Greetings Laura and Dani,

Hope you're doing well! I just wanted to run a project idea for a SPA grant by you both. Of course, we wouldn't be submitting it for a few months, but I wanted to get a sense if it would be feasible. Please let me know what you think when you get a chance.

Ani, the librarian at the Chetalishte, brought up the point that youth today are pretty far removed from the folk traditions and wisdom that's been passed down for many generations. She had the idea of getting a group of kids together from the schools and researching different cultural and historical aspects of life in Bulgaria, including doing comparisons between the different ethnicities that call this place home. One group would look into different traditional dances and learn them, another group could learn different songs and learn to sing them, one group could research the archeological sites, Perperikon and Tatul, and take pictures that could become an album, one group could explore the different foods that people have made for generations...Turkish, Bulgarian, Bulgarian/Muslim, (maybe Roma too, but there aren't many Roma in this region) and make a cookbook of recipes that could be sold.

Each group would have a few adult leaders to guide, motivate, and serve as a sounding board for ideas. All this would culminate in a festival around summertime where all the groups would share what they've learned. The purpose of all this would be to inspire interest in the traditions, histories, and cultures of the different ethnicities of this region, to share and refuel the wealth of knowledge that's steadily becoming obsolete. Would this be appropriate for a SPA project? I don't think we would need much more than $5,000 and the chetalishte is able to contribute 25% to the project.

Please let me know your thoughts and enjoy the colors of this beautiful fall/winter season!
Vassi

Inspiration from the Initiation

The Initiation

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.

I want to know what you ache for....

And if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are.

I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love and the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.

I want to know if you have touched the center of the sorrow....

If you have been opened by life's betrayals

or have become shriveled and closed from fear or further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain....

Mine or your own....

Without moving to hide it...

Or fade it...

Or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy....

Mine or your own....

If you can dance with wildness and let the ecstacy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes

Without cautioning to be careful,

Be realistic, remember the limitations of being Human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.

I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself....

If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.

I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day...

And if you can source your life from the Creator's presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure....

Yours and mine....

And still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon....

Yes!

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up after the night of great despair,

Weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn't interest me who you are...

How you came here.

I want to know if you'll stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.

I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep....

In the empty moments....

Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Love N' Laundry

On a still night in Momchilgrad, a big event took place...the first hand-washing, an initiation into person hood...you really haven't lived until you've lived to handwash your clothes. It was me, a white bathtub, a little bar of soap, and a big-ass pile of dirty clothes. It was painful, but pleasant somehow. We jumped right in and started to get to know each other. There vas scrubbing und there vas swishing. Und somehow thinking about this experience makes me want to talk in a thick Germanic accent, so i vill, yah... Und it vaz dirrrrty, und it vaz vild, und ve made a splishy-splashy. Und die pants danced with die socks, und dey danced around the tidy whities. Und dey splished, und dey splashed, und they did the conga, und they did the hokey pokey. Und the neighbors didn't hear a thing, that's the magic of it! If only they knew what they were missing out on...

Ah, the joys of not having a washing machine... somehow, we all made it out of the experience a little bit cleaner, except for maybe the little bar of soap, which took on all the dirt. Hey, somebody's gotta do it!

Yes, this is one of the modes of entertainment in Smalltown, Bulgaria. When things are calm in your surroundings, you have to take the responsibility to turn the ordinary into something extraordinary because every experience has the potential to be extraordinary, as my dirty clothes taught me. Thank you, dirty clother! My advice to you is: Teach your dirty laundry to dance...every one can do it, some clothes just haven't found their inner dancer yet ;P

And we walked. And it was good

Due to popular demand, here is the conclusion of our pohod into the Rila mountains...

So, we passed the seven lakes and with the seven lakes passed our last big uphill stretch. On the top of the last hill we climbed we found a large number of stone sculptures, created by piling many flat stones on top of each other. A good indicator that civilized, creative life has passed through the area. A few of us decided to leave a little sculpture behind as well, in order to assure ourselves that we were both civilized and creative. So we did. And it was good.

