill away from noisy cafes and people. I have already discovered a good, cheap place to get excellent Bulgarian food, a good pizza place, and a place with Melba (ice cream sundae but better-I have become obsessed-it sounds like an old lady and looks and tastes like heaven!). I'm excited to explore more and figure out the best route to get across to Romania.

The Bad: My counterpart, who I really like, is ridiculously overbearing. I was really looking forward to being on my own for a few days and being a 23 year old again after being treated like a 10 year old for the past month but found myself in the same situation. She didn't let me speak Bulgarian at all. I didn't once introduce myself or order a meal or walk by myself once. I spent every last minute with her the whole time I was in Svishtov. It was a little much but I guess this means I need to be assertive and let her know I need my space. I am a wee bit worried as she said told me several times that "we were going to BEST FRIENDS!" (it's nice I know but still a little much-plus I have no intention in replacing my current best friends, just fyi besties!)

The Ugly: The school. The school I will be working at is in horrible condition. I couldn't believe how bad it was. Now I know why I will be working there. It needs serious help. At least half the windows are broken, the walls have huge cracks, the desks and chairs are falling apart, there are no overheard screens, there are no pictures or posters on any walls, the signs are missing most letters, the halls are bare except for a few scattered pictures, most of the students didn't have textbooks or basic school supplies. In Svishtov there is one ridiculously nice high school, one technical school, and then our school which is 1-12. The school does have nice painted walls for the 1-4 grades but the part of the school for 5-12 grades (who I will primarily work with) are in serious disrepair. There is a serious need for some good old TLC.

Besides visiting Svishtov,

This week we have a ridiculous amount of work to do.

1. Model School. This is like a summer camp that we are putting on in our Tiny Little Village for the kids. We are expected to Team-Teach with our partner teacher as well as create our own curriculum and keep kids 2-8 grade happy and knowledgeable in the area of English language education. It has actually been quite fun and we have the perfect number of kids. However, it takes up a lot of time.

2. Cultural Presentation. This Friday we are supposed to come up with some topic about Bulgarian culture and present it in a creative way to the rest of our Peace Corps family in a creative and interactive way. I will tell you more about this next week. It will be good, but I don't want to give too much away.

3. Community Meeting. We are expected to hold a meeting for our Community in which we will come up with a project that we can do with our town. This is the real stressor. We are expected to send out invitations, hold a meeting with all the most important people in town, the community, and write up a schedule of how and what we will discuss.

4. INTENSIVE Bulgarian Language Lessons. On top of everything else, we are having our usual 3 hours of language lessons a day. My brain is about to explode.

***PLEASE also note that we had been traveling for the last week prior and were loaded with a ridiculous amount of information. My brain hurts.

Anyways, I'm stressed to say the least, but it will be ok. I just downloaded like all of Celine Dion (which I happen to know the words to most of the songs due to my days of worshipping her in 5-7 grade) and the Spice Girls, so I have found my happy place and am coping fine. If you could however, please pray that my group and I, as well as the other volunteers, find peace in this stressful time and get through it. Unfortunately one volunteer has already left due to stress, so pray that others will be able to push through and continue to find relaxation, sleep, and beauty during this time. Also, in the near future I am sure that I will need lots of supplies for my students and perhaps financial help, so pray about it and let me know if you are interested in helping to get things for the students and the school. Anyways, God is still taking incredible care of me and I am doing fine. I have had no health issues (which I think is due to the Rakia I drink every night-it's like a glass of rubbing alcohol a night to clean away any sort of bacteria!) Keep me and my other volunteers in your prayers.

BIG GINORMOUS NEWS!!!

