The Rhodopes

**So I know it’s been a while and I really haven’ updated, but I just got internet in my house and so maybe now I’ll update this thing a little more frequently.

Two weeks ago I moved to my permanent site! I had about 5 bags (only one huge one and then 4 smaller ones) and I had to trek them through three buses and about 7 hours of traveling. It kinda sucked. But I finally made it to site and it’s been great! I live in the middle of the mountains, literally up in the mountain, and there is only one bus that leaves my town (at 7:30am) and one bus that returns to the town (at 5:30pm), and there are no buses on the weekends. So traveling is a bit of a challenge. I’ve started learning when all the worker vans come and go to work in the day and been sure to make friends with people who have cars!

And the people here are wonderful! They just want to take care of me. They are even a little too overprotective sometimes. But I’d rather have that than the other option. Everyone is curious about me and most people know my every move and talk about it with their friends. I’ll meet someone and they’ll know stuff I did the week before in the village, or if I have a coffee with someone, people ask me about it later--I just think it’s a bit weird. And I live on the third floor of a house with a grandmother and grandfather who live on the first floor and they are just awesome! They cook for me all the time, even when I tell them I am cooking, and they went on a 10 day vacation to the capital to see their family this past week and they call me like every night to make sure I’m ok and even made one of their daughters stay here overnight until I finally convinced her I was ok in the house by myself!

Also, this is a Turkish community so everyone here speaks Bulgarian and Turkish fluently and they go back and forth in their conversations. They of course want me to learn Bulgarian, but they are much more excited about me learning Turkish. I don’t know why. Every time they start teaching me I have to tell them to hold off and maybe when I finally know Bulgarian I’ll attempt to take on Turkish. Nevertheless, I already know some Turkish words and when I throw them out it’s like they are marveling at a baby who is taking its first steps!

I’ve started helping the English teacher in the school teach a bit in the mornings and I’ve worked some in the kindergarten as well. In Bulgaria the kindergarten is kind of like a daycare and is a completely separate building from the school where kids from the ages of about 4 to 6 go during the day. The challenge for me is that the kids in this kindergarten only know Turkish and it is actually the job of the teachers there to teach them enough Bulgarian so they can get by in school. Apparently Turkish is a lot easier than Bulgarian so all the families here pretty much speak Turkish at home all the time. So on top of them learning Bulgarian every day, here I come with my little English lessons! This week I’m going to start going to a neighboring town once a week to teach English in their kindergarten too.

Overall, I’m so happy with my site! But believe me, there are definitely times when I miss the States, even the most random things, like the local television reporters in the Dallas area, and the people on tv in Abilene constantly referring to “the Big Country.” Hmm…maybe I just miss tv…but I totally got to watch an episode of Conan O’Brien the other day! The old people downstairs have satellite with about a million channels! I’m pretty sure they only watch like 3 of them.