4th of July. Birthday. Graduation.

The Beach

I again find myself scrambling to keep these entries up-to-date. A lose-lose situation since I now realize that this journal will probably the best souvenir I will have of my two years of growing up in Bulgaria. But, I digress…

4th of July.

Our group, the same people that I said would be my ‘family’ almost two years ago, met up in a small beach town near the Turkish border.

It should be mentioned that this is a pretty amazing feat since this was entirely voluntary and the only motivation for anyone to travel that far (over 6 hours for me and the longest trip was 16 – yikes!) was to hangout. We had everyone but 4 people show up and just relaxed on the beach and ate. It was a chance to talk to the folks you only see at mandatory meetings and get a feel for what people will be doing afterwards.

It was also an excuse for me to use my whiffleball set. We played 3 on 3 tackle whiffleball – much to the confusion of the other beach-goers. There is nothing like blind siding a base runner in the sand to keep the ghost-runner from snagging an extra base.

The last night we had a dinner for the entire group and ended the evening at a tiny bar that sat on a cliff. It was all blues and jazz all night. Very, very cool.

My Solo. (Yes, that is a pink shirt.)

Packed. A Birds eye view.

The band.

Birthday.

Per tradition, my birthday seemed to drag out for days. The first party was mostly a 4th of July thing – but, I have always been half way convinced that the 4th is just millions of people getting ready for the real deal on the 5th. A good buddy of mine and I rented out a place and hired a band for us and 70 of our closest friends. The band absolutely tore down the house and the party went well past 5ish.

On the actual 5th, I was drained and just met with some volunteers for a couple hours at one of our local Shoumen haunts. Aside from that (and the phone calls / emails), the day was just like any other. I was at work from 8.30 – 5.00 – having to work on your birthday is defiantly a sign you are not a kid anymore. After work, I made myself a tuna sandwich and tried to cool off. The surrounding events were cool, but the day of was pretty boring. Anyways…

That Thursday we had a giant 15 person Mexican fiesta for the Volunteers in my town and my colleagues. I spent the night before making an insane amount of salsa and the day of rolling and cooking 40+ tortillas. I think they really liked it, and in the end, it was well worth the effort.

Graduation.

Just this past week was our ‘graduation’ (a.k.a. COS conference) – the last conference of the Volunteers. It was four days of form-filling and chit-chatting. And was capped off with a formal(ish) dinner – how dressed up do you really think a bunch of Peace Corps folks would get?

I guess the biggest purpose the conference served – aside from tons of administrative tasks – was to cement the idea that this is all going to end soon in our minds. Very soon. There were far less tears than I expected, but I think that is due to the fact that we are still a couple months away from leaving and we all entertained the illusion that we would see these people again. Lots of ‘I will come visit your town, for sure, man.’ Oh well, no matter how improbable, if it kept the soppy goodbyes at bay, I am all for it.

And, that leaves us with the last week in July.
Which – as far as I can tell – will be fairly chill. No major plans and since I have been train-setting for almost a month straight, I have no inclination to make any.
There just isn’t that much time left to enjoy Shouman.

So, with a strange mix of excitement (for coming home), anxiousness (for starting something new all over again), and sadness (for preparing to leave a place that has been good to me) I am determined to get as much as I can out of the next 8 weeks.

Hope all is well, best,
Mark

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