First some boring things:
This past week was kinda boring but I will list some of the great things:

1. Dr. Toni came to check up on us, make sure we read all the edical stuff and came bearing gifts. We got Tampons, helmets, water filters, bug spray and super intense bug killer!!!! It felt like Christmas!
2. Had my Mid-Term Langauge Test and it kinda kicked my butt, it was made up of a recorded 20 minute conversation all in Bulgarian. I was told that I did fine and that it was good that I spoke in paragraphs but I didn't feel at ease. It was an eye-opener and made me realize my need to talk to my host family more in complete sentences: right now my Bulgarian kinda sounds like this: I tomorrow like go market bread banana. Which is understandable just sounds like a caveman.
3. Made my host family dinner. I made stir-fry and made my own teriyaki sauce (honey, brown sugar, garlic and soy sauce) which turned out wonderful!!! I think they geniunely liked it and my host mom said that I can cook anytime. I also made chocolate chip cookies which were a little different than usual, some sustitutions on ingredients but turned out tasty (with slight curry undertones-I put the chocolate chips next to my curry powder in my suitcase).

Now, THE BIG NEWS!!!

I know what town I will be serving in for the next 2 years!!!!! (found out thurs, June 17, 2010)

I will be in a town on the Danube River right across from ROMANIA!!! Seriously, I will be able to see Romania! It is a big town (33,000) located in the north in the middle of the country, if you email me or ask I will tell you the name of the city. I will be teaching (as far as I know) 1st-8th grade as well as a special 12th grade American Literature Class!!!! Plus I will be super involved in drama, art, and sports. I am so incredibly excited and think this sounds wonderfully amazing! God is Good and is taking such good care of me! I am so thankful! Plus, I met my counterpart who is great! She talks a lot, is really good at English, funny, and loves dancing! She reminds me of my host mom, so I am excited to work closely with her for the next two years.

Here's the next steps:
Right now I am in Vratsa (lovely city), with my counterpart and the rest of the volunteers and we have been doing a lot of activities and had far too many sessions, but it has been great because our personalities click and we both have a similar love/addiction to coffee. Plus, I have been getting to spend a lot of time with my wonderful Peace Corps family. On Sunday, I will go with my counterpart to my town and check out the city and the school, as well as my apartment (if it is ready?). Then I return to Tarnava. (side note: In the 2 days that I have been gone, I have heard from my host family each day and find that I miss them but, not going to lie, this little vacation away from them has also been nice).

Ok, that's all. God is incredible. I am pretty much in love with Him.

I can't help but write a lot, but I think my mom may appreciate this.

Ok, so let's see....In the past week, I tried to cook Bulgarian, went to a ball, taught 3 lessons, nearly killed my host family, met the mayor, and found myself astounded again with God's goodness.

We tried to cook Bularian. June 3, 2010.

One of our assignments was to cook a Bulgarian meal for our language trainer. Being the only one in my group that likes to cook and has cooked a number of times different dishes, I took lead on this and we ended up cooking for 11 people (the 5 of us plus the 6 people in my host family). We made meatballs (kinda) with potatoes, tomato and cucumber salad, and a strawberry cake. The meal was pretty good and my host family loved it and now somewhat trusts me to cook again, which is absolutely fantastic. Good thing is that my group worked wonderfully together and it absolutely opened the door for me to cook at my house, which is something that I really love doing and miss doing, so yay!

Bulgarian Ball. June 5, 2010.

A week earlier, my host family informed me that I would be going to a ball the following saturday. This was all that I knew. I didn't know who or what is was for, where it was, or what I was expected to wear. First of all, I made sure I was home, with plenty of time to get ready before the ball to find that no one was home and I was going to base what I was going to wear on what they were wearing. No luck. Finally, my host sister Didi got home, so I asked her what to wear, and through the use of Google translator, was told to wear "Lamb." Which again was not helpful nor did it really make sense. Thanks Google. Anyways, eventually decided on nice top and trousers. I was dressed semi-appropriately as the dress was casual to prom fancy. The ball was great! It was like a mix between a polka dance, a belly dance competition, russian dancing, freak dancing, and an awkward junior high slow dance. I was wildly amused the whole time. Plus we were served a lot of Rakia and massive amounts of meat, Lamb (which made the earlier conversation perhaps more understandable). Seriously, I don't think I have seen so much meat served to a single person in my whole life. Two more great things: my host family made sure I had a steady stream of men to dance with throughout the night (mainly old, smelly, awkward Bulgarian men-the way I like 'em!), and there were a number of times when there were more men on the dance floor than women, (straight men...i think, kinda hard to tell-gay or European doesn't work here). I danced like crazy, seriously, so much fun! There are so many more wonderful things about this night but please skype me and I will tell you all of them. I don't feel like writing them all here.

