my first days

let's try this again!  I arrived in Phili on May 10th along with 86 other peace corps invitees.  We filled out paperwork and had some brief introductions of the corps and the people we would spend the next 2.5 years with.  The next am we boarded busses and drove to Newark airport to fly to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, by way of Munich.  Let me first just say I have never been around so many people eager to serve  Every step of the way the group cheered; when the busses arrived in newark, when we arrived in Munich and in Sofia.  I am so honored to be associated with these people!!  2 people even sold houses and are literally "home"less after 27 months.  And you all think I took a leap of faith??  Anyway after we arrived in Sofia we were greeted by some currently serving volunteers at the airport and then we boarded more busses to take us to a retreat type hotel for the rest of the week.  Here we had the beginning B classes and more information about every aspect of the core we will need to know for the rest of our stay.  That Sunday afternoon we again boarded more busses to take us to Vrasta where we met the very hospitable people whose families we would become apart of  for the next 3 months.  Did I mention that the hotel was in the mountains???  Those of you that know me better know what a great setup that is for me and I thoroughly enjoyed the hectic, jam-packed week.  I have 2 sisters, Krisi who is 15 and Vesi who is 13, and a host mom and dad, Dani and Alexis who are my age.  Every am I have breakfast which usually consists of bread with either ham or some type of cheese; like an open-faced sandwich.  Here there are 2 types of cheese, serine which is white cheese and really does not taste much like feta, and yellow cheese which is cashcaval.  Then I go to the training center which is my home away from home away from home.  I have language class from 8:30-12:30 and 2-5.  In there I also have training in Youth Development, my program sector and what I will be doing for 2 yrs after I leave my host family and become an official volunteer.  Right now I am considered a trainee.  My family is great and I really do not know how the 6 of us in my group got so lucky.  I have a non-smoking family in a country where 8/10 people smoke.  I have internet access at home which is very lucky.  I come home most days for lunch, today I went out with some of my group to try my ordering skills and found out I really need more practice.  Lunch usually is salad but it's not really a salad, just cut up cucumbers, kratsavitza, and tomatoes, tomate.  Rice and chicken are popular food items.  Tonight for dinner I had pizza...with fried eggs on top.  That was la little different but good all the same!  There are a lot of cucumber and tomatoes here.  Fruit is also common.  My host mom keeps yabolke, apples, banan, banannas, and portacale, oranges in the house.   Last night my host mom and sister spent hours helping me with my homework.  It's kinda different to need help with homework again and very interesting(?) to think that I am back at 1st grade level in my language skills.  I have to say it is very frustrating trying to speak.  For instance talking with Dani this evening, vecher, I had so much I wanted to say but do not have the words yet.  My dictionary goes most everywhere I do!  For instance, how do you eplain why a person in your family is important to you when you hardly know about them?  Last night I was trying to interview my sister about being young in my town, again did I mention I'm in the mountains, while on a very, very limited vocabulary.  How do you do that??  Luckily, or not however you choose to look at it, my family knows English and despite what they say can usually understand me when I have trouble with the B. word.  I am really trying hard not to take advantage of this "gift" because I'm on my own after July 23rd and can't rely on someone knowing English.  The language isn't too hard and the fact that I speak a little Spanish is helpful for the foundation.  Sometimes I wish my family knew Spanish because so ofter I think of what I want to say in Spanish before Bulgarian but I'm out of luck there.  Now that I look at the time , I am 7 hours ahead of you all in Indy, I should bring this entry to a close and start studying, which I probably should have been doing all along but I figure my blog is part of my homework too!  I am fine and am surrounded by good people, both my family and the 5 others here with me.  My family is a first time core host family so I'm really trying to help out and be a good addition to the family so they will continue with the next group, B27.  My group is the 26th group of volunteers to serve in Bulgaria.  Ok, that's goona have to do it for tonight.  Leka nosht(good night)!