Stacie and I have been pretty busy lately, but wanted to give an update on how we have been doing. Within the last month or so we have continued our training and daily Bulgarian lessons, and our last day of training will be in the third week of October. We have taken many pictures of our experiences up to this point, so check out our picture page to see them. We included captions on many of them, so you can understand what is going on. Also, you can comment on them!
Last week was an especially busy week because we visited our permanent placement location. Drum roll please……. We will be living in a city called Sliven! It is about twice the size of our current location (Kyustendil), and has a population of about 100,000. It is right on a main highway through Bulgaria, about four hours east of Sofia and an hour and a half west of the Black Sea. We will have two other volunteers with us in the city, and there are at least five more within an hour bus ride. You are welcome to come visit us! The Peace Corps has not decided on which apartment we will be living in yet, but it will be one that a previous volunteer has lived in before. They have pretty strict standards, so we aren't worried.
I will be working with an organization that helps small businesses by providing inexpensive rent and various classes on business ownership. More specifically, my job within this organization will be to work with the Roma community by making micro loans funded by an organization called Kiva. The Roma community in Bulgaria is a very poor minority group, unlike anything we have seen in the states. There is actually a fence around their community which separates them from the rest of the city.
Stacie will be working at a youth house. This is a non-profit organization which focuses on giving youth safe after school alternatives and leadership opportunities. She will be organizing summer and winter camps and will be starting an anti-drug and health campaign in the high schools. Also, she will be helping to get youth involved with the local orphanage and rest home. We will both be teaching English for a few hours a week, and hopefully get to work together on a few projects in the Roma community. Our main focus will be to help the Roma people integrate into the community as these two groups seldom ever interact.
Lastly, we got a cell phone! It is free for us if you call, so here is the number: (359) 088 699 2186. If this does not work, try a 0 before the 359. We are about 10 hours ahead of PST.
Check out these sites.....
Stacie's organization: www.youth-house.org
Jason's lending program: www.kiva.org
Sliven's Wikipedia Site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliven
Kyustendil's Wikipedia Site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyustendil
Our pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/stacenjas
We love you and would like to hear from you soon,
Jason & Stacie
2 weeks ago