Happy Mother's Day

This post is mainly for Mama Bear, but you guys can read, too. Merve came over with flowers this Sunday for our weekly bake fest in honor of Mother's Day. We made brownies for all the Mama's in the neighborhood (thanks for the organic mix from the states, Roger!) and had a fun time experimenting with decorating the brownies with edible flowers!
Happy Mother's Day!


Merve and I...we are in our aprons that we wear every week

Merve cooking up a storm!

Fast forward to a slew of holidays

May is just packed full of fun holidays here in Bulgaria. From May 1-May 6th all kinds of fun things go on. This year some other fun volunteers came to join me! We started the trip off with a holiday/hike/wedding in a nearby village and then it only got crazier from there. Below are a few pics, but to get a real idea about the week, go to my awesome friend's blog to read more....http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=87572632679&h=Fl_gq&u=jttPX&ref=mf


Justin, our trusted tour guide throughout the entire trip




Sarah and I




The village from the high mountain peak that we climbed

The futbol match outside the school

Our friend doing a comedy skit about an Arabic Sheik in Bulgaria

Some kiddies dancing traditional dances for the holiday

Bday's in Plovdiv

There comes a time in every volunteers life when they just need to break away and have a relaxing, fun filled weekend. This entry, in part is about one of those. I want to start off by telling you about my amazing friend who's birthday we were celebrating on said weekend. Sarah is my neighbor, as much as you can be one here, and one of my best friends. Her village is a lot like mine as far as culture, language, and geography goes, and I can say first hand that it is hard at first to integrate. This girl has done the most amazing job of becoming part of her community and inspiring them to start programs and begin projects that would have taken me months if not years to start. I'm lucky to have such an enthusiastic example of strenght right next door! So anyway, for her birthday she decided to invite a few of us to Plovdiv to do a bit of celebrating. Now, I've been here a while and have been to Plovdiv more times than I can count. But, my visits there always entailed hopping from one bus to another, or running down the street like mad to catch a train. This time, we didn't have to rush...it was a relaxing weekend full of site seeing and shoe shopping.


James, John, Sarah and Noelle in front of the Museum in Plovdiv


Life and Art

Sarah, Noelle and I @ a restaurant before heading out to dance the night away

Sarah and I

Merve is 7!

It wouldn't be January without Merve's birthday! And wouldn't you know it, it was the warmest day we'd had in months! We started the morning off by treating her first grade class with games, dancing and a cake! Then later that day we made our way to Trigrad (Merve's choice, she'd never been) where we hung out with friends and had a great day :)


Us in Trigrad


The birthday cake....all the way from Devin!

Happy Birthday!

The birthday girl, herself in her 1st grade classroom :)

Have yourself a Merry Little Bairaim

Happy Bairam!! December 8th was the second Bairam of the year...Courbon Bairam. Not the fun sugary one with the sweets, but the one where baby lambs are slain in my backyard and their cooked body parts are served to my neighbors. Mmm. Ok, so the actual cooking process is kind of interesting, but I digress. We also had a program through our Cultural Center to celebrate a great holiday and to show off our new costumes we acquired through the SPA grant. Below are some pictures of the traditional dancers and of the wonderful ballerinas that performed...I wonder where they were from?! :)


The kids dancing on stage




A couple of my ballerina's showcasing the skirts we made!










The older group in the new costumes we got through the SPA project








The director of our school playing a traditional instrument for the concert

My ballerinas in their traditional horo costumes

An American Thanksgiving in Bulgaria

A group of us from my wonderful region got together to celebrate Thanksgiving together in Smilian, where another volunteer lives (here is your TRL shout out, Atown.) As luck would have it, it was also a great Bulgarian holiday that same weekend...the one we all know and love, The Smilian Bean Festival! That's right, the famous Smilian Beans have thier own holiday. The locals of the famed village held a great program in the municipality...there were readings about beans, kids sang song about beans, and there was cooking contest where the main ingredient was..you guessed it, BEANS. Afterwards we cooked a huge traditional Thanksgiving meal, and even went to play football the next day. A perfect way to celebrate my favorite holiday.


Going to play football


The AWESOME meal we cooked up

Rajun: "How can we mash these potatoes?"

Nicolette: "Here's an empty beer bottle...."

We glued individual beans to form a picture on a wall in hopes to be accepted in the Guiness Book of World's record for worlds biggest....for world's most....for something. Look how excited Thomas is! His blog link is on the side...go make fun.

Beans

Happy Thanksgivin' punkins!

Happy Thanksgiving! This Thanksgiving I was asked into Ms. Vassileva's 4th grade class to talk a little bit about our tradition and to come up with a craft for the holiday. As we had already done hand turkeys in the first grade (and 4th graders do all they can to seperate themselves from THAT immaturity) I decided on a Thanksgiving Tree. Bear with me here. All of the kids brought in random clothe that they had lying around the house. We made a tree trunk with brown clothe and cut out our hand shapes on different colored cloth for the leaves. We each wrote something we were thankful for on our hands...after a while we kept thinking of so many things that I told them to put everything on there! Below are pics!