It was all downhill from there. Beyond the rock sculptures, I found a rock shaped like a rock. No, delete that...I would delete it manually, but I trust that my readers are civilized and creative, so I leave the act of deletion to you. It was a rock shaped like a heart. Ergin (the trip organizer) suggested that Rossi (the journalist documenting the journey) write a story titled, "Peace Corps Volunteer Finds Her Heart in the Rila Mountains". Needless to say, this story didn't make it in the daily paper. Must say that finding a spare heart is nicer than finding a spare esophagus or a spare intestine, though I can't speak from personal experience.

So, we got over finding a heart and we walked on. And Silvi (a sweet girl who works for the municipality and happened to be my bus companion) began to sing. And Ergin joined and Ani (a hilarious woman who works for the chetalishte with me and likes to tell jokes in her village dialect) joined and Rossi and I listened and clapped where appropriate. They began with Bulgarian folk songs. Then I sang Yesterday. Then, Ergin and Silvi sang Turkish songs that were so beautiful and so sad that it makes me want to cry just writing this. But, I shan't break down like a little baby right now. I shall instead continue to write, just as we continued to walk. And we walked. Downhill. And some ran, and some walked, and some almost crawled at parts where it was steep and scary. And we stopped by cold, fresh mountain streams to fill up our water bottles. And Rozhdi turned on his little radio and played opera. And we had accompaniment for our walking.

The mountain air was fresh and healing and some started to feel giddy and some mouths started chattering. At one point, Avni (a courteous gentleman who was always helping those who were on the tail end of our group) started talking about extra terrestrials and how he thought it was absurd to think that we're alone in the universe. From there, we jumped to the idea of reincarnation. Silvi said that she thinks she may have been in India in a past life 'cuz she really likes the clothing and the colors and the culture.

I said, "Maybe we knew each other when we were in India 'cuz I think I was there too. I love Indian philosophy."

And Ani said, "I remember when you two came over to my house in India and we ate good food and we sang and we danced. We also went to the Taj Mahal."

Of course, she was joking, but we kept going with it and we collectively created some nice scenes from the past life that we shared in India.

And thus, the time passed. The whole day was sunny and gorgeous and the fall colors were inspiring. We walked for hours and hours...by the time we hit 6 hours of walking, most of us were ready to be done. The feet were hurting, the knees were complaining, the bottoms wanted to kiss the ground. Then, we hit the last stretch. By stretch, I mean two-hours worth of walkin' stretch. Not your track stretch of 100 meters! It was a shaded forest path and it was completely covered with leaves. In the steeper parts, it became a sheer slide. So, we slipped and we slid, and we bumped into each other and we held hands at parts and some fell.

As we walked, there were times when it felt like we would never get there. The only thing we could see were miles and miles of trees and leaves and woods. Some claimed to see the monastery on the bottom of the path at times, others claimed this was merely an illusion formed by wishful thinking, like an oasis in the desert. Somehow, these last two hours of the trip passed and we piled, one by one, two by three, six by five, and so on, into the Rila monastery. Some limped, some leaped, some kissed the ground, some (i won't say any names here) wanted to crawl, but restrained themselves, as this would not be socially acceptable behavior in a monastery.

After admiring the beautiful icons, lighting a few candles, looking at the souvenirs, drinking tea, and relieving ourselves of natural burdens, we piled onto the bus to make the 10 minute trip to the grave of Ivan Rila, the monastery saint of sorts. We lined up to go through a little cave-like hole that, according to legend, only those who have no sins can pass through. Luckily, all who tried, succeeded. We all came out clear...we chose not to question the verdict of the hole. It may be a hole with an idealism complex as far as sinlessness goes...yet, it's all relative...it may be that it's not that the hole is too idealistic but the people who go through it are too hard on themselves and choose to question the hole's verdict. What we ultimately learned was to: trust the hole! This was something that Ivan Rila never learned to do. In his last letter to his students, he writes that he's the world's biggest sinner who has not been able to accomplish a single good deed on this Earth. Maybe the hole wasn't around at that time to show him how wrong he was ;P

After meeting the hole, we piled onto the bus again. This time, for good, and good it was, for everyone was drained from the massive amount of walking we had just done. So, we sat on the bus, and some talked, and some ate, and some slept, and some drooled, and we finally made it home, and it was good.

