Map Making, Chinese Food, Diplomacy of Deeds

Our group has been super busy with assignments. Tonight, we are making dinner for our Language Trainer: Palachinka, Mish-Mash, and Shopska Salat. Last week we made a map of the village. Since no street map for our town exists, we used a rough google earth sketch as a template then walked around to find street names and mark the locations of the little cafes (3), markets (1.5), government buildings, and stork nests in our town. The objective was to identify natural and human resources within the village that could be leveraged for future projects. I'm not sure how well we did on this, but we drew some very realistic chickens and water buffalo to signify the locations of farms... Also last week, we had our first HUB. This is when all of the trainees from the different satellites get together for a day of workshops and classes in Vratsa. It was great to see everyone, even though we've only been in our satellites for two weeks, it seems that so much has happened. The classes were interesting. We received a condensed version of Bulgarian history from the time of the first Bulgar tribes arrived to modern day...a lot of history to absorb in a morning. After lunch, there were some workshops on our specific jobs and a man from the embassy came to chat with us. He used a phrase, coined by Karen Hughes, to describe our work that I really like: individuals engaged in the "Diplomacy of Deeds." The workshops also stressed the importance of not only seeking tangible progress, but also focusing on the intangible gains made through relationship building and time spent simply chatting with locals. After the HUB ended, my wonderful host family let 5 of us stay the night at their apartment in Vratsa. It was so great! For a bit it felt like the training wheels were off. We were able to walk around the city anonymously, go shopping, and do as we please without noticed. One of the other trainees host family's sister was our unofficial guide to the city and we spent the evening talking and laughing at an outdoor cafe and later, a Chinese restaurant. On our way back to the apartment, myself and one of the other volunteers stopped in a cafe to buy some bottled water for the group. It was already late, around 11:30, but there were still people finishing up what looked to have been quite the celebratory dinner. When we were asking the owner/bartender/waiter/cook for 8 bottles of water, he asked us where we were from. Finally! I got to use my much practiced, but rarely used "I am from America, I am a Peace Corps Volunteer....etc" phrase. Well, the owner of the cafe loved this! He then communicated that we must sit down, for he has a bottle of wine that has been sleeping for 10 years and we must drink it. The other volunteer and I have been up since 6am, sat through classes all day, and have been eating heavy food and drinking wine for several hours, sleep sounded much better, but a choice was not given. Nor did would we change a thing. Space was made at the table and we became the unofficial guests of honor.

We ended up spending three hours in the cafe with the owner and his sister looking at family albums, his high school yearbook-class of 1980, and discussing his love of classic hard rock. It was incredible. By the time we got back to the apartment we were exhausted, but felt as if we were part of something much bigger than ourselves. For those few hours, this man and his sister shared their lives with us as Americans. It was a really neat experience, they loved that we were there to help their country, that we were learning their language, and that we were staying for a couple of years. Maybe a bit of the "diplomacy of deeds" was happening? The other volunteers at the apartment had given up on us showing up with bottled water long ago, drank tap water, and went to sleep. FYI: they had no after effects from the water.