Taught 3 Lessons. 5th, 7th, and 8th grades. June 7, 8, 9, 2010.

I love teaching and more importantly I love making a fool of myself and opening the door to get stubborn/too cool for school 8th graders to make fools of themselves as well. These lessons were easy peesy lemon squeezy. I was really intimated by the 7th and 8th graders because they are just so awkward, but I found the more I was comfortable in being a dork in front of them, the more comfortable they got with not having to "be-so-cool." The 5th graders were, as always, super wonderfully great and responded great when in competition. I liked them all and am stoked on teaching multiple levels.

Nearly killed my host family. June 9, 2010.

I decided that I would try to make banana bread again after my first attempt burned. So, I made sure that I put the oven on the right temperature and my host mom and baba were nowhere around, so I figured, GREAT! Anyways, I started making the banana bread and mixing the ingredients. This is when I smelled a slightly unpleasant smell of burning and thinking that something must have dripped down and was burning on the bottom of the oven, which I was not nearly concerned with. Then, I noticed that my Deeado (grandpa) was walking out and carrying something. (Little explanation-oven inside in grandpa and grandpa's while kitchen area in outside away from oven and where we eat). Then I realized that deeado was carrying half of a plastic serving dish that I immediately remembered was sitting on top of the oven. Then I realized what I did. I had accidently turned on both the stove area above and the oven. The fumes I was smelling, which at this point had completely filled inside with a think black, obviously toxic smoke, was the sweet smell of burning plastic. Inside was like someone took all the smog in L.A. and placed it inside the house. It was hard to breathe and I could feel my lungs deciding that they hated me, and best of all I'm pretty sure the fumes could kill small children or animals. This is when I thought, wow this could totally kill my host family, which would just be messy and awful (I can't be the PCV to kill her whole host family). Pulling the plastic off the stove was like pulling thick long taffy. Good news: After this, my banana bread cooked perfectly and tasted delicious! So, to make the perfect Banana Bread just almost kill everyone by burning plastic on the stove beforehand!

Meeting the Mayor. June 10, 2010.

Big Pimpin'. If you didn't hear before, I live with the Mayor and know her very well at this point. Plus my whole group had already made her dinner (June 3), but we finally got to have an official meeting with her, which is one of our assignments. So all week, I've been telling my host family how excited I am that I get a meeting with the Mayor on thursday, and she just blushes. We decided to dress up for the occasion, and the whole thing just made me so happy. It is not that great of a story, but I was pretty stoked because I got to wear a dress and my pink striped knee socks and found the whole fiasco really funny.

Found myself astounded by God's Goodness. Unending 2010.

I am blessed beyond all measures by this whole experience and just am so thankful for everything God has given me. Life is beautiful. For those of you who know and don't know, a couple of months ago now, my grandma died and this was one of the hardest things that I have ever gone through, and I miss her like crazy and I continually think about her and how wonderful she was. She had a huge impact on my life. Anyways, since coming to Bulgaria, I have found that God has put another wonderful grandma in my life, who is so incredibly like Nannie (that is if Nannie were Bulgarian and drank more). It is like God is giving me more time to experience life with her, while helping me to let her go and simultaneously remembering Nannie and why I loved her so much. I am finding this all therapeutic and wonderfully amazing. God is good. He is wrapping me in his arms and letting me know that I will be ok and he is helping me with my grieving. It is spectacular the way God works in and through things. God is good. He takes care of everything. Life is beautiful.

