Happy April!

I can hardly believe I've been here in Bulgaria for almost 11 months. The time has flown by. It's already spring and today on my walk back from the center I saw two beautiful butterflies and quite a few dandelions. No matter how many people say they are weeds I will always love them, they just compliment the grass so well. 

Let's see....since the last time I blogged there has been quite a bit going on. First of all, I was able to be a part of welcoming the new group of volunteers - the B27s to Bulgaria Wednesday, March 30th at the airport. It was fun seeing them with all of their baggage and matching real people to those I had already "met" via facebook. Here's a photo of them at the airport:

It was so nice seeing a group of 40 volunteers as I came to Bulgaria with a group of 87 and I still don't really know all the people I came here with. After the airport I headed up to Panichishte (in the mountains, south of Sofia) where the B27s were going to have orientation with Peace Corps Staff. I was able to stay with them until Saturday to help out with two training sessions and to just be there to hang out. Again, it was nice to experience orientation week again but not be on the trainee side of things. They seem like an amazing group of volunteers and I look forward to getting to know them better. I wish them all the best during their PST (pre-service training) and hope they take time to enjoy the little things that only living with a host family can provide. I love my host family as if I've known them my entire life, I will actually be visiting them this weekend. They have a new volunteer at their host so I will be interested to hear her initial impression of all of them.

It is currently spring break here in Bulgaria (for everyone but the 12th graders) which means I am filling out the Peace Corps reports I need to complete and planning for my summer activities. This summer I plan on doing several week-long English classes focused on Spelling. My students who participated in the Spelling Bee seemed to greatly enjoy it so I figure I'll give them a bit more practice for next year and focus on reading/spelling tricks to help them out a bit. Since I'm visiting the US of A in July (woo hoo), I'm really planning for the end of June and August as school will start back up again in September. But enough about future plans as today has been a great day. Today a volunteer who lives near me came into Sliven and we went out for coffee. lunch, dessert, and we did a little shopping. It was nice to hang out and she brought me some delicious home-made gifts. It is a beautiful day and it was nice to be outside and enjoy the sunshine. It's very apparent by my skin that it's been wintertime, time to get a bit less pale.

What else to share? I guess not a lot except for the photos I took while up in the mountains (not that a photo can truly encompass the beauty). 

These small, purple spring flowers were everywhere:

The view:

A close-up of the flowers and some sort of old machine:

    

Some of the hotel dogs:

 Peace, love, literacy, and reckless curiosity.