A Chronicle of my Changing Times.

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I was smart last night at Jen's - I emailed my posts to myself.  I'm back in Septemvri but I'm not done with the Haskovo write up.  So I'll treat y'all to the second of Bulgaria.  Only one problem - those great pictures I've taken wouldn't upload to the internet, so they'll have to come later.  Till then...

Dobre Den

Today we were exposed to our first bit of language training.  I can now say “Good Day” “My name is
Michael” “I’m from America” and can count to ten. It’s a great feeling to be able to even begin
communicating with those around you outside of Peace Corps even if it is just the absolute basics.  Someone should ask me in 3 months if I’m still as excited, but for today it is a wonderful feeling.

One of the random events of the day included helping a horse untangle itself.  It had been tied up with a rather long leash around it’s leg but had managed to walk around a tree enough times that it was almost pinned to it.  Another PCT, Stephanie, and I managed to force it around the tree enough to free it.

There also was a thunderstorm that rolled through around dinner time.  Whilst everyone was still in
eating I ran out and grabbed my camera and caught a couple of great shots as the storm passed.  Hopefully I’ll be able to post a few.

I’m truly shocked at how well our group is getting along.  We have a number of really strong
personalities and extroverts yet everyone seems to mesh very well together.  I had another late night of beers and talking at the cafй/bar here on the grounds, although tonight with a different group.  It’s phenomenal how many people I feel comfortable with already.

Soon we’ll be broken up into our language training groups and head out for small group training.  I’m a bit nervous about this.  In my head there are a lot of people who I get along really well with, but I’d rather not have in my group.  And of course there are a lot of people I’d love to have there.  This is negative against anyone here, it’s just that in a group of 50 people you’ll always have those who you get along with better than others.  Given that I’ll be spending over 8 hours a day with this group just about every day over the next 10 weeks, I want people with whom I really connect well. 

We also have our placement interview this week.  I wasn’t nervous about them until I heard some PCT’s who’d had them talk.  It’s weird because we already have a job, yet they seem to interview us like we don’t.  I’m not sure what to make of that.  Mine’s in the next day or so.

The one sour up to this point is that I’ve picked up smoking again.  I really wish I hadn’t and I’m
considering hard on ways to nip this in the bud, but it’s hard over here.  I mean, we’re rather sheltered here and I’ve already started.  But then again, there are a lot of PCT’s who weren’t smoking at Staging but have started now.  I think there were 4 open smokers in Chicago, but now 2 days in country I can probably count about 15 who are open about it.  We’ll see how it goes.

Well that’s all from here tonight.  I’m still tired, but I know how much I want to be able to document and remember so many of these early day events.  Hopefully I can keep this up for a while.  Now just to find an internet cafe so I can actually post it.

Posted by: mjmarble at May 21, 2005 05:51 | link | comments

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