"We are the People We've Been Waiting For"

On my day off from teaching English, I stumbled upon the documentary, "We are the People We've Been Waiting For". It is an excellent film about education in our current society. 'You can watch it for free here:

We are the People We've Been Waiting For

It is definitely worth your time. Great questions are asked and some of the answers are quite amazing. One of the people in the documentary is Ken Robinson, I can't wait to read his books once I get my hands on them. He gave an excellent lecture on "schools kill creativity", you can find at this site:

Schools Kill Creativity 

Also, Ken Robinson will be in MN to give a lecture in December, here's the site for more information:

TIES 2010 

Wish I could make it, but as I'm in Bulgaria I figured I could at least pass on the info.

First Full Week of Teaching

First off, thanks for the package Mom and Dad!

It was my first full week of teaching this week. Well I guess not quite because Wednesday was Independence Day and therefore a day off. But, I won't be teaching any regular classes on Wednesdays this semester so the week was pretty similar to what it's going to be. My regular classes teaching schedule is looking like the following (for this semester):

		Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
1	7:30 – 8:15		5A
2	8:25 – 9:10	6A			12	6A
3	9:20 – 10:05				6A	5B
4	10:25 – 11:10		5A			5B
5	11:20 – 12:05	5B	6A		5B	5A
6	12:15 – 13:00	12	6A Class Hour		5A
7	13:10 – 13:55			Tutoring 12A

The 12th class also has English 2nd and 3rd hours on Tuesday which I will occasionally help with. Also, all of these classes are being team taught with my counterpart. So far it is going just fine. We seem to mesh well together which is awesome. She tends to teach more of the grammar (as there often needs to be a Bulgarian explanation) and I tend to teach the vocabulary, writing, and pronunciation. We both do the dialogues together. My counterpart created and implemented the first test (placement test) and we will grade them together. I have also implemented writing journals with our 6A class which they will write in at least 2 times each week. They tend to do a great deal of scripted work so it will be fun to see what they can do with the language they have and how they will be able to improve over the course of the year (and potentially next year if I teach them again).

The whole school system here in Bulgaria is so different than what I'm used to that I'm just trying to understand what needs to be done, where it needs to be done, and when. There also seems to be a bigger focus on yearly plans than plans for each individual lesson with each class relying almost completely on the book curriculum. I'm trying to model my teaching after my counterpart at this time in order to see what works and what doesn't quite work with the books we are using and the students in the classes. The school I teach at is a 1-12 school with a focus on the arts. All of the students in my 5A class are singers and all of the students in 5B (pronounced "v") are dancers. The 12th class is mainly dancers (traditional Bulgarian folklore) as well. I know these students are creative, I just need to find out what makes them want to learn English the most (they are quite a few students who are just lazy).

Well that's about all for this post, here are a few photos:

Me with one of the 5th grade classes:

Me with the same students:

Some drawings the 5th graders made of themselves:

Some drawings the 6A class made of themselves:

Sliven in the morning from from my apartment:

Sliven at night from my apartment:

Happy First Day of School!

Today was the first day of school for Bulgarian students! It was quite the celebratory day. Most of the students bring a flower or bouquet for their class teacher so it is quite the beautiful event. I wish we received this many flowers in the U.S.A. in one day. This is definitely one piece of culture I love here in Bulgaria, the amount of flowers at special occasions (though you better give an odd amount of flowers, even numbers are for funerals)! Instead of telling you about the first day in a lot of words, I created a powerpoint about the day. You can access it here:

Four Months

It's September 10th which means 4 months ago today I left Minnesota. It's quite strange to think that I've been away from family, friends, MN lifestyles, and familiar places for so long. As long as I'm writing about time it is also less than 2 years until I will be back in MN (provided I don't extend my time here in Bulgaria). My COS (Close of Service) date will be near the end of July 2012. But that is way to far away to think about right now so I'll stick to what I've been up to in the last week.

Monday was Unification Day here in Bulgaria which means no work. Therefore I had school each day at 8:00 from Tuesday to Friday. It's teacher planning time right now and there are a lot of meetings and cleaning going on in my school. I was done each day around noon. Next week Monday and Tuesday are planning days and then Wednesday is the first day of school! I'm excited to get into a schedule and see students on a regular basis.

This week the COD and YD volunteers were in Sliven for a conference from Tuesday to Friday (the other programs for volunteers here in Bulgaria, I am a TEFL). It was nice to go over to their hotel in the evening and hang out. The hotel they were at was very nice and is located next to the football (soccer) stadium in town. There is also an entire sports complex there of a tracks, tennis courts, and football fields.

Other than that I've been hanging out at my place with Popitsa:

and finding some great websites online for my television entertainment at night. Not much else to comment on this week as my schedule was the same most days. However, I did find a place in town that I really like and took quite a few photos yesterday.

Here's some of Sliven in photos:

The buttons for the floors in my elevator.

Here's my Block (Apartment Building) from the back. 

The line of metal garages near my Block.

Beauty along my walk

The Football (soccer) stadium with Karandila Mountain in the background.

