It's Freezing in Bulgaria!!!

Hi Everyone,

I thought I'd give a quick a update on what's been happening lately. Well, in short, the main event has been the weather. The past two weeks has been unbelievably cold, at least for me, with low temps hovering between -25 - -20C (-14 - -4F) and high temps ranging from -13 - -5C (9-23F). For everyone in South Carolina, and the south in general, you have no idea what those low temps feel like because it never even comes close to being that cold there. Now, I know you guys had a cold spell come through a couple of weeks ago, but that's a warm front compared to what's going on here. I will admit that even though it's really cold, it's also very beautiful here at the moment. The snow is resting on the trees undisturbed, and it hasn't become grimy as a byproduct of cars and pollution, unlike places such as Sofia.

Other than the cold weather everything is pretty much the same as before. Next week I'll start holding exercise classes for the mothers of the village, so I'm interested to see how that goes. Bulgarians do a lot of walking which has it's benefits, but they also have some bad habits such as smoking so I'm trying not to set my expectations too high. Also next week I'm going to start a youth parliament with the children of SOS to teach them the basic concepts of democracy. There are a few children that are very outspoken and enjoy taking lead roles in my English classes, so I'm expecting them to flourish in the youth parliament. Evidently the youth parliament has been tried in the past and it wasn't successful, but as I learned of the details it sounds like there was a lack of organization. I'm optimistic it will work and be successful, so I'm not worrying!

Peace, Love, and Understanding...

The kids love any excuse to take a break from English class. :-)

This a picture of the Old Town from a bridge in the center of Tryavna.

This is the same lake that's near SOS, but now it doesn't really look like a lake.

Here is the town center covered in snow. It's a stark difference between the summer picture (below).