Yes, I am alive

Sorry folks, I'm not a very consistent writer on my blog. I haven't had much time lately to sit and write and when I do have time the internet club in my town is closed. So just an update for you all. I did go to Montana and visited the school where I will be teaching. The city isn't as bad as I thought it would be. The down town area is quaint with a really nice park. But the rest of the city is kind of dirty and is nothing but block buildings - pretty normal for Bulgarian cities. The area outside the city is beautiful and I wont have to travel to far to go into the mountains for a hike. The visit with my school went really well. I'm not upset anymore about having to teach the 5th - 8th grades. I met all the students that I'll be teaching next year and they all seemed to be pretty good students. The director of the school is an amazing woman and very committed to helping the students in her school succeed. The thing that is the most interesting about the school is that they teach traditional folk dancing. When I went to the school Thursday morning some of the folk dancing students performed a dance for me, and after wards I was given some traditional Bulgarian bread that I had to dip in a bowl with many different kinds of salts. So, all in all I think that I'll like Montana - I will be there for two years so I'd better learn to like it.

This last week has been crazy. Monday my satellite training group met with 2 other groups to talk about our permanent sites. Then Tuesday, we went to Plovdiv with another group of volunteers to watch the festivities for the Alphabet Day holiday. This holiday celebrates education and learning, as well as St. Cyril and St. Methodius, who created the Cyrillic Alphabet. After watching the festivities, which included a parade of students from 55 different schools and kids folk-dancing, a group of us (11 volunteers and 2 trainers) went to see Star Wars 3. I'm not a huge Star Wars fan, but it was fun to see the movie. After a while though, I totally blocked out the Bulgarian subtitles.

Then, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday it was back to learning Bulgarian and teaching at the elementary school. Bulgarian lessons are getting rough and by Friday afternoon we were all beat. We have our mid-term Bulgarian Language exam tomorrow, so even this weekend we've had to study hard. Though, yesterday I went to Plovdiv again. I met up with Mickie and we just walked around the city. We did get caught in a monster rain-storm. The wind was blowing the rain side-ways and even though we both had umbrellas, we got completely soaked - but we had a good time.

Things are going well with my host-family. Roumy has been teaching me how to make some Bulgarian foods - not too difficult. Most recipes in Bulgaria use the same ingredients: oil, sour yogurt, and eggs. The yogurt is the most commonly used ingredient, it's in just about everything. I will be making dinner tonight, one of my favorites - spaghetti. Maria also asked me if I could make them an apple pie. They've never had it before but have seen pictures of it and heard that it's a regular American dish. So, sometime in the next week I'll be making them an apple pie. Does anyone have an easy recipe for pie crust??

I've been having some difficulties with the support teacher that we work with here at the local elementary school. She and I just butt heads. She wants me to teach the classes according to her plan and do everything exactly her way. And I, of course, have a mind of my own and refuse to do everything her way because I don't like her teaching style. I don't think that it's very productive to call students "stupid" or to put them on the spot to embarrass them. I should make mention that this is an older teacher who is originally from Russia, so she has an old-fashioned strict way of teaching and is not very accepting to trying new ways of teaching, like interacting with the students. I made her really upset on Friday b/c I don't want to just stand at the black-board the whole time. I like to move around and walk around the class to make sure that the students are on task. She kept telling me that I "must not do this." But I figure that the reason why I'm here is to teach and to find my own teaching style, what does and does not work for me, and I can't really do that if I have to follow her orders. She also introduced me as Miss Chocolate, which was really irritating. I had to re-introduce myself and have the students repeat my last name a few times to hear the difference between Chocolate and Giacoletto (Jockoletto). So, I'll teach again tomorrow and hopefully things will be better. I think that my director has called the teacher and reminded her that her job is as a support person. She is not to control my lesson, nor is she to interrupt my class. If she has comments about what I'm doing or maybe even advice, she can tell me after class.

Well, that's the skinny on the last week and the major events worth mentioning. I'll try to update my blog more often, but I wont make promises.

Montana

I just found out where my permanent site is (where I'll be living for the next two years) - it's in Montana. Yup, that's the name of the city. It's located in the north-western part of Bulgaria. I guess it's an average size city, about 50,000 people, but much bigger than little old Helper, UT. Tomorrow I will be meeting my counterpart from the school that I'll be teaching at. Then, Wednesday, I will be traveling with my counterpart to Montana where I will stay for three days. While there I'll get to see the apartment where I'll live, observe some classes at my new school, and even teach a few classes. For the most part I'm pretty excited about where I'll be going. Though, I wasn't too happy about the fact that I'll teaching 5th - 8th students, because I really wanted to be teaching 1st - 3rd grade - I love little kids. It's not that I don't like older kids, it's just that I prefer the little ones. I'll have to make the best of it though. Most of my practice teaching has been, and will be, with older kids and so far I'm enjoying it - so teaching in Montana probably wont be that bad. I'm excited to be going to my new city and to see my classes, it will give me an idea of what I'll need to bring with me and what skills I should work on in order to be an effective teacher. I also can't wait to be living on my own; for the simple fact that I'll have more control of what I eat. My host-family feeds me way too much - my pants are getting tight (and I've only been here for 3 weeks). It's impossible to say "no" to all of the food that they offer, especially the chocolate - which we eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Once I get to my own place I'll be able to cook only what I know I will want to eat, and I will not be buying chocolate - well, maybe some chocolate, just not everyday.

