After the dust has settled

I have been a volunteer for a week and a half now, and I can already feel myself getting more adjusted to life in Straldja. My apartment is clean(er) and I have food in it...and things to cook with (though it still takes me about an hour to bring water to a weak boil...I'm waiting for my stove/oven to just give out completely so I can get a new one. For now, salad seems the way to go.)

The first week I was here I made two trips to Yambol, my nearest big town and the "capitol" of my region in Bulgaria. It is apparently one of the poorest "Oblasks" in the country, but you can't really tell that from the downtown area. There are shops (where the best 15 leva of my life were spent on a rotating fan imported from Germany for my apartment. They didn't have a box for it, so I had to sit with it fully assembled on the 20-minute bus ride after paying for an extra seat.) There is even a movie theater that shows one film a week.

I had to go to town two times because I am in the process of applying for my lichna karta (my Bulgarian ID) and I needed to get extra forms. It's one of the few remaining elements of a communist goverment, and even though it's a pain, I'm glad it's just one little aspect of living here. I could be much, much worse.

Over the weekend I headed back to the Rhodope Mountains to visit my "family." My host sister had her birthday on Sunday, but even though she wasn't there (she was at the beach with her uncle), they still wanted to have a party. I left for Plovidv on Friday morning by train. It's a 3 and 1/2 hour direct ride. I spent the day bumming around the city. I managed to find a replacement camera for the digital I lost (so be on the lookout for photos with these emails) and I saw War of the Worlds in the theater nears Ivan's apartment...don't ask me how I found it again, but I must be getting better with directions. In the evening I took a bus to Krichim, and Maegan and Andy were "home" too. Everyone was glad to see us, and they treated us like we had been gone forever (not just one week). On Saturday I bought the new Harry Potter book (since it is not yet translated into Bulgarian, I was the only one in the store) and hung out in Krichim. Villi, my host cousin, gave me a haircut and she says I look "Bulgarian" now...I doubt it, but several people have come up to me and started speaking Russian thinking I am Russian...

Anyway, I came back to Straljda on Sunday and finsished Harry Potter yesterday. Today I did the last of my paperwork in Yambol, and now I eagerly await Aug. 19 when I can pick up my ID card.