Ok...I realize this is long but I only post these things like once a week...

ok, so my internet has been off for a few days now and it just came back and then went away again....so I am writing this on Wednesday, June 2 and will post it when I have internet again.

So, to catch up on the events, this is how it went down.

Monday, May 24th:

Alphabet Day!!!! So this is a Bulgarian Holiday to celebrate education, culture, teachers, students, and the alphabet!! Yay for Education! No School! On this day they threw a huge celebration for the town and the kids put together a number of songs, dances and skits that they presented to the community. Everyone in my host family was involved. It was great!

Tuesday, May 25th:

Primary Education Cluster (aka OMJ! I totally forgot that there were other Americans in this country!) We all got together gossiped about our host families, the food, the towns, the people, funny stories, not knowing the language, getting the word "beautiful" mixed up with the word for "cucumber" or in some cases "cheese," or and learned a lot about different teaching methods, games, activities, classroom management, etc. It was weird and wonderful to see some of my PC family.

Wednesday, May 26th:

I taught my first full lesson. It went really really well. I had to rearrange the lesson plan and drop some activities and add some others to meet the students needs but I felt good about it. I think I'm going to fully enjoy my time here teaching. No doubt.

I think it was also on this day that my family had a party for the almost 3 year old cousin, Dosi (cutest little boy who loved me). Dinner with both sides of the family, delicious food, hilarious conversation (I assumed-we laughed a lot, I didn't understand a thing but couldn't help but laughing, which may have made them laugh more), and two desserts! I ate a ton and my Baba took me around to everyone to explain that I didn't know Bulgarian but I could say certain things like "cynep" (super) and "dobpe" (good), so I tried to say these things as much as possible.

Thursday, May 27th:

Sleep in. Yes, please. The 7th grade is taking exams, so there was no school for the other grades. A little explanation: in 7th grade students take exams to be accepted into certain high schools, which could be a general high school or they can study a specific subject. We also got to have a wonderful trip to the Police Station in the city, so we could find out all the risks we face while being in our area. The most awkward part was when the police gave us a brochure of the mug shots of all the theives in our area and said, "Remember their faces." Upside, they let us into a jail cell and we got to take pictures! Successful field trip.

Friday, May 28th:

HUB 1-All PC family reunited!!! We got to see our whole group and go to the Big City (Vratsa)!! It was magnificent! I have said it before, but I absolutely love (almost) everyone in my Peace Corps group, (almost) all 87! We also went over a lot of material....like history and stuff (I took my notes in pictures, it was that interesting).

Saturday, May 29th:

So, funny story. Mary's (see right bar) host mom wanted to take us on a picnic on saturday, so we signed permission slips and let the Peace Crops know we were going five minutes away from our town for a few hours, thinking ok, a picnic should be fun. Well we showed up at her house at 9am, were served wonderful food and coffee, met a bunch of the family, and then headed out in two cars. We drove to the next town over, pulled over on what seemed to be the side of the road and got out. Then we walked where we met a lot of other people, kids, some high school students wearing Bulgaria red cross shirts, our school director, our resource teacher, and others. It was a really big group (35-50 people). We stood around and then started walking up this path that lead to a park where signs were up. We found out that the whole thing was not just a family picnic but a huge picnic to celebrate "Kid's Day!" (another Holiday which actually took place on June 1). Luckily we brought mitts, baseballs, a volleyball, a jump rope, a football, and some other games. We ended up just playing with the kids, drawing some great pictures, and having a really good time. It was not what we thought we'd be doing at all but had lots of fun!

Next thing: Soccer Game! Our town's team played another town's team, and both team's were not very good. It wasn't that they individually did not have the skills, it was that the team couldn't work together. But, the highlight was definitely going out to drinks after the game with the soccer team and the mayor (my host mom). Big Pimpin'.

