Christmas Time is Here!

Merry Christmas (Vesela Koleda) and Happy New Year (Chestita Nova Godina)! We trust this update finds you well this holiday season! Click here for our Christmas card. We are celebrating Christmas Bulgarian style this year!

Since our last update, Jason and I have gotten more involved in the community of Sliven. We have found a few friends, attended a few "Na Gostis" (which are dinner parties) and even started to attend a Latino Dance Class! We are thankful for our continued good relationships with our co-workers, language tutor, landlords and other contacts within the community.

We spent the month of November adjusting to life in Sliven. Stacie was able to give many HIV/AIDS awareness presentations to high school students in preparation for international aids awareness day on December 1st. She continued running her English discussion clubs as well. Jason continued to work closely with Kiva as well as a new partnering organization - Mikrofund. We were lucky enough to have two Thanksgiving dinners this year as well! The first was with our site mate Josh and his high school English class. Everyone in the class volunteered to make a different American Thanksgiving dish. For many of them, it was their first time to taste turkey! Needless to say, most of the dishes were delicious. However, some of the students' interpretation of stuffing was interesting...hard brownie-like stuffing bars topped with tea leaves! Our second Thanksgiving dinner was in a town about an hour away. 18 Peace Corps volunteers gathered together to create the most Americanish Thanksgiving dinner possible! It was a great time of eating, laughing and catching up! Jason and I made pumpkin pies- from scratch- quite the feat! I am happy to say they turned out great :)

December has been spent preoccupied with Christmas! I am glad to say that Bulgarians celebrate Christmas just as much- or more- than we do! We have had 6 Christmas parties to go to this season! The center of the city is decorated beautifully for Christmas with garlands, lights and even a real Christmas tree in front of the municipality building. On Saturday, we will head out for a much needed holiday break. We will spend Saturday and Sunday in the town of Dupnitsa with other Peace Corps volunteers. We will go out to pizza and catch up on all the news. On Sunday we will travel back to Kyustendil to be with our host families for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. On the 26th we will head back to Sliven, just in time for Jason's office party that night.

We are excited to celebrate our first Christmas in Bulgaria and learn about their unique traditions. We are thankful to God for so much this year. We are thankful for our safe travels and adventures here in Bulgaria, our new Bulgarian friends and "family" and the opportunity to share our lives with the Bulgarian people. Please remember to keep us in your prayers- it is extremely common to be homesick during the holidays. We continue to keep you in our thoughts and prayers as well!

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy 2008!

We love you all and look forward to hearing from you soon!

Catching Up

Hey there readers! I have to apologize, I have not been as up to date on here as I have hoped. But in an effort to make up for lost time, here are a few updates that we have sent out over the last two months or so. Enjoy!

From: November 16, 2007

Dear Family and Friends,

We are happy to say that we are now settled into our new apartment and jobs in Sliven, Bulgaria!! This is our permanent site, so we won't be doing quite as much travel as we have been in the last few months. It has been nice to have a little more free time in our schedule. In Sliven, there is a Chinese restaurant, three large supermarkets, lots of cafe's, etc. It is a fairly modern city- not what we imagined when signing up for the Peace Corps!



Our apartment is pretty nice for Bulgarian standards. We have a bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom, and a large enclosed terrace area. We did a pretty thorough cleaning when we moved in, so it is clean now too! Click here for a virtual tour!

We also started our jobs after the first weekend here. The work style is much different here than in the states, so it will take some getting used to. As with many Peace Corps job placements, there has been quite a bit of ambiguity at the beginning. But as time goes by and as we learn more of the language both of our jobs will become more normal. Stacie has begun to teach English classes twice a week at the youth house, as well as teach health education sessions in the high schools. She is helping to plan an AIDS/HIV awareness campaign for December 1st. Jason is working a lot with KIVA, the micro lending organization. He has been creating spreadsheets to help organize all the information for the program. We are enjoying getting to know our co-workers and learning Bulgarian along the way!

This last weekend was the town holiday for Sliven. Every town in Bulgaria has a town holiday that they celebrate quite extravagantly with all kinds of festivities and ceremonies. There was a big carnival setup near downtown with bumper cars, a ferris wheel, an airplane/umbrella ride and many types of mobile games. We only went on the umbrella ride, because it looked the safest and wasn't overcrowded with people! During the evenings, each of the rides played its own music to attract customers. But the funny part was that the strategy of each ride was simply to play the loudest music. So as we walked around the carnival we could only hear each other if we yelled over the obnoxiously loud Chalga music!!! Additionally, Chalga music is something that you either love or hate. Although many Bulgarians would say that they hate it, we have yet to meet one that does not start to dance when it comes over the speakers! It is a mix of fold music put to pop music beats...it can get kinda annoying!

Finally, there is a new member in our family! Jason gave Stacie a kitten for her birthday! It was a big surprise, organized by Jason and a fellow co-worker! We are now busy taking care of him and learning how to "kitten-proof" our apartment! It has been fun to have a new pet- we are enjoying playing with him every day!

One last thing... we have found a church to go to here in Sliven! Our language tutor is a Christian and we will be going with him and his wife this Sunday. This was an answer to prayer for both of us!

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. We miss you all and look forward to catching up through email soon!

From: November 15, 2007

About Bulgarian Birthdays- it's actually backwards here- when it's your birthday, you treat everyone else. So you either have a big party at your house or take everyone out to dinner and pay for everyone's dinner! The other thing is that you have to give your co-workers and friends chocolates or other treats. Then they wish you several things (in Bulgarian of course) like love, luck, health, etc. after you give them the chocolate. It’s a fun tradition actually, but we like the American tradition too!



From: October 31, 2007

Hello Everyone! Happy Halloween! I hope that this email finds you well. Many people have been asking about our mailing address, so here it is:

Stacie and Jason Smith
Youth House Sliven
12 D-r. K. Stoilov St.
Sliven 8800
Bulgaria

This is my workplace address- it is better to send it there for some reason! When sending packages, it is important to remember to not insure it, and to write on it "for personal use only, no commercial value". This is because taxes and fees will be applied to packages over $50 in value. There was another volunteer who got sent a package from home that her family had insured for $500, and she had to pay about $150 at customs. Lastly, package any breakables well. It is a long ways from the US to Bulgaria and many volunteers have recieved broken things. But if you are only sending flat things, envelopes get here quite a bit faster than packages do.

We also have skype- a way to call people through the internet. If you don't already have skype- it is definitely worth it to download. (You can make free calls anywhere in the world and also chat) My skype name is: "Stacie Reimer Smith" and Jason's is "jasenman"...please find me! Anyways, hope everyone is well! Please keep in touch!