Orientation Week

On Sunday May 8th I left my brother and some friends at the Alta Lake Golf Resort to embark on my Peace Corps adventure. Monday morning I flew from Seattle to Philidelphia with Lexi, my first PC friend. We were part of the early arrivals, so we spent the night at Hard Rock Cafe meeting our fellow PC Volunteers. Tuesday was full of ice breakers and orientation meetings. There are 87 people in our group, which is the largest in PC Bulgaria history! Skip ahead a few days of long, aggrevating travel from Phili to JFK to Munich to Sofia to Panichiste and this is where our 4 day orientation retreat began. Panichiste is a beautiful place. It is a resort up in the mountains and is just gorgeous! Out of the 87 volunteers, I have met most of them and they are really nice, funny, loving people. We definitely have a great group of volunteers! The past few days have been spent in meetings learning about PC Policies, which was not too fun, but necessary. After 5 language sessions I have a good grasp of the materials we have been taught. Da - yes (with a shake of the head) and Ne - no (with a nod of the head)...not confusing at all. Ummm...what else. The food so far has been really good. Tomatoes and cucumbers are served at every meal along with some kind of cheese and bread. There are also a lot of cooked vegatables and meat (chicken, fish, beef) has been served at all lunches and dinner. Its all good! Today I found out where I will be living for the next 3 months. The town is call Pavolche and is 3km (1.5 miles) southwest of Vratsa. Pavolche is a small village of 800 people. My group includes 5 other Community Development volunteers. Our goal while we are there is to assess the community needs and carry out a project that will help improve these needs. Tonight at 7pm (9am for most of you as Bulgaria is 10 hours ahead of the west coast) we have a formal dinner and then tomorrow we leave to Vratsa to meet with our host families. That is it for now. Thanks for reading, ill try to update asap but dont know if ill have internet access with my host family. I hope you all are doing fine back in the states!