Our finished product


Tracing our hands

Ms. Vassileva and I

Cutting out clothe with the 4th grade

Happy Halloween, ya'll...

For halloween this last year I went to Veliko Turnovo. A few volunteers had organized an annual Halloween party for all of the volunteers in country. Tons of people showed up and we had a great time. It was my first time in Veliko Turnovo and I was surprised at how modern and westernized it was. The scenery was really beautiful. A few of my closests and I spent the whole first day walking around the city, jumping in leaves, and enjoying grafitti. A few pics below.


The only pictures that shows my full costume...I was the Whoro...


The Halloween party @ the Guest House

This is Thomas and I at a church on a hill on VT (do you like how i never take pictures of actual sites? get over it)

Lauren and I having a great time in the leaves on our walk around the city

At a cafe in Veliko Turnovo after sleeping for about 3 hrs on a hardwood floor

My family on my side of the world (part 3)

Happy Fourth of July! A couple of days before the family left back for America we celebrated the fourth here in Grohotno. My mom brought over streamers, whistles, cups, little flags and everything you can think of! As luck would have it, it was also Hodja boy's 70th birthday! We started the day out by hiking up the mountain that faces the village to where my family (the bulgarian one) has a field with 10's of wild cherry trees. We spent the morning picking cherries, had an awesome picnic and then made cherry compot (canned juice) at home. After a quick rest, we began the holiday/birthday festivities. We had a huge dinner, and awesome cake, and then we danced horo and kuchek until the break of dawn...well...until 10pm anyway.


Birthday boy and his wifey


Us dancing horo with streamers, sparklers, and look who's decked out in red,white,and blue!



Picnic after a hard days work...it's true what they say: Everything tastes better in the Baiera




Bennas and I picking cherries...cody being a creeper in the tree.

My family on my side of the world (part 2)

Having my sister here for my ballet classes was such an awesome blessing! I started the classes, split into 3 groups by age in mid feb of 2008. I've taught dance for many years, but never to kids who have had absolutely no prior experience and who had never even been exposed to the art of classical ballet. By July, they had learned so much and were even grand jete' ing without a bucket in the middle of the floor. However, as they are children, ballet was getting a bit monotonous and I was in a creative draught. My sister twirled into the room bringing with her this beautiful new energy and tons of yummy new choreography. The ballerinas, like most people, clung to my sister and hung on her every word....I forgot at one point that they didn't even understand anything she was saying! I watched on like a proud big sister as Cody walked around the room fixing flexed feet, and spotting back bends. Everyonceinawhile she would turn to me and say, "How do you say your leg must be straighter?" Immediately followed by a thick accented, "Po prava, be...krakata." Though my sister went home, she left behind the enthusiasm that it takes to get through at least 5 minutes of needed stretching, to put up with a song even though it's slow and "boring", and to smile and be proud even when your arabesque is just a little wobbly. THANKS CODY!


My groupII ballerinas letting my sister know how much they missed her!




My sister and I with the director fo the school and some of our younger ballerinas






Cody leading us on our barre excersizes

My family on my side of the world (part 1)

So, after an awesome visit in the states where I got to spend hours in the garden with my grandma, flea market with my grandpa and just kick it on the porch drinking Sangria with Diddy Bones I was blessed to have my mom and sister come out to see "how I'm livin'." They were here for a total of 21 days....19 really after they got over the jet lag and car sickness from the trip out. I didn't have a lot planned for them coming down. As soon as I gave the locals a date they were off and running...planning our every meal, every trip, and every move! I've talked to many other volunteers who have had family visit. It seems they are always running all around the country and trying to squeeze in trips to Bucharest, Istanbul, and Athens. I thought about this for awhile, but decided that they would have a lot more fun just kickin' it in my little village and I was right! Later, talking to them, they told me that their best memories were of Grohotno and the wonderful people right here.



This is us in one of the many Mosque's in Istanbul. We stayed there in the city with a family that is originally from Grohotno.




Mom, Cody and I in Plovdiv before catching our bus out to Istanbul




My sister showing the kids in my neighborhood how to fill water balloons (I now use those balloons as a tool to take out litterers from my terrace :)

UPDATE

Here, my friends, is where I apologize to you all. To be fair, I told you not to expect anything great from this blog....and did I deliver or did I deliver? So, it's been an entire year since I've updated you all on this thing (for those of you still watching the re-runs.) Lots has happened. I've decided to log in a few entries of exciting things that have happened over the past year and am giving you faithful readers (Mom) my word that I will update now that I have more time.

No, where did we leave off? After the wonderful holidays in May my cultural center was awarded a SPA grant that we wrote through the USAID organization for the creation of a traditional dance group and to stock up the library and center with stuff. After that I headed west to America because my bestest friend in the world, Colleen Goff Hannah, got married to one Mr. Jacob Hannah in NC. Here are a couple of pics of said events.