I've been in Bulgaria for more than a year and a half now and I met my first real Peace Corps volunteers on Friday night.  My friend M. from Walla Walla lived in Bulgaria as a peace corps volunteer so I know a little bit about the program but that's about it. But, I was beginning to wonder how long it would take for me to meet a current Peace Corps member.  Um, one year and five months.

So here's what I know: the Peace Corps is in Bulgaria. Most volunteers teach English throughout the Bulgarian countryside.  Some work on development projects. The Peace Corps teaches the volunteers Bulgarian so they are pretty fluent.

I also know that Bulgaria is part of the European Union.  This is the part that I think is the most surprising.

We're EU members and have Peace Corps volunteers.  On the surface these two things seem at odds.  They don't seem to mesh. But Bulgaria's not the only EU country with the Peace Corps--Romania also has volunteers. <a href="http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=learn.wherepc.easteurope">Eastern European countries with Peace Corps volunteers</a> aside from Bulgaria and Romania include Macedonia, Albania, the Ukraine and Moldova.

Well, back to the story. I met some volunteers on Friday night when I was out with some of my American College colleagues. They were really nice--friendly, well spoken--the kind of Americans that you want to meet abroad.  We got talking and they had some great stories about life in the villages, the babas that they live with, the challenges they face and the things that they miss.<!--more-->

It was made very clear to me that the Sofia I live in is worlds apart from the rest of Bulgaria. These volunteers seemed good natured and pretty happy about their situations.  Still, it can't be easy--small villages, not very many young people and lots of local-village gossip.

I woke up the next morning in my well furnished and nearly new apartment thinking how lucky I am.  Sometimes life in Mladost gets me down a little bit but I can't imagine the feeling of being isolated in a little village, learning the language, making it through winter in a village and trying to negotiate life and work abroad.  Phew.

Some version of this topic came up while we were talking and it became clear that the Peace Corps kids here in Bulgaria are doing a good job documenting their lives here.  What follows are some of the blogs that caught my eye!
<ul>
	<li><a href="http://vgoode.blogspot.com/">Blogging from Bulgaria</a>: This is a bubbly-blog written by a cheerful Texan.</li>
	<li><a href="http://windowtobulgaria.blogspot.com/">Window to Bulgaria</a>: This site has a charming series of blog posts titled Baba of the Week. The site interviews different babas about their lives, Bulgaria, the past, their family, travel.  It's pretty extensive and there are some wonderful old pictures.</li>
	<li>If you ever get tired of reading about my twenty-something adventures then you could check out <a href="http://anadventuretogehter.blogspot.com/">Lynn and Mike's blog</a>.  They are a retired couple who are Peace Corps volunteers in Plovdiv.</li>
	<li>Or if you're looking for something funnier than my blog (as if), I thought <a href="http://dansarles.blogspot.com/">Completely Bulgarian</a> was pretty funny.  He has a good eye (and ear) for the humor of the place: we were in the old town Plovdiv at a gift stand when the man working the stand heard us speaking English and could tell that we were American. He asked us “Mormons or Peace Corps?” Oh and most of his posts end with bad jokes.</li>
	<li>This is a blog I'll check out if I am feeling down about teaching high school--<a href="http://bulgarianna.blogspot.com/">d-d-d-doodles</a>. One post says she's teaching English to second graders (but I'd assume she's teaching a number of different grades). Phew. What a lot of work.  I bet it's hard.</li>
</ul>
Anyhow, I really enjoyed meeting the volunteers this past weekend and I hope that they weren't too overwhelmed by our large group of happy-it's-Friday-night-after-a-long-week-of-teaching Americans.