One Exhausting Week, though not necessarily in a bad way.

I guess I'll write this blog day by day as yes, that much seemed to happen. Plus my counterpart was out this week with a sick child which meant just me teaching the classes. I wanted to see how the kids would behave with just me there. Turns out, not great. Things didn't go horribly but definitely didn't go as well as they usually would with both of us there. It also doesn't help that spring break starts this Wednesday, these kids need a break. 

Monday:

In true Bulgarian fashion I brought chocolate in to give out since my birthday was the day before (I've been told to never celebrate ahead of time, only after the actual day). I brought one type of chocolates for all my students I have on Monday which ended up being right around 100 students. However, I also brought in two types of chocolate, tea, juice, soda, and money for coffee to give to my fellow teachers to celebrate. They even got me a gift which is beautiful. It's a floor vase with all my favorite colors in it (browns, yellows, and orange). 

For my first grade lesson we sang "Happy Birthday to You" and went through the vocab of birthday cake, crown, and Happy Birthday. Here are few photos of the kids wearing their (not quite finished crowns).

 

Tuesday:

Tuesday brought another full day of work as I was at school by 7:15 am since I had 1st hour and didn't get back home until after 6:00 pm. Along with classes, we had our first ever local spelling bee here in Sliven. Sixty-four students ages 9 through 11 came on Tuesday for our 4:00 competition. The top eight of them then moved onto the Thursday competition so we could funnel the participants into finding a top six from Sliven. My school along with the 3rd school here in Sliven had students who participated. Tuesday was long but there were beautiful skies on my walk home and the Spelling Bee went with little problems which was nice.

Wednesday:

First of all, first day of spring according to Bulgaria was Wednesday. Warmer weather is ahead!I don't have classes in the mornings on Wednesdays right now which was nice this week since Tuesday was exhausting. The guidance counselor at our school invited me to come to a High School debate in the center on Wednesday at noon. I went and though I didn't understand everything going on I think I got the gist of most of the topics which I was happy with. It was all in Bulgarian after all. There was a lot of talk focusing on why are so many high schoolers always on social networking sites and going to discos. Why can't there be a better focus on humanitarian causes like keeping the environment clean and bringing up education? For all of you who are not here in Bulgaria. There is a lot of litter here in Bulgaria. Many people just toss whatever they have on the ground (sometimes even if there is a garbage can right next to them. For this reason, I asked one of the students why don't they just stop throwing trash on the ground to set a better example. The response was, well what will that do for anyone else, no one will stop littering. It was a bit disheartening but similar to the attitude I receive on a lot of issues related to change. The debate was good to attend though to know that at least these topics are being discussed. Plus, the students from my school (in the purple) presented our school with a powerpoint focusing on the projects our school has participated or is participating in. I got an entire slide, it felt a bit strange but it was presented well. 

After the debate I went to school to get our 2nd spelling bee underway. This time for the 12 to 14 year olds. We got the competition down to about 10 kids that would be moving forward to Thursday. It went more smoothly than Tuesday and it was fun to see the kids excited about spelling. 

Thursday:

It was finally Thursday in what was beginning to seem like an endless week and along with classes we had the 3rd and final local Spelling Bee to determine the top six students who would be advancing to regionals. None of the students from my school made it but there were six very happy 3rd school students. I was also surprised to find that Thursday was the school accountant's 60th birthday. She had quite the spread of drinks, sweets, and popcorn for us to partake in, all very delicious. 

Some of the younger students from our school who participated in the Bee:

3rd2nd1st

Top Six from Sliven:

Friday:

TGIF, no really TGIF. This was one of the longest weeks I've had here in Bulgaria. With so much going on I could hardly wait for the weekend to come. Woo hoo! A short morning of teaching and then it was time for me to come back to my place, clean, skype, and head out for an early dinner (late birthday celebration) with 4 other Peace Corps Volunteers, 2 Mormon missionaries, and an EVS (European Volunteer Services) volunteer from Poland. Essentially it was a group people who speak English who are not natives Bulgarians. Dinner was delicious, I had pizza and beer. I also received a bottle of wine and some rum balls (no bake delicious dessert treats) thanks to some wonderful volunteers as birthday gifts. After dinner me and a few other PCVs walked around the center and then went back to my place where we hung out for a while before going out to the disco (dance club). Yep, finally went to a disco here in Sliven. Though it was extremely loud the music wasn't so bad and I had a decent time. We got back really late and I unfortunately couldn't sleep in very much this morning so I'm really hoping to take a nap this afternoon. 

