Where the Gold At?

Last night, my host family and I went on a night-hike of sorts. We only ventured just outside the village, but from there I could see every star and the outline of the mountains against the navy blue sky. The nearby town of Sapareva Banya is barely visible during the day, but at this hour (and with all its lights on) the town shimmered like campfire coals strewn across the hillside. It’s one of those sights to which a picture could never do justice and for which words only scratch the surface. I have a lot of those little moments here, and every time it just proves to me that I’m exactly where I want to be right now.

I hope you like the pictures of the Rila Monastery and the surrounding mountains. That was another unforgettable experience, and I hope everyone gets to see it at some point.

Today I’m back in Dupnitsa for a meeting on how to write grants, with which we will carry out a community project in town. Our group in the village where I’m staying had a meeting with the mayor, director of the school, and some local families about possible projects. We decided on a mural on a prominent public building. We’re still tossing around ideas of what to actually paint, but I think that’s the topic of another meeting with the locals. We’re hoping for a lot of youth involvement so they can really band together and have something they can look at and be proud of creating. I think we’re aiming to get the director of the local Chitalishte (Bulgarian community center – every village, town, and city here, no matter how small, has one) involved as well…

Some people have asked me about how Bulgaria has been affected by the Georgia (“Gruzia” here in the BG) situation. I guess the answer to that would be “not very.” It doesn’t really seem to be on the radar over here, despite the apparent geographic closeness and the involvement of former overlord Russia. It’s on Bulgarian news every once in a while, but nobody seems to be talking about it. However, Peace Corps does have a post over there that has been successfully evacuated – which was pretty big news within the PC. Bulgaria’s gold medal in women’s rowing (woohoo!) is currently bigger news…

In other Bulgarian Olympic news, the total final medal count (I think) stands at 5: 1 gold, 1 silver, and 3 bronze. They were supposed to medal in some other events, but apparently choked – which the locals are pretty unhappy about. Jordan Jovchev (gymnast: rings - pretty much at national hero status here) missed a required element and so got a bad score. Volleyball is huge here, and the USA absolutely blew them out, which at first I felt kind of bad about, but then rubbed it in later. On top of that, the entire weightlifting team (one of BG’s specialties) was disqualified for steroid use… oh well. At least it was a fun experience to help my host family cheer on Bulgaria’s teams, and my host family helped cheer on the USA in the few games that I got to watch. I think this might be the only time in my life I will ever watch the following events as intently as I did: volleyball, rifle shooting, ribbon dancing, handball, and several others that I wouldn’t usually care about. I did get to watch the finals of men’s basketball though, which was pretty awesome.

Until next time…