Kocherinovo, Bulgaria Travel Blogs

Placement Interview
May 8, 2006

Today some of the people who run PC Bulgaria TEFL came out to Kocherinovo and interviewed us about our permanent placement. Ahead of time we recieved descriptions of all the permanent sites: size of the school, size of the town, description of our class ...

Host Family!!
Apr 21, 2006 (4 photos)

... only one who speaks a bit of English. The 3 of us drove in their old car about 20 minutes to Kocherinovo, their village. Driving anywhere in Bulgaria takes at least twice as long as in the United States. No matter where you are all the streets are what ...

Bulgarian is hard
Jun 18, 2006

... it's in.) that's not counting irregulars. as difficult as it is tho, i'm learning bulgarian really fast. the whole kocherinovo group is doing really well with the language. it's amazing the difference when you do something intensively, and when you ...

Svinska Svadba (pork wedding)
Dec 10, 2006 (39 photos)

This weekend I went back again to see the host family because they were killing their pig. This is the pig they've been taking care of for over a year and will provide all their meat for the winter. It's a huge deal, where the whole extended family gets ...

Merry Christmas from Bulgaria
Dec 25, 2006 (9 photos)

... displays of Christmas takes its toll, even tho Christians still celebrated at home. So I spent Christmas with my host family in Kocherinovo. It was great to see them as always, but a bit strange. The traditions were so different it didn't seem like ...

Last Days in Kocherinovo
Jun 29, 2006 (5 photos)

just some fun pics from the last couple days hanging around

Weekend with Fidanka and Kiril
Jun 25, 2006 (19 photos)

On Friday Desi called from Sofia and said that Georgi's operation went fine. Even tho they're not coming back til Monday now, Fidanka doesn't seem worried so it made me feel a lot better. I actually had a really fun weekend hanging out with Fidanka and ...

Glad to be back
May 2, 2006 (11 photos)

... the kind of place where when you walk around you say Dober Den (good day) to everyone you see. Kocherinovo is a 10 minute drive from Blagoevgrad, one of Bulgaria's largest cities, where there are 2 universities, lots of shops, bars, and a lot more stuff ...

Barakovo subor
Aug 27, 2006 (17 photos)

... back 'home' to see my host family. What I've discovered is that the town of Belitsa definately feels like home in a way Kocherinovo never did, but while I have great friends in Belitsa I'll never have family like I do in Kocherinovo. The people here are ...

Community Project
Jun 23, 2006

... on an idea. We decided to get involved in a big project the community center was just beginning on the white storks, because Kocherinovo is a large nesting ground for the birds. We decided to work on the text for a brochure, in English and Bulgarian, that ...

more pictures from kocherinovo
May 12, 2006 (5 photos)

I'm a little camera happy

And then there were 3
May 4, 2006

This morning one of the other volunteers who was training in kocherinovo decided to terminate early and go back to the States. I was the only one of our group (including our language trainer) who wasn't surprised by it. I knew he had been frustrated by the ...

Practicum Observation
May 9, 2006

... 't work the other way around. With Iskra I also got to talk about some of my frusterations with the school here in Kocherinovo, basically that we've received mixed messages about what to teach, we're not always informed about the ability of our students, ...

Birthday in Kocherinovo
May 20, 2006 (8 photos)

... I had an amazing permanent site visit, honestly I don't think it could have gone any better, I was happy to come back to Kocherinovo, to my wonderful host family. Georgi's birthday was on Thursday, the day before mine, so I was ready for a big blowout. In ...

Cooking Assignment
May 11, 2006 (6 photos)

... this week we had to go to the store, buy food for a meal, and cook dinner, on a limited budget (5 leva each.) We made shishkebabs and banitsa, a cheese pastry. We cooked at our language trainer Desi's apartment in Kocherinovo. Here are some pictures.

Classroom Observations
Apr 27, 2006

... . I'm still optomistic about bulgarian, it excites me whenever I can string together a simple sentence. I know one other PCV here in kocherinovo is already feeling frusterated at not being able to communicate. I don't, at least not yet. I guess having low ...

Lazy Sunday
May 7, 2006 (20 photos)

This morning my family woke me up at 9 am to go fishing. Well we didn't catch anything, and I slept the whole time anyway, but it was still relaxing. Back at the house we had a relaxing day. Half of the family slept over and was still here. I got some of ...

Kocherinovo subor
Sep 22, 2006 (22 photos)

Back again to visit the host family, this time for the Kocherinovo subor (събор) or town holiday. it was a blast, with a stage set up for professional dancers, folk singers, a chalga singer (bulgarian pop folk) and a rock band. there were also massive horo ...

Our Practicum is almost over!!
May 30, 2006

... our school, since I tend to leave out the bad things when I make my entries and just write glowing reports about the Kocherinovo family. So, the first problem we encountered is the language barrier. There are 2 teachers at the school, our resource teacher ...

Guest Teaching
Apr 28, 2006

... at the local school. An eighth grade class was broken up into 2 classes and Donald (another one of the 4 PCVs here in kocherinovo) had one and I had the other. It was all very confusing because originally Peace Corps wanted us to team teach this week, but ...

Georgi's eye
Jun 21, 2006

When I got home from HUB on Tuesday night I found out that Georgi had seriously injured his eye while I was away. As far as I could understand he hit himself in the eye with a hammer, or some kind of tool at least. He had already been to an eye doctor in ...

Imen den na Georgi
May 6, 2006 (18 photos)

... . So the party was really fun, there was a lot of dancing, and around 12:30 all the young parents plus me went to the kocherinovo disco. I put up a fight about it, cause I didn't want any of my students to see me there, but after 10 pm you have to be 18 ...