Saturday:

So that brings us up to today. So far I've gotten through about a 1/3 of the things I need to do this weekend which is good. 

This next week is only a 2 day school week for me as Wednesday I have the opportunity to greet the new group of volunteers who are arriving in Bulgaria. It's so strange that I've almost been gone from the US of A for a year and now we won't be the newest group of volunteers here in Bulgaria. Welcome B27s! I'm excited to greet them and be a part of their first few days of orientation here in Bulgaria. I get to assist with a few sessions so it will be nice to be on the other side of what was my orientation week last May. It's a beautiful day here in Sliven!

Where Popitsa decided to hang out after I cleaned my apartment Friday (she's on the washing machine in my kitchen):

Peace, love, literacy, and reckless curiosity. 

My 25th Birthday

Today was my 25th birthday. I started the day by waking up, eating some cinnamon-sugar toast, having coffee, and watching Rango (the animated movie with the chameleon) in bed. For Rango being marketed as a kids/family movie, I greatly enjoyed the amount of social issues and adult humor written into the script. After writing a few emails, knitting, and finally getting dressed, I went and met another volunteer, Neysa, and we headed over to a special needs home here in Sliven that Neysa volunteers at once a week to wish one of the kids there a Happy Birthday.

Signs of spring:

Near the center of Sliven:

At the Youth Home:

After the home we went out for dessert and a drink. Finally I was able to skype with my parents and chat with some other friends and family. It was a good, relaxing day.

Tomorrow I will be celebrating my birthday once again with my students and teachers at school. I already have chocolates bought and will be buying some sort of beverage. Here in Bulgaria, you give out chocolates to people on your birthday (and other special days). I enjoy it as it's a nice way to share your happiness and celebrate your special day.

Thank you to everyone who posted messages, sent emails, or sent me a package (thanks Kathy, Bob, Amber, Jason, Rowan, and Braden) for my birthday. Everything was greatly appreciated as it made my day all the better.

Saturday School

Today we had school to make up for a day we had off earlier in the month. Here in Bulgaria whichever day the national holiday falls on is the day we get off. For example, there was a holiday on Thursday so we had no school Thursday and then it was decided there would not be school Friday as well (which wasn't a holiday) so we made it up today. I know that we used to do this in the USA however we now lump holidays to a Monday or Friday usually as days off of school.

Anyways, instead of having a regular school day, my school decided to have 25 minute classes (with 10 minute breaks) and then have a swimming and track competition after classes were finished. I missed the swimming competition however watched the entirety of the track competition. The track competition began with the 3rd grade parallels (classes) competing against one another. The same thing happened with 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th grades. Then there was a race between 8th, 10th, 11th, and 12th as there are not as many students in these grades. Each competition was a relay race in which the students had to run half the length of the track. It also switched off girl, boy, girl, boy, girl, boy with an equal amount of students participating from each grade. All of my photos from the day can be found here:

Track Competition

And, the following are videos of today's events. 

The 5V girls cheering ("samo peti v" means only 5V):

The 7th grade competing:

The 8th, 10th, 11th, and 12th graders competing:

It was a pretty good day. After school I did a bit of grocery shopping and now I'm back at my place ready to eat and relax. I'll most likely be knitting, watching TV online, sending a few emails, and occasionally taking my turn on Lexulous (facebook app of scrabble). I'm so happy I now have someone to place Scrabble with, I've missed it, thanks Jill!

Oh, and I'm adding another video to go with my last post about the game speed spelling. We played it in my 5A and 5V classes today with the entire class and it went very well.

Peace, Love, Literacy, and Reckless Curiosity.

Speed Spelling

This post is mainly for my fellow PCVs here in Bulgaria though anyone is welcome to the game. I created it based on some other things I've seen and a fun way to practice spelling with my students. My blog happens to be the easiest way for me to share not only the document (it is linked below) but the videos as well. Enjoy! 