Hello to everyone reading this! Behind my shadow is essentially a large circle of concrete dug into the ground that is full of graffiti and garbage. Some of the art is very well down while other things were definite symbols of hate.

I love my TOMS!

Some of the graffiti.

I thought this one was extremely well done.

Found the letter C! I guess this blog is sponsored by PBS.

The sun about to set behind the mountains.

Sun Setting

I love the snails here.

Myself

I'm always wondering who's reading these posts. 

I welcome comments and questions, please feel free to leave me a note below. Until next time, love from Bulgaria!

In Honor of Thomas Maresco Jr.

In the Event of My Demise

In the event of my Demise

when my heart can beat no more

I Hope I Die For A Principle

or A Belief that I had Lived 4

I will die Before My Time

Because I feel the shadow's Depth

so much I wanted 2 accomplish

before I reached my Death

I have come 2 grips with the possibility

and wiped the last tear from My eyes

I Loved All who were Positive

In the Event of my Demise

Tupac Shakur

I know there is nothing I can write here to make the grieving any easier for the family and friends of Thomas Maresco. I simply wanted to let all of you know that I am thinking of you all. Though I never met Thomas, I've come to realize the Peace Corps truly is one big family. I know here in Bulgaria I love spend time with other volunteers. Thomas's time was most definitely cut short as he was the same age I currently am. Wishing you all my love. -Kate

P.S. If anyone knows of a mailing address I can send an actual card to please leave it for me under the comments.

The news story for any of you who did not hear:

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/09/05/lesotho.peace.corps.death/index.html#fbid=gOg9P47UmeC&wom=false

I got my computer!

For almost a month now I've been having problems with my computer. What it boils down to is I should have bought a new one before I came however no worries anymore as I'm currently typing on my new computer! I picked it up when I was in Sofia last Friday. Thanks to everyone at home and in the Peace Corps who helped with the process. It's interesting dealing with computer issues here as needing a computer was not the first thing that came mind when I accepted my invitation to Peace Corps Bulgaria. However, here in Bulgaria my need for a computer is fairly great. Some of the reasons having a computer is a need here are that emails are the main form of communication between the Peace Corps and myself, the internet is a great way to find resources for teaching English as a foreign language, emails/skype/blogging are great ways to keep in touch with people at home, and my computer is my main form of news and entertainment.

What's been happening in the last week? Well, school started for teachers on September 1st. The day started at 8:00 AM with meeting colleagues. Most everyone seems great and I'm excited to get to know them better as my Bulgarian improves. I'm also hoping to observe some of the other staff teach their classes because even if I can't understand everything, I can observe. At 9:00 AM (or around then) there was a teachers meeting with all the staff. The Director (Principal) spoke about many things, I definitely could not follow everything. Basically she went through many bullet points and said who each class teacher would be (home room) and announced who was on different committees and so forth. After the meeting, which was a little over an hour, each "specialty" (languages, music, primary, etc.) met with the Director to find out what classes they would be teaching. it was interesting because since the teachers at my school teach by the hour, they were all adding up their hours to see their workload. My school actually doesn't have a 9th grade this year due to a lack of attendance. Also, many of the teachers don't have as many hours hours as they could due to lack of kids. All of that said, it looks like I will be teaching the following per week of English Instructional hours:

2 hours 12th class

3 hours 6th class

3 hours 5th A class

3 hours 5th B class

1 hour 1st A class

1 hour 1st B class

2 hours Intermediate extra-curricular

2 hours Beginner extra-curricular

1 hour English for Teachers

All of this adds up to 18 instructional hours of English per week which is the amount Peace Corps expects us to teach (most of these hours are team teaching hours). I'm also going to help out once a month or once every 2 months with several clubs. I will also be planning several holiday parties to educate students about American holidays and traditions. First up will be Halloween! Other than the 1st day of school my counterpart and I met the 2nd to plan more and we will be back at school at 8:00 September 7th to continue planning. September 6th is a national holiday here - Unification Day. Kids start school September 15th.

September 3rd would have been another school day however I traveled to Sofia to attend the quarterly AIDS/ATIP (Anti-trafficking in Persons) meeting. It was an informative meeting and I'm excited to implement some of the activities here in Sliven. As a PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer) I will be working on the education/prevention side of ATIP. I don't quite know what this will look like yet but will have a better idea once I know my community better. After the Sofia meeting I took a train to visit another volunteer for the night. We had dinner and hung out at her adorable apartment (I need to do some renovations to my place). Then on Saturday I took the train back into Sofia and a bus back to Sliven. I even had a Dr. Pepper at the Sofia Bus Station, yum.

Today I'm just hanging out at my apartment. I went grocery shopping earlier for a few things and I should clean but that might happen tomorrow. Tomorrow is Unification Day here in Bulgaria so there is no work just like there isn't any work on Labor Day in the U.S.A.

Here is the group of kids I helped teach during our training week in Blagoevgrad:

Megan and I in Blagoevgrad:

Me at Rila Monastery:

Having some tasty McDonalds:

Popitsa:

Love from Bulgaria!

Feel free to comment or ask questions.