Disclaimer: Some may say that my atrocious lack of grammar and commas in the right places is a terrible sin but the hole says i have no sins and as a whole i choose to trust the hole because it's a holy hole. case closed.

Climbing Mountains

You cannot stay on the summit forever;

you have to come down again.

So, why bother in the first place?

Because what is below does not know what is above,

but what is above knows what is below.

One climbs, one sees.

One descends, one sees no longer,

but one has seen.

There is an art of conducting oneself

in the lower regions

by the memory of what one saw higher up.

When one can no longer see,

one can at least still know.

Mt. Analogue

This past weekend, a group of about 40 people from Momchilgrad packed up for two days and piled on a bus to climb some of the highest mountains in Bulgaria. It was a 'pohod' planned by Gospodin Ergin from the Obshtina in order to commemorate the Momchilgrad holidays that had transpired during the week and the Islam holiday Bairam, celebrated at the end of Ramadan (month of fasting and purifying). The ironic thing is that the journey's destination was the Rila Monastery, a notorious Eastern Orthodox Christian sanctuary for prayer which has been home to some pretty saintly people.

We started out at Hizha Vada. The beginning of our quest was marked by the appearance of a fox which everyone stopped to photograph. The fox came out of the woods to stand in front of our group. It just stood there while people struggled to take out their cameras and capture the moment. Then, when the fox got tired of looking at us, it turned around and went right back into the woods.

The group started walking and within 10 minutes, the big, eskimo coats started coming off and people started stripping down to cooler layers. Our bodies' natural heating mechanisms were working full force, propelled by our trudging uphill. I was fortunate to meet many people from Momchilgrad. Teachers, people who work for the municipality, store owners, the journalist from the nearby big town Kirdjali who came along to document our trip. Ergin, the trip planner, re-named me Stacy...to decrease the confusion that resulted every time I tried to explain that I'm both Bulgarian and American, but I'm here in a Turkish/Bulgarian region representing an American organization. Huh?!

So, we walked, and some danced and some sang and some complained and some got sick, and so on, but somehow we moved forward. And then it got dark and we were still walking. And we encountered ice and rocks and bushes and puddles and streams and some fell and some got wet and a few had flashlights, so a few of us could see. And some walked slow and some walked fast, so our group broke up into clusters and it was a bit scary at times and i later found out that some thought they might not come out of this scenario alive. But, gosh darn it, it was an adventure...and if you could only see the sky by this time...the zillions and zillions of stars that you could see when there wasn't a single car light or street light for many, many kilometers. Some commented on how romantic the whole thing was...bushwhacking in the wild, wild Rhodope mountains, in the dark, in the company of the bright stellar plentitude of the universe. Some commented on how stupid the whole thing was, that we didn't leave earlier to get to our Hizha (i.e. nature hotel) by daylight. Yes, it was hard, but the whole thing was somehow blissful and euphoric at times. Go figure!

Then, we saw the light of the Hizha and we reached the Hizha and everyone was blissed out and euphoric at this moment because, well, the Hizha meant warmth and food and rakia and vodka and maybe singing and maybe sleep. Then, our fearless leader had to go back to gather the other groups who had gotten a bit lost in the wild. By a miracle, we all managed to come together again in the hizha and to eat and drink and laugh and pat each other on the back for making it through that daunting bit of wilderness in the dark, hardly being able to see the shoes of the person in front of us. Then, we slept, and it was good.

The morning after, we were awakened by the mezmerizing views we had missed out on the night before. There was a lake right next to the Hizha. Who knew? We were lucky that no one stepped in it by accident. That's how little we could see...most of us were surprized by the discovery of the lake. Then, there were the layers and layers of mountains in shades of purple, pink, grey, and dark blue...layers that seemed to go on forever. This was the view that greeted us as we came out of the Hizha to walk a kilometer to the bathroom. It filled us to the brim with beauty, so much so that we didn't even notice the smells from the triangular hole in the ground that passed for a bathroom out here.

