Big Enough Umbrella

A Chronicle of my Changing Times.

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User: mjmarble
Name: M. Marble
As the title suggests, this is a chronicle of my changing times. I currently live Arlington, Virginia and I go to graduate school at ESIA at GWU. I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Haskovo, Bulgaria. Now I'm what's called a RPCV. I see this as an open diary of where I was, where I am and of course where I hope to go. It's a record of the daily trials, tribulations, successes and distractions of my journey. I hope you enjoy it. Welcome to a slice of my world. I'm also obliged to say that this is not an official Peace Corps website and the views and information presented here are my own and do not represent official Peace Corps views.

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« People I know (part 1)...  |  Home  |  Paris this time »
Sunday, 08 July 2007
People I know... (Part 2)

It’s time to continue from where I was last time with all the people who I met and made a difference in my life during my time in Bulgaria. It looks like there is too many people even for two posts and a third will be needed in the next day or so.
 
The first person is my friend Pauna’s father, Penko. In many ways he served as a host father in Haskovo. When I wanted to hang a whiteboard in my apartment but didn’t have a drill, he showed up with one for me. My favorite memory of him was from when my parents came to visit last spring. We had a na gosti at their apartment and my father and he got along famously both ending up more than a bit tipsy before the night was half over. Even though they didn’t speak the same language (my father speaks about as much Bulgarian has Penko does English) it didn’t stop them from having a wonderful (legendary in my family) night.
 
These are my friends Jen Hoover and Rachel Westropp, fellow PCV’s. Both are extraordinarily intelligent, good conversationalists, and just fun to be around – yet both are very different. Jen had a number of problems in her original site and had to move after a year. She ended up leaving early to pursue a Master’s of Int’l Business in Switzerland. Rachel, a fellow Cleveland native, is going onto Law School in DC and will certainly be around the next few years while I toil there. In retrospect, I saw quite a bit of them during the last two year, but it never seemed to be enough. Both are good people that I consider myself lucky to know and count as friends.
 
Liz, another PCV, had her time in Bulgaria cut short do to a career opportunity that came up which she just could not pass up on. She honestly had a rough go of it being placed in a town, Ivailograd which was pretty much horribly far from everything. Being a vegetarian, she simply wanted access to fresh vegetables on a regular basis – something that just was not available. She did live in a beautiful region of the country, in the mountains next to a huge reservoir which was gloriously picturesque. The ride to see her was less than desirable and left more than one person sick, but if you could avoid the car sickness the scenery was phenomenal – especially in the fall.
 
Vili and Anelia are two students at the university in Haskovo. Anelia and I had a falling out this past year, which was unfortunate, but was my fault. She is exceptionally kind and I’ll never forget her being one of the 4-5 friends who keep vigil on me when I got horribly sick and spiked a fever the first winter I was in Haskovo. Vili is a supportive friend who always had kind words. She is by far the most superstitious person I’ve ever met in my life. Yet she also has the ability to tell your fortune by tarot cards or a cup of coffee. While I don’t put a lot of stock in this type of stuff, it was good for the evening’s entertainment. I’ll miss her and her random test messages of encouragement.
 
Alex and I were in choir together – the very first night I showed up for choir he asked me to join him and a few friends out for a drink. He’s very earnest and good guy, what you see with him is what you get. In this picture we went to Kenana Park and sang songs while he played his guitar. He’s worked last summer (and will work this upcoming summer) in Alaska in a fish factory. Out of everyone who tried to help me learn Bulgarian he was among the most patient, always willing to repeat things over and over again and making sure I pronounced things correctly. I hope someday that I run into him in the states.
 
And I’m to another person who is difficult for me to simply write just a little bit about. This is Pauna, someone who has become like family to me in many ways. We met when she was looking up universities in the America using books in the SAC Library. Somewhere along the line she called to ask for my advice and we hung out a few times and the rest was history. She and her family became my family in Bulgaria and I spent all the major holidays such as Christmas and Easter with them. When she found out that I was bummed about missing another Thanksgiving, she gathered her family and dragged me out to the family village where I helped cook a proper Thanksgiving meal complete with a (FRESH!!!) turkey, mash-potatoes, broccoli, and all the fixings. This is a picture of her in Rome when she traveled with my choir on our Italy tour. She’s headed to London to study English in the next month or so, and I wish her all the best.
 
This is a picture of Marcy and Emily – both more PCV’s. Emily is a nice girl, but I became fairly close friends with Marcy. Funny story about her is that she is dating the PCV who served in my site prior to my coming there (the ever famous Greg). It was weird that she ended up coming down and meeting me, becoming friends, and actually getting along pretty well. She helped me pull together my Grad School applications putting the finishing touches and proofreading them before I sent them. She also strangely enough went to George Washington for graduate school, although for a different concentration, and owes me a list of things to do in DC.
 
This is Hristina, Pauna’s sister and part of my family in Bulgaria. I didn’t get to see as much of her as I would have liked since she studies Tourism out at the coastal town of Bourgas and works in Sunny Beach during the summer. But it has always been great spending time with her. This is a picture from last summer where I took her and Pauna to play miniature golf for the first time. I was trying to explain to her that she had to learn how to speak “Ball” in order to get it to do what she wanted it to. Another interesting story about her is that she helped with the “English” translations for when Sting had a concert at Sunny Beach last summer. I’m not jealous of her at all – nope!
 
This is Maya, a Bulgarian I met last fall on the Italy choir tour. Although she lives in Sofia, we hit it off really well and have since met a number of times in both Sofia and Haskovo when the opportunities have presented themselves. Besides sharing a love of playing cards, we also both have a love of older movies and she’s now been indoctrinated into such classics as “The Sound of Music” or “Mary Poppins” or “The Wizard of Oz” and “Ben Hur”. She’s also expanded my literary side by giving me a copy of Hermann Hesse’s “Siddhartha” – a wonderful book ya’ll should read.
 
This is a picture of Gina Gonzalas, yet another PCV, and I with Haskovo in the background. Gina lived on the far side of the country and we almost never managed to hang out together, yet she’s good people I truly wish I’d had more time to see. Well, it’s probably better that I didn’t see her more because I always seemed to be losing bets to her, mostly due to my own stupidity and actions. Regardless, she’s fun to be around and is headed off to graduate school this upcoming fall up Boston way. I wish her luck.  By and by, that's Haskovo in the background.
 
Virge and I met when we both went to set up the “Dance Across Europe” Hungarian Youth Exchange last summer. Funny enough, neither one of us were actually going to lead the groups that we were setting things up for. Her group from Estonia went without her while she headed off to Western North Carolina, of all places, on a 6 week church exchange. I ended up in Italy with my parents during the exchange. We just hit it off talking during the planning visit and kept in touch afterwards. She enjoys traveling and does so at every opportunity. We decide to meet up in London this past February and had a wonderful time touring around and seeing the sights.
 
That’s all I have time for today. There will be one more group since apparently I have a ton of people I don’t want to forget. Till then…



Posted by: mjmarble at July 08, 2007 22:01 | link | comments
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