Two days this last week, the town of Byala Slatina didn't have any water. I woke up one morning and as I'm in the bathroom (in which all things you do in there involve water) my host mom knocks on the door and tells me that the town shut off the water for the day. This happens pretty often. How often, do you say? Well, often enough that everyone in town keeps these HUGE three liters of water in storage around the house just in case. That often. So anyway, I became an expert at washing my hands and brushing my teeth using a bottle of water. It's pretty much the same just a little more awkward and time consuming. The rest of the day wasn't really dependent upon water. We were all able to buy bottled water from the magazines and because of all of the backup storage water, dinner went on as planned. The only weird thing is that my family was digging some kind of crazy trench thing in their garden. I don't really know what it's for but it takes up their whole day and I had to have dinner by myself. Luckily, I was talking to my friend, Lexi who lives in Iskur, on Skype and we had dinner together via Skype. Technology is fantastic. After dinner, I think the water got turned back on. Not a big deal.
The next day, I get up and do my thing with no problem. Then I go into the kitchen for breakfast and my host mom tells me that there's no water again. This is weird. I mean, there have already been days with no water, but it's only just been one day. But, there's nothing I can do about except hope that they'll turn it back on at night again so that I can shower. The day went on fine, again. After our Bulgarian lessons, we all went to the resteraunt for some drinks. Rob joined us and told us that he hadn't had water for the past four days in his apartment. He lives on the 6th floor of his block and sometimes the pumps don't get the water all the way up there once they've been turned off and then back on because they're so old. He then went on to say that he didn't konw of this happening in any other region in Bulgaria but that it happened in our region pretty frequently. Mary and I looked at eachother with false expressions of joy. Something to look foward to for the next two years. After the resteraunt, we all went home. I stayed at Jackie's house for a little while to ward off her boyfriend. He usually doesn't hang around too often if I'm there because we speak in English the whole time. We made sure he was gone and then I was allowed to go home. I had another dinner without my family and I didn't have anyone to Skype with this time either. The water was turned back on around 9 o'clock so I was glad to be able to take a proper shower.
The rest of the week seemed to fly by. I imagine that's how it will be now that we only have, like, three weeks left of PST. It's a bittersweet feeling. I'm ready to live on my own but I'm really going to miss our group and Tanya. Anyway, we had another HUB yesterday. We all got on a bus with the group from Popitza and whatever Bulgarians could fit. This bus was pretty packed. Some people stood all the way there. I found this HUB more interesting because it was about more cultural stuff. We talked about safety and security, which is always important. Some current volunteers talked about some situations that they had to deal with. I feel like anytime there is a personal account it's more interesting. Then we had a discussion about the years of Communism and the Bulgarian staff gave their firsthand accounts, so that was good. We got a lunch break and Jackie and I had some amazing gelato. I plan on visiting that place everytime we go to Vratsa...and I think Jackie does too. After lunch we talked about diversity and some minority volunteers told us about some of their experiences. Then each satellite site had to give a presentation about a cultural topic. Our group chose "Fortune Telling and Superstitions". All of the presentations were good and a couple of them were hilarious. Ours was fantastic, of course. After Vratsa we all went to the resteraunt and Rob joined us.
We also started our Model School this week. What is Model School, you ask? Well, it's kind of like a summer camp with an English undertone. We just get a bunch of kids together and do some activities to help them to learn English and then we play games. It only lasts for a couple hours every morning but it's been kind of fun. Jackie, Mary and Rachel started theirs on Monday. I helped them out on Tuesday and we played UNO. Bulgarian kids love love LOVE UNO. They get really into it. We had one really intense game that lasted for about 45 minutes. Vinny, Kevin and I started ours on Friday because that was the first day of our kids' summer vacation. We were so surprised when almost the entire class showed up. We had them do a scavenger hunt that involved some English activities, but it was mostly just fun. They finished so quickly that we took them out and played American football with them (Kevin's idea, naturally). A few of them played but most of them just sat in the shade. I think I'll bring some cards for them to play with on Monday so that they'll have something to do too.
Tomorrow we are having our 4th of July celebration! It should be good. We're not doing anything huge, just another American football game and we're going to get sparklers for afterwards. We were going to try to do legit fireworks, but it wouldn't be dark enough by the time we finished playing. I just hope that there will be a good turn out and that we'll have enough sparklers. Either way, I'm sure it'll be fun. Happy Birthday America!!!
