all…….. the places and spaces i’ve been

one of the best parts of being in peace corps, is that; a lot of the time work and fun look like the same thing.

here are some stories from my service; in order the photos appear
here

There is a little cabin located 4.5 KM outside of my village. It is a nice place to take a hike to and eat lunch. Lunch in the winter is salami/bread/onion and… straight-up animal fat, grilled. It’s actually pretty good, but probably not too good for your health.


Rakia, is a brandy, that people in Bulgaria love to drink and make. There is a distillery in my village. One fine spring day, I had the opportunity to help with the distilling process. We made sure the fire underneath the basins was roaring, and pored the distilled rakia into their containers. Then, we ate some animal fat and drank some beer. It was a good time.

There are a lot of cats that live on my street. I’m more of a dog person, but there is this super ugly cat that hangs out on my terrace sometimes. I threw it some bread because I felt bad for it.

A few weekends ago, we celebrated Meg’s birthday by going to Buzlodja. Buzlodja is an old communists monument that was built for communists party meetings. After Bulgaria became a democracy, Buzlodja was closed-up and forgot about. The building is been badly vandalized, and the windows are all smashed out, but you can still see how cool it was. On the day we went, it was very windy and foggy. Given the spaceshipness of the building, and the creepy post-apocalyptic abandoness, the fog was just the icing on the (birthday) cake.

Last Wednesday (March 3rd) was Bulgaria’s independence day. And even though it is March, and very similar weather to Minnesota, my landlord, his daughter, and my neighbors and I had a barbecue at the picnic area we built last summer. (Finally, the pictures of the picnic area I helped make!)

I’ve been cooking a lot. Banana-bread is a hit here.

The thing that I am starting to realize about service is this; life is characterized by little moments that become routine and you forget how unique and incredible it is that you have the opportunity to be doing things like this.

For instance;
There is a lot of lumbering that goes on in my region, and hence a large forestry department with a lot of forest rangers. Yesterday, a group of forest rangers from my village invited me to come along to mark trees for removal at the peek of a neighboring mountain. We climbed into the forestry jeep, and made the drive on the snowy rudimentary road up the mountain. It was sweet! We were driving through rivers and very narrow roads through a beautiful pristine forest. The road didn’t go all the way to the top so we had to hike up another 300 meters. It was a perfect day to be up there. The sun was bright, and the sky was a marvelous blue, almost as blue as it is in Duluth…almost. There were some big caves we got to poke around but didn’t want to go to in-depth on account of the 500 kilogram bear that lives up there.

With sunburned faces, we went and had a picnic and ate some animal fat.


Joke!

Q. What is a witch’s’ favorite subject?


A. SPELLING!!!!!