Lady Gaga Brings People Together

Today was our last full day of PST (Post-Service Training) at our site in the Rila Mountains. Tomorrow we're all going to meet our host families and our satellite sites. My satellite site is in a little town called Byala Stalinka, which is northest of Sofia and our hub site, which is in Vratsa. We will have hubs once every couple of weeks so that our entire group can meet up with each other again and tell all about our experiences in our villages and with our host families. There are about five or six people in each satellite group and a language intructor. We will have Bulgarian Language class basically everyday and also get into some of our service skills and integrate ourselves into the community. My satellite site has six people in it: Kevin, Vinny, Rachel, Mary, Jackie and myself. I don't really know any of them very well but that kind of makes it more exciting.

Today was a lot of fun because we found out all about our satellite sites and all that AND we had a sort of celebration of everyone's last night together. We had a very nice dinner and everyone got all dolled up for the occassion. The food was amazing (like all the other food we've had here). We had a Bulgarian salad, which, oddly enough, doesn't have lettuce. It has some sort of coleslaw like substance, cucumbers, tomatoes, feta cheese, and corn. It was delicious. Then we had chicken with mushrooms and mashed potatoes, followed up by a piece of vanilla cake with orange and kiwi slices on top. Right after we ate dinner, we were entertained by a group of Bulgarian dancers who performed traditional Bulgarian dances. It was kind of a mixture of tap, step, and folk all wrapped in a vest...if you can imagine such a thing. They were so talented.

After dinner, the Bulgarian staff started dancing the Horrah and other Bulgarian dances and encouraged us to join it. It was really fun, but ridiculously tiring because all of the songs lasted for about 15 mintues and they expect you to dance the entire time. I am really excited that I learned the dances though and I hope that I'll get to go to a Bulgarian celebration so that I'll get to dance them. After we all danced Bulgarian dances for about an hour, the music switched to Latin and things started getting ridiculous. The lights turned off so that it was only the disco ball and strobe lights to light the dancefloor. Some people went to bed, but most everyone stayed and eventually American music was brought into the situation. People were a little timid at first, but then Lady Gaga was played and all was right in the world. Everyone got up and jammed until they kicked us out of the resteraunt. Tonight was proof that Lady Gaga brings people of all cultures together. Everyone loves her.

I'm super excited slash nervous to meet my host family tomorrow. I hope my Bulgarian is good enough to not make it awkward. I just hope I get a baba (grandmother)!