Winter in Bulgaria

Dear friends and family,

Things in Bulgaria seem to be moving very fast, it feels like just yesterday that I was drinking beer and eating a hamburger in my backyard surrounded by my friends and family. Well Thanks to technology I feel like I am still connected to you all and that makes things for me quite a bit easier. So thanks a lot for the emails, it has been a great reassurance of the large network of love and support I have in the States.
I played my last rugby game of the season in Sofia a couple of weeks ago. We played the game in 2 inches of snow. The snow slowed the game down quite a bit because we couldn’t really feel our fingers which made ball handling a bit challenging. Thanksgiving was not quite the same for me in this neck of the woods. My thanksgiving dinner consisted of Bulgarian style taparamen and a few Sausages. But the following weekend I met up with a few of my friends and we had our own belated thanksgiving dinner. LSU graduate Michael el Koubi made us all some wonderful duck and goose gumbo, which was delicious and apparently very popular down south.
I wish I had some more exciting news for you all but things here have really slowed down and the reality of a slow paced winter is beginning to set in. My work situation has been pretty much a disaster from the beginning. I kept waiting for the clouds to part but it never happened so I was forced to initiate some changes. To make a long story short, my counterpart made a few financial mistakes, and my NGO ran out of funds and is no longer operateable. So After some patience and a lot of heavy thinking I contacted my Peace Corps Program director and had him set up a meeting to have all my work responsibilities transferred to the local municipality. On Thursday I will have a meeting with my PC COD director, and the mayor of the city and we will discuss my new role and job responsibilities working for the city of Chirpan.
I have spent the last month or so adapting to my new community to the best of my ability. I have made a few friends and am feeling more and more comfortable in my new community. The old women who lives underneath me is very kind and often helps me with small things such as setting up mouse traps and teaching me to hang my laundry properly. I have been teaching English at two kindergarten classes every Tuesday and Thursday. My little pupils are very bright and a joy to teach. Everything here is going farely well. The locals still stare at me, but they are getting used to my face so I think that will eventually change. A small article was written about me today in the local paper describing the new American volunteer in town. Despite my work troubles in the last few weeks I have been doing great here and have been enjoying this new and exciting experience. The good times have definitely been outweighing the bad.
Many thanks to all of you that have kept me updated by emails and have supported my endless ramblings on this blog. To the Lake family: (especially Gramps) I am sorry to here About Rich, He was an amazing person who lived a very full and wonderful life. I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to develop a relationship with him over the years and to have seen him shortly before he passed.
Trevor Lake