Great Day

Had a great day today! So, my fellow volunteers and I left our town today and took an adventure on a Bulgarian Bus. We only went about 4 miles to the next town - but we still got on a bus and bought tickets all by ourselves - in Bulgarian!! We only went to the next town to use the internet, check out the bizarre, and see the other 5 volunteers posted there. We had lunch at Meagen's host family's house and then went on a gorgeous hike. I loved it - for the first time in my life I was not the slow-poke and I didn't even have to stop and rest. It's great having grown up at an elevation of almost 6,000 feet and then moving to one of about 1,500 - I can hike for hours. Ok, maybe not hours, but it was great to actually be able to enjoy the hike. The view was amazing. One thing that was quite different though was that Meagen's host-mom rubbed garlic all over our shoes before we went hiking - she said that it keeps the snakes away. I guess it worked because I didn't see any snakes. Tomorrow is our first hub, or meeting with all of the volunteers. I'm excited to see the other volunteers and hear about their first week with their families.

Here's Melody's photo web site. It has a lot of photos of us on it. Some of the pictures are ones that I took - but most of them are hers. But all together they're photos of people, places, and things here in Bulgaria.
www.flickr.com/photos/harm1020

We learn a lot of new vocabulary through pictures - this is how we learned vegeatarian and not a vegetarian 

my co-volunteers and friends: Eric, Melody, and Kathy 

my host family - Maria, Roumy, Ivan, and Petyo 

Adjusting

Adjusting to a new culture is not an easy thing to do. On the outside, Bulgaria looks a lot like home. But it's when you start to look underneath the surface that you find the differences. Mostly, they're just little things like food never being served hot - always warm, always taking your shoes off before entering the house, the women doing all of the cooking and cleaning, and eating bread with just about every meal. These things may not be as prominent in a big city like Sofia, but they definitely are in my small town of 2,500 people. So far I haven't had to big of a problem with adjusting. I watch my host-family and follow their lead on how things are done. If I don't understand something, then I ask my h-fam or my language trainer. Language classes are really intense and often times my brain is so overloaded with information that it pretty much shuts down. And I don't really get a break from language training b/c when I go home from school in the evening I'm surrounded by Bulgarian - it is nice to have Maria, who can translate some things for me. I've also started my technical training - practice teaching. My fellow volunteers and I will be working at the local school here, which has two English teachers. We will mostly be working with the 5th, 6th, and 7th grades. The Education system here is really underfunded and students are using really old British English texts. It was kind of funny when some of the kids asked us volunteers what our surnames were. We're so used to using the term "last name" that is threw us off. So not only will we be learning Bulgarian, but we will be learning British English too.

I'm here

For all those who haven't heard from me, I am in Bulgaria and I'm in my new town (Kourtovo Konare) where I will be staying for the next three months. This past week has been non-stop. After leaving Chicago we flew for about 12 hours to get to Sofia and then went straight to our hotel (an old recreation center) in Strelcha. We were there for about 5 days, with safety, health, and language training every day and almost all day. The time spent there was really nice and an introduction into Bulgaria. But it was also time spent with my fellow volunteers and I made a lot of new friends - people I know that I can talk to and go visit when I get to overwhelmed with my new Bulgarian home. Friday evening, three other volunteers and myself came to Kourtovo Konare with our host families. My family is very nice - mother, father, son (18) and daughter(21). My host-sister is the only one to speak any English - just enough to help me out and get some basic understanding of what is going on. They like to feed me a lot - too much actually. The food is definately different, but still good. I'm not to keen on the whole yogurt thing though. It seems that they drink their yogurt every morning for breakfast. It's really plain and liquidy and I noticed that they add salt to it. I think that I'll just stick with water and tea for now. However, they did get me some yogurt with strawberries (more to my American taste). Yesterday, Sunday, was Easter and I got to witness and be a part of some of their traditions. One was with easter eggs, where two people each take an egg (which has been boiled and then colored) and hit the ends of the eggs together. First you hit the top ends together and then the bottom ends together. This is sort of a game and the person whose egg cracks upon impact, looses. But you have two ends on your egg, so you get two tries. If your egg does not break at either end then you can play your egg again with someone else. Today is also my towns holiday or Kourtovo Konare day and there are celebrations and a sort of fair going on. It seems that I got to Bulgaria at the right time - lots of parties and food. I think that I'll go check that fair out now - I saw some cotton candy that I wouldn't mind getting.