Dear sweet people,
Remember that other Peace Corps I was in for two years in Nicaragua...well, I think I am in the other one....:)  I hope some of you are old enough to remember that line from the movie Private Benjamin when Goldie Hawn joined the Army and they have her marching in the rain with a heavy pack, etc. and she says something about wanting to be in that "other" army( the one the recruiters had told her about, the one with the condos on the water), well, I am embarrassed to say this since I am here on the taxpayers' dime, but........I'm in that " other army" Goldie was talking about. 

This is my first blog post from Sofia, Bulgaria.  I have been here exactly two weeks ( as of yesterday) and it has been all good.  I am in a decent apartment but will be moving to another one closer to the center of the city and closer to my work assignment.  I don't have any photos to send you right now but  my assignment is working in a clinic which is part of the New Bulgarian University which is a private university here.  Its a liberal arts school with a very active arts program - I went to a play there last night which was presented in Bulgarian so I did not understand much at all but it was still very enjoyable.  Kids are kids and they were terriffic.  I am going to ask my language teacher to translate the playbill for me so maybe I can read the play on line.  I can't even read the cyrillic language well enough to decipher the playwright's  name.

Anyway, the clinic is part of one of the University's education degree programs which offers  a dual degree in speech therapy and social work and they opened this clinic to give their students an opportunity to have some clinical experience.  The director of the clinic program is an associate professor of speech disorders at the University. She is a medical doc with a Ph.D. in speech disorders.   Many of the very young children who are enrolled in the clinic seem to be on the autistic spectrum and others have a variety of communication disabilities ( one girl is deaf and has huge behavioral problems in school) ...not sure of them all.  So, I am assisting with the therapy in a variety of ways but another of my assignments is to help them identify funding sources locally so that the clinic can continue.  The university provides the therapy offices and space, utilities etc but the salaries of the therapists apparently are paid by the fees charged the students who come to the clinic for therapy.

The therapists seem to be very dedicated so they are very easy to work with.  Also, almost everyone I come into contact with ( other than the little children) speaks English which really makes things a lot easier.  I am trying to learn some basic phrases in Bulgarian, like "how much does this cost ?" but I am not going to work real hard on that...I am going to spend most of my energy on the goals at the clinic and working with various groups who want to practice their English.  I start next Wednesday with a group at the "American Corner" in the public library.

Today I went on a venture with another PC volunteer to see the ski mountain that is about  1/2 hour from downtown Sofia.  Its Vitosha and beautiful.  We rode the city bus up to the bottom of the lift and had planned to ride the lift up but decided to eat lunch in a beautiful restaurant at the base rather than get on the lift.  It looked pretty cold but we might do it next weekend.  I am attaching some photos of our outing.  You'll see what I mean about this being the "other army."

Turns out I can't attach the photos from home as the internet connection is too slow so I'll go into the university tomorrow morning early and use their fast wifi to post the photos.

More later...

Pat