Sunday, May 30th:

Pajama Day! I stayed in PJ's (which were my space needle shirt and track pants-which are actually really in fashion, so booyah!). I decided I would bake banana bread since my host family bought me a ton of bananas when they saw how much I liked them and I couldn't eat them all. Well, it went fine...until my host mom looked at the recipe and saw it said 350 degrees (in F), so turned the oven (in Celsius) up to it...my banana bread burnt. I was lucky that I smelled the banana bread burning, so I took it out of the oven 25 minutes early, but it was still burnt. I explained to my host mom that the oven was too hot, and she saw that I was disappointed, so she took the bread out (cooked in a bundt pan), and smothered it was powdered sugar and said it looked beautiful, promptly took a slice and told me it was delicious. This totally made up for the fact that I failed at baking my first thing in Bulgaria. It was even better when she made everyone else try it and had people telling me the rest of the day that it was delicious and they loved it! They asked me to make it again for them the following Sunday. I pray it doesn't burn...again.

Monday, May 31st:

BREAKDOWN! (#1) The PC warned us that we would have a breakdown sometime during our pre-service training, so we all have been joking about it and declared that we would yell "BREAKDOWN!" the moment it happened. Well, that might have happened on Monday. So each week our language trainer goes over everything we were supposed to accomplish the week prior, including marking our punctuality (which I have perpetually failed each week) and our respect toward the culture, our trainer, and our host family, which I was horrified to find that I had also failed. I am sarcastic and our whole group teases each other all the time, including our language trainer, but the week before, when we were with other groups, we were joking with her about a bunch of things. Needless to say, our trainer got really offended and we really hurt her. She misunderstood our teasing and got really really hurt. She told us all on monday and we broke down. We LOVE our language trainer and think she is wonderful, and without knowing it, we had shown her disrespect and really hurt her. We felt awful (and I still do) and all of us broke down (well I guess to be honest the three of us who had been joking around the most). The scary thing is that none of us had any idea that we had offended her at the time at all. It was the first time I became aware that I still don't know this culture as much as I feel I have integrated myself into it. I am now horrified that I will do something and offend someone else without knowing it. I need to learn as much about this culture asap.

Tuesday, June 1st:

Happy Children's Day!!! Guess what! I'm team teaching! On Monday we found out that we had to team-teach our lessons on Tuesday, so PC could observe all four of us as teachers on the same day. After perfectly planning out my lesson, I had to relent some of my power/control (some of the lesson) to someone else, which for those of you who know me well, this is not easy for me to do. However, I did it. The lesson went fine. It was fine and I team taught with a wonderful teacher (Thomas-he's kind've a big deal). Besides that, that night we had another community celebration for Children's Day and the next holiday (June 2). The kids performed many of the same dances and songs that they did for last week's holiday but with some new ones as well. My family pretty much ran it. My sister was the MC, my dad the technical and sound guy, my other sister in the parade, and my mom was the guest of honor who also presented awards. I felt like part of the in crowd.

Wednesday, June 2nd:

Another Holiday!!!! WooHoo!! Hristo Botev Day aka the Man who looks like the Guy from the Hang-Over Day! Actually Hristo was a pretty amazing person, an intellectual that lead revolutions...and was eventually killed for it. Plus, he was a stud. Today we also discovered that my host mom is terrified of the family pet (a hamster) when it is let loose. She runs and slams doors behind her, while the rest of the family laugh outrageously. the whole scene is spectacular to watch. I try not to laugh too much as I am still horrified that I will do something culturally insensitive.

Well, pray that I will be careful in what I say and do as the last thing I want to do is hurt someone or disrespect someone. Luckily, this time our language trainer got to talk to us and explain everything and forgave us, so we'll know for the future. Also, please pray that the Bulgarian meal that my group is cooking tomorrow will be stupendous! (or at least not burnt) Besides that, God has surrounded me with amazing people and I feel lucky to be in the situation I am. God is definitely carrying me in his arms, and I am relying on Him.