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Little Stoikite itself just became home to a brand new ski lift this summer, but is still in the category of villages that are still pretty much untouched and underserved. There are a few nice homes here and there and a couple of restaurants, but for the most part this town of around 200 keeps to itself. It seems to be as “Peace Corps” a site as you can get here in Bulgaria, a far cry from other assignments in well established cities with over 50,000 residents in them. It’s the kind of place where everyone knows everyone (and everything about everyone), in a pretty literal sense.
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Ultimately, the visit gave me a ton of great ideas for my own site, and a new sense of the things that are possible in my time here. I basically retraced my steps back to site, and this gave me a lot of time to write up a lot of notes on what I wanted to do at my orphanage and how to go about doing them. It was the first time since I had arrived a month ago that I was so excited to get back and start working. My first goal has become to forge the ever-elusive relationship with the staff that will make things easier to accomplish, and will give me a person to pass the torch on to. This will be the hardest part of my assignment, and I have known this since the beginning. However, now that I have seen just how important and rewarding it can be, it has become a big focus of mine.
Overall, my visit to the Rodopis was an incredibly productive one, and the good times along the way were just a perk. I had a short stop over in Varna (3rd biggest city in BG, beach town, has a gigantic megamall) too before heading back home, but that is the subject of yet another post sometime later.
Until next time...