Wednesday, May 18, 2005

This week was one of the most important ones so far for us as volunteers…we found out our permanent placement – where we will spend the rest of our time in the Peace Corps –yesterday. The Peace Corps currently has about 150 volunteers all over the country – some are English teachers while others work in community development or youth development. Our new group of 50 volunteers will replace the teachers that finish their service this summer. So, I have been assigned to the school in Gorna Malina, which is just about a half an hour outside of Sofia, the capital. I don’t think I could have asked for a better placement. I requested to be in a small town (most primary teachers are in small towns, anyway) – and that is just what I got…Gorna Malina has only about 1500 people. The school includes grades 1-12 and there are only 331 students and about 30 teachers. I have heard that volunteers tend to do well in small towns because everyone in the community knows them and welcomes them – I guess in bigger cities this is a bit more difficult to do. I think it is a perfect placement for me; a small community but very close to the city.

We were back in Pazardjik Monday and Tuesday for more training, and yesterday our counterparts – the English teachers from our new schools with whom we will be working – met us there as well. This morning we all traveled with our counterparts to visit our new site for a few days. Our school director came to pick us up, and we had about a two hour drive back to Gorna Malina. It was a beautiful drive, as the mountains run all along Western Bulgaria. We were lucky to have such a short drive – some of the other volunteers who were farther away and were taking buses and trains had 10 trips ahead of them. But I suppose no one could really complain, because I am sure there was much to look forward to. There is one volunteer who will be living right on the coast of the Black Sea and several others living right in the mountains – one is actually living in a ski resort town, another in a spa town! Bulgaria seems to have everything you could want! My school director has offered to take me hiking in the mountains this summer with his family. As we drove by Sofia, we could see one of the big snow capped mountains and it got me very excited for ski season!

Today was again another long day of touring, meeting people, and, of course, eating. The school is very nice. It seems to be in much better condition than the school in Kaloyanovo. There is a beautiful courtyard outside as well as a fairly large stadium. They have a gym with a volleyball net, basketball goals, and soccer goals, and a computer lab. They want me to help out with some computer classes this summer – hopefully they are meaning elementary computer classes, because I am not sure I can offer much more than that!

My counterpart, Kirilka, has a wonderful classroom. The more I get to know her, the more I really like her. She is in her early forties, is divorced, and lives in Elin Pelin, a town of about 8,000?? just outside of Gorna Malina. She lives with her sister, who is a doctor, and their parents. Her father was also a teacher – he taught history – and her mother was a pediatrician. Kirilka actually studied physics in college, and worked for 4 years in St. Petersburg, Russia. I guess that when she returned to Bulgaria she couldn’t find work, so at 27 she went back to school to learn English and become a teacher. I had dinner with the four of them tonight, along with Kirilka’s cousin and his wife, who is also a doctor (and is sooo excited to practice her English with me, which I of course am happy to do!). One of the first things we did was look at their fairly extensive library, although all of their books were in either Bulgarian or Russian. Kirilka was so thoughtful and had found a few books in English to give me as a gift – anything printed in English is like gold to me right now! – so I am going to start first on Robinson Crusoe. I told her that I hope to be borrowing from her Bulgarian library someday soon!

Her family was full of gifts for me tonight. Her mom and her sister both are avid knitters, so tonight her mom took my measurements so she could knit me a sweater. Apparently she likes to knit while she is watching Bold and the Beautiful at night  (For whatever reason that show seems to be pretty popular here – Ridge Forrester was one of the first people that my host sister Maria asked me about after I arrived in Kaloyanovo. I guess my mom isn’t the only one with the guilty pleasure of watching cheesy soap operas! But these horribly cheesy soap operas are a good example of exactly what Bulgarian music videos are like. They are so horrible I can hardly stand to watch them! I couldn’t believe how risqué (sp?) they are, along with everything in the media – but that’s a whole different story!) Anyway, she got out her books to have me pick something out, but her sister then insisted I come upstairs to just look at hers to decide what I would like. She probably had 30 sweaters that she had knitted herself, so they kept having me try them on, and when all was said and done, I left with two new sweaters and one on the way.

Tuesday, May 23, 2005

The rest of my stay in Gorna Malina continued with lots of introductions, including more of the students. Kirilka has students of nearly every grade between 3rd and 12th (the Minister of Education just moved back the start date for learning a language to 3rd grade, I think?? I think that is so unfortunate for students in the States that we don’t require a second language at a younger age as they do in so many other places. There is so much that goes along with studying a language – understanding and accepting different cultures, exploring the world, etc., etc. Maybe someday!). I was so impressed at how much the students knew and how eager they were to learn. On Friday she had me teach her 3rd grade class, and it was so encouraging to actually have conversations with them, even in their first year of study! Kirilka seems to be a very effective teacher, and her students clearly respect her very much. I think that I could learn a lot from her. Her written English is very good, but she has very little practice using it with a native speaker (we have a little bit of difficulty communicating), so I think that having a volunteer around will be really beneficial for her, too.

Thursday Kirilka took me to Sofia to do some sightseeing. Sofia is such a beautiful city. I had only seen Sofia from a distance as we were leaving the airport, and while the mountains in the background were very picturesque, my impression of the city from afar wasn’t all that great. Since Sofia kind of sets in a valley, the air pollution can be heavy at times. On the outskirts, the tall buildings that draw your attention are the old communist bloc housing, which are all simple, uniform structures that are in pretty bad shape. Once I got into the city center, though, my opinion of the city changed completely. She took me around Sofia University, where she studied, which is situated near many government buildings. In the center there is a national library, various embassies, the Parliament, and the Aleksander Nemski (not sure of that spelling??) Orthodox Church. It is beautiful. It seems that I am using that word a lot lately, but I think Sofia is very deserving of such a description! I finally took some pictures – so maybe someday soon I will figure out how to post them here.