Chirpan Volleyball Tournamnet

Last weekend I went to the town of Chirpan , its near Plovdiv where I was for my conference. My friend Kevin lives there and he is a Youth Development Volunteer that works in the Municipal office of Social Help; they do a lot of projects with the kids in town. This past weekend there was a fund-raising volleyball tournament for his organization, and he asked a bunch of us volunteers to come out and play on teams. We each had to pay 5 leva to play and the proceeds went towards his work. There were two Bulgarian and two Volunteer teams of 6 people each.

Team and Rule announcements

watching the other teams warm up

Team PC 2 and the Bulgarian kids

Team PC 2 huddle

 I was on team PC 1 and we took 2nd place, after the fireman team from Chirpan. Team PC 2 took third, in a pretty surprising win over the Bulgarian youth team. The 1st place prize was three 2l bottles of beer, 2nd two bottles and 3rd and 4th one bottle each. We hung out in the gym with the other teams for a bit and then went to lunch.

awards precentation

Since there were 13 of us Kevin found us a place to stay Friday and Saturday nights at the municipal guest house. Its a glorified cabin in the woods, probably really nice in the summer, but it was a little chilly in December. But we all got you hang out, and each had a bed, so it worked wonderfully.

Checking out the upstairs, bed area, of the guest house

Most of us got in on Friday because the tournament started early on Saturday. We headed to the house after dinner in town and celebrated Jessica's birthday with surprise cake and baklava. Then some good ole American fun.

Birthday Gift Presentation

Birthday Cake Cutting

the limbo

We hung out in town a little on Saturday after the tournament, then the municipality sent a bus to take us to the house. The Chirpan FC team was having an official dinner in the dinning room and they invited us to join them for food, a raffle and dancing. They were really nice, and we even shared our S'mores with them. Yes we found marshmallows in Bulgaria. We had to compromise with the gram-crackers, and we had to broil them in the oven, BUT they were awesome so who cares. 

Chirpan FC dinner

S'mores

Bulgarian food, American desert