Today started off beautiful with a colorful sunrise on my walk to the bus stop. It wasn’t very cold and I didn’t need to wait long for my bus to come. I had first lesson today at school so I was there by about 7:10. After first hour I had a 2 lesson break (each lesson is 45 minutes with a 10 minute break between) so I graded some vocabulary quizzes and wrote a few emails. Lessons went fairly smoothly today and the time seemed to fly by. During 7th lesson I had the first Spelling Bee practice with a group of 5th graders. There were only 6 six kids who came during the timeslot thought it was a nice small group. After a short pretest, I gave them 38 words today which not only included English but the Bulgarian equivalent and their definitions. We then spelled in a circle all of the words and finally I gave them the task of creating sentences from the words for our meeting next Tuesday. I challenged them to use as many words as possible in one sentence with it still making sense (hopefully most of them understood, sometimes it’s hard to tell). Then I had a second group of 5th graders which didn’t necessary go as smoothly as they are quite the loud group of kids but they at least got all of the words. This is the first year there will be an English Spelling Bee here in Bulgaria and some of my kids are pretty excited about it. It’s a great way for them to practice using the letters and get word definitions. The Bulgarian alphabet is phonetic and the letters do not have names as ours to so the kids tend to use the sounds rather than the names when spelling. There is a list of 250 words that will be used for the contest so that is what we are practicing from. I hope they do well, there are definitely some promising kids alongside those who think they know a lot more than they actually do. Other than that school was pretty decent as it wasn’t a 12 hour day like yesterday. I stopped to get groceries near my school and then I was off for my place.
While I was walking home from school today I was struck with both the feeling of being content alongside the wow, I’m in Bulgaria. Every now and then I just think to myself I can’t believe I’m here. Though I miss people at home and some days time drags on, today was not one of them. It’s like I haven’t been here long at all though I have been gone for almost nine months. Today the weather felt like mid spring in northern Minnesota. I could still smell the smoke of wood stoves yet there was a warm wind blowing on my face. It was beautiful and bright and I was wishing I had my sunglasses. More people were outside and I didn’t even wear my jacket home. When I was close to my apartment I could hear the boys and men playing football (soccer for all you American folk) in the school yard near my place. The Babas (grandmas) were all sitting outside chatting and there was just a general feeling of happiness. It may sound like I’m making this up but it was really nice. I was happy to be enjoying the day.
Once I was back at my place I opened my window and door to my small terrace to let in some fresh air. This was when utter craziness broke out. You see I have two cats, Popitsa (pronounced poe-peat-tsa) who is pretty smart and Tumnina who is … well … a cat. I mean Popitsa can open doors, get into almost anything and likes to sit on my 4th story (that’s 5th story in the states) ledge of the terrace; meanwhile, Tumnina just follows Popitsa around and is incredibly timid. I should also preface this with the fact that my neighbor has a pit bull and there isn’t much of a divider between my terrace and hers. She is an extremely nice dog but is a dog who is quite large and something you think a cat would be afraid of. I was out watching the men play football when I look over and Popitsa has jumped over to my neighbor’s terrace and is face to face with Tara (the pit bull). I can’t do much because I can’t reach that far and I’m just waiting for utter chaos to break out. I mean this dog could do some serious damage. I can’t quite decide if I even want to watch when Tara growls at Popitsa, Popitsa backs up, raises all her hair and bats at Tara’s face. At this point the dog backed off, amazingly, and Popitsa backed up enough for me to grab her. I got a nice hiss out of her and basically threw her into my apartment and closed the door so nothing else could happen. All I could think was I’m glad I don’t have to bring my cat to the vet, close call.
Well, after that I made some food as all I had had all day was snacks, juice, and coffee and then sat down to enjoy some facebook and online TV.
Satisfying day.
From Monday:
This kid was VERY upset I didn't allow him to retaliate on a classmate:
Then I took a photo and all was forgiven:
I loved this kid's helicopter:
And he's one of my sweetest students:
That's right, he's wearing a Bananas in Pajamas shirt:
The sunrise this morning:
Our spelling words from today:
Kids out in the school yard this afternoon:
Some cats enjoying the sun in front of the post office:
And looked who arrived today, it's Calder's flat Stanley. I let him push the elevator button to my place when I got home:
The pit bull Tara next door.
My lovely slippers from another volunteer here in Bulgaria:
Tomorrow: Picking up not one but two packages! Woo hoo! Can’t wait to see what’s inside.
Peace, love, literacy, and reckless curiosity.
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