We washed in the cold mountain stream coming out of the lake, ate breakfast, and started out on the day's journey refreshed. The weather was sunny, warm, and delicious as we set out to explore the seven lakes of the Rila mountains. Lakes with appealing names such as: the Kidney, the Eye, and the Tear. The ironic thing is that the tear is found above the eye. One of our group-mates reasoned that this must be because of the wind...the wind blew the tear upwards. Our leader said that it was actually because everything is upside down in the mountains. The fresh mountain air makes your entire psyche turn upside down and of course, then, your perception goes upside down.

To be continued....maybe...if there is enough demand ;)

A few pictures...

Here's some pictures of the clean up day.
As a response to your comment, Maegen,
there's no way our group could have transcended
your group's meaning for Krichim. You guys were the very first PCVs in Krichim and you'll
always be #1. The nature of our projects was different...since our group represented both Youth Development and Community Organizational Development volunteers, we kind of had a responsibility to involve the whole community in our project. There's no competition...it's impossible...can't we all just get along? All of us will be remembered and loved in Krichim :)

Leaping into the unknown, living on the edge of uncertainty

Our group officially swore in as Peace Corps Volunteers on Thursday, October 27th and there are now 48 more PCVs on the loose in Bulgaria. This could be dangerous! ;P Peace loving people are taking over the mailto:overthecountry@news.com Maitap, maitap (translation: joke, joke, put the squirt guns down and let's hug each other)

Before all this happened, (all absurdity aside) I have to mention that our Krichim group completed a kick-ass (excuse my language, but it was really that good!)clean-up project involving more than a hundred kids, teachers from all the schools (thanks to director Kapka Shapkova), and a very helpful specialist from the municipality (Georgi Markov) who secured game equipment for our after-cleaning celebration. As part of the project, every class in the elementary school did a drawing project around the theme "We love Krichim and we keep it clean". The drawings are fabulous and are now hanging in the school, as a constant reminder to take showers. Just kidding, it's actually a reminder to put trash in bins rather than in the river, on the street, in the field, on cars, etc. We also put together a little info sheet for all the teachers in all the schools on how much time different trash items take to break down. The sheets are laminated and can be put up and used in education year after year. That helps with sustainability of a project! You get bonus points with Peace Corps when you add sustainability into the equation.

To top off the educational part of our project, we did a hands-on clean up of the town on October 23rd with about 100 kids. The Eco-Club of Krichim, under the coordination of the super-enthusiastic, idea-filled Gospozha Slavova, made little emblems for everyone to wear that said, "We love Krichim and keep it clean" With so many kids, as you may imagine, the day was fairly chaotic. But, we got a lot of cleaning done, we planted a seed of inspiration (the kids got enthusiastic about cleaning and even started competing amongst each other about who cleaned up the most trash), and afterwards we played games in the stadium. Trevor led soccer, Jack and Freddy played frisbee, Rhonda got snacks for the kids (the local grocery store donated a big bag of treats), Andy and Maria took lots of pictures (that i will put on this blog soon), I played a Bulgarian game called 'Drop the handkerchief', which we retitled 'Drop the trash in the bin'. The weather was absolutely perfect. Sunny, warm, the whole day was just perfect. It was a wonderful finale to our stay in Krichim.

Then, on October 26th we had to say goodbye to our host families and to our PC Krichim group. It was a sad day. The next day, we swore in. There was a feeling of uncertainty and anticipation in the air as everyone was coming to terms with starting anew at their permanent site, leaping into the unknown once again, as we had in the very beginning, in the very act of joining Peace Corps. Anna Franklin, one of our PC groupies, gave an amazing, sophisticated speech that was all in Bulgarian. That's quite an accomplishment, considering that our group's been studying Bulgarian for only about two months.

After the ceremony, we all split off in different directions. After spending a few days in Sofia to inhale a few times (after the wild spur of activity called Peace Corps Training), I've been settling in to life in Momchilgrad. The people I've met here so far have been incredibly kind, welcoming, and helpful. I haven't been here for very long and it may take some time to adapt, but i can visualize calling this place home. The leaves on the trees are brilliant with the colors of fall, yellow, red, brown. There's much more Turkish spoken here than in Krichim. I don't understand much since the dialect spoken here is different from the academic Turkish I've been learning...so, it's a bit intimidating and yet exotic and interesting at the same time. That's it for now.

Be happy, dear reader, and i'll do the same.

"Know that you don't know and everything will be revealed to you." unknown