A week of workshops and travel

Just got back from another week and a half of traveling around the country. two weekends ago i set out to bourgas and stara zagora to see some friends before heading to our In Service Training and Project Design Managment workshops out in Hissar, Bulgaria. Hissar is an old resort town located out in central bulgaria, famous for its mineral water and hot springs. it also has the remains of an impressive old stone fortified wall surrounding the center of town. we stayed at a nice three star hotel from sunday til friday, complete with an indoor pool and water slide! the meetings were informative, but the most beneficial was getting to work on project ideas with my colleague. hopefully this will lead to some new exciting projects getting implimented and better cooperation between me and my office. The other good part about the meetings was getting to hangout with all the other volunteers in the evenings and catch up on whats been going on. some of the people there i hadnt seen since i first came to malko turnovo. after the workshops ended on friday morning, i traveled down to plovdiv to meet more people and see some more sights. the weather was much better this time around than it was over new years, and i got a good view of the city from one of the overlooking hills. it was a pretty lazy weekend of sleeping in and eating tons of good food. i even made it out to my favorite arabic resturant and filled myself up on humus, baba gnoush, nan, greek salads, and falil dunors. fantastic. anyway, headed up to the mountains for a day after that (sadly, snowboarding season is over for me) before heading out to the main office in sofia to get some stuff done. boarded the train there to bourgas, and finally got back home around lunch time today. Everyone in the office is gone traveling for various reasons, but that at least gives me some time to get caught up on work and get ready for tomorrow. I just submitted my first project proposal that i am hoping will get accepted, and i have ideas for a few more. hopefully it will be a busy couple of weeks getting things taken care of. i also heard that my real counterpart finally got back in town from germany, so that should be nice as well. other than that, im just waiting for spring to come so that i can start getting outdoors again and out of my apartment. I also finally posted more pics, including my time on the coast in tsarevo, and my adventrues around hissar, plovdiv and up in the mountains. enjoy. http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0EbOGLZo3cMXbQ