Only a few days left before I officially swear in as a Peace Corps volunteer! Today was my language proficiency exam, a 30 minute individual Q & A with a Peace Corps Bulgaria staff member designed to assess if we’ve learned enough to stay in as a volunteer. It was intense, but I don’t think I’ll be on an early flight back to America. Next week this time, I will be in my new apartment after a full day of work at the Obshtina in Chiprovtsi!
The past 10 days have been full of activities: trying to stay cool (my bedroom was 85 degrees when I woke up this morning), fighting a losing war with fleas, studying Bulgarian, and finishing up the final pre-service training assignments.
Even though I’m anxious to start my new job and move to my permanent site, I’m a little sad the end of PST is so near. The past 11 weeks has been a really unique time. When else do you have the opportunity to live in a completely foreign environment with a family that, despite not being related, takes care of you and your primary responsibilities are to trying to learn to speak a new language and integrate into a new culture—tasks most easily accomplished by hanging out at cafes and playing soccer with local kids? I can’t think of any other such opportunity. I also am fully aware that next week I will be living by myself in an apartment without my Bulgarian family or American friends nearby, without a garden that produces more fresh fruit and vegetables than I could ever eat. That I will have to go to work everyday in an office with colleagues I still can’t really understand and will have to really start figuring out how to do community and organizational development in a small village. I will also have to do laundry without a machine. Knowing this makes want to appreciate every moment of training: my host family, my training group, my language trainer-they are amazing.
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