moving forward "malko po malko"#3

Where did I leave off Tuesday.  The weather here is like it is in Indiana; you never know what you're going to get!  I swear one day last week it snowed a little and today it is bright and sunny and 54*F, and it's 10 in the morning.  If I remember right last year the same thing happened, it's like we moved right from winter to summer!  But I'll take it after the hard winter we had!  I paid my tok (electricity) this morning, 151.30 leva.  Both the lady at the post office, where you pay tok, and my Director said that's a lot and I guess it is but we had a hard winter!  I have yet to see a stork, the signal to take your martinitzas off and spring is here.  I may have seen one but I'm not quite sure; I'll wait until I'm with someone and THEY see a stork and say "oh look Lisa!  A stork!"  This week has been very nice and I only need my light jacket and sometimes in the afternoon don't even need that.  I have a plastic, solar powered "plant" that dances in the sun's rays and it has been dancing up a storm this week!!  Again, fine by me!  When I wrote the first "moving forward malko po malko" I had just gotten to my home for 2 years.  Things were cluttered in the apartment and my mind as well.  Now I'm preparing to end my service.  Granted I don't leave until the end of July but I'm going to my COS (close of service) conference in a few days and now is the time to start winding down.  As much as I really don't want to think about it it's the truth and these last couple of months will fly by whether I like it or not.  I'm going back to Vershets, my pst home, in April to see my family there for what may be the last time.  I hate to think that way, and neither I nor my family has said it out loud, but it's the truth and in both of our minds'.  When I was finished with pst and was getting ready to move to my new home I was at the train station preparing to leave my pst site-mates.  I was surprised when I started crying when their train left.  My host mother, who was with me at the time, put her arm around me to comfort me.  It had only been 3 months.  But the way I saw it my pst was 1 life and it was ending.  We (my pst mates and I) had spent so much time together; we laughed, cried, got mad, learned, and faced so many emotions together and it was ending and a new life was starting.  So just as I was preparing my mind and apartment in that first "malko po malko" to start a new life I'm doing the same now.  Only this time it's to leave.  I didn't plan that but that's a pretty good stopping point for this blog.  Have a good weekend!!  Love and hugs from here and thoughts are with my family in the states.