Speed Spelling

Peace, love, literacy and reckless curiosity. 

School Anniversary 2011

This week marked the anniversary of SOU 11 "Konstantin Konstantinov" (that'd be where I teach). The school was created in 1983 and was home to many more students than are currently at the school. To give you a brief history of Konstantin Konstantinov, the man, here you are:

Konstantin Konstantinov was born on August 20th, 1890 here in Sliven, Bulgaria. He studied law at Sofia University and later became a judge, prosecutor, and lawyer. However most of all he became a writer. He began publishing his works in 1907 and continued writing stories, essays, memoirs, and children's literature throughout his life. He is also remembered as one of the best Bulgarian translators from Russian and French. He died on January 3rd, 1970. Beginning in 2004 an award was created in his honor to congratulate and honor Bulgarian Children's Writers which is given each May during Sliven's city festival. 

Back to SOU 11 "Konstantin Konstantinov" (the school), I don't want to give you any wrong facts about the history so I'll stick to the present. Currently there are about 800 students from 1st to 12th grades at the school. Most of these children are in grades 1 through 7 as we do not retain as many in the high school levels.  Here in Bulgaria most schools have a specialty and ours is the arts (mainly choreography and traditional dancing). As this is not an "academic" path many of our students leave the school after 7th grade to pursue degrees from other schools in town. Sliven has about ten high schools. Some of their specialties are languages, maths, culinary, economics, tourism, and sports. For more information feel free to visit our school website which is located under the "links" section of my blog. Though the site is in Bulgarian you can easily set your browser to translate if you are using Google Chrome. 

In order to celebrate there has been quite a lot going on at school. Each grade level seemed to have their own way to celebrate however as a school there was a concert. It was held on Thursday evening and began with the signing of the school song (or hymn). Then there were singing and dancing performances ranging through most of the grades. Below are photos and videos of the night. Sorry if the video quality isn't great, things got a bit bright.

Here is Malomir, one of the 5th graders I teach, singing:

Here are some students ballroom dancing. The two boys are twins who are in one of my 5th grade classes:

Here are a pair of 11th graders and a pair of 12th graders dancing traditional Bulgarian dance:

Here are a group of 4th and 5th graders singing traditional Bulgarian music:

Here are a group of 6th and 7th graders dancing traditional Bulgarian dance:

Here are the best of the 11th and 12th graders dancing a traditional Bulgarian dance (I really enjoyed this performance, it is a dance originating in the Pirin area of Bulgaria):

Here are a selection of photos but all of the photos from this night can be found here: School Anniversary 2011

Tomorrow is our day of Saturday school to make up for a day we didn't go a few weeks back. We're having 25 minute classes so we can have races in swimming and track. Should be a pretty good day. 

Peace, love, literacy, and reckless curiosity. 

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, no really.

I can't put my finger on a specific reason today was such a great day so I'm giving it to the weather. It was a beautifully sunny day here in Sliven. I actually enjoyed my walk from school to the grocery store and then back to my place. Plus, as I'm writing this my cats are sitting, staring out the window, watching the men play football in the school yard. It is extremely cute. I knew I had to blog today in case tomorrow is a different story (which is very well could be). All my classes went pretty great today. Eleventh grade was especially interesting as we did something new. 

For a bit of background on the assignment I gave the 11th graders today I have to start with yesterday. I spent most of Sunday cleaning and organizing and came across a great deal of paper garbage. I came across the copy from Peace Corps with all the snapshots of us volunteers and knew I should do something with the faces instead of just throwing it out. So, I decided to cut them all up (just faces, no names) and glue one photo on enough pieces of paper for each of my 11th graders, and then some. The task for the students today was to look at the photo and then make up information with the following questions:

1. What is his/her name?

2. How old is he/she?

3. When was he/she born?

4. Where is he/she from?

5. Where does he/she live now?

6. Is he/she single, dating, engaged, married, or divorced?

7. Does he/she have any children? If so, what are their names and ages?

8. Does he/she have any brothers or sisters? If so, what are their names and ages?

9. Does he/she have any pets? If so, what are their names?

10. What are his/her hobbies/interests?

11. What is his/her daily routine?

12. Give an interesting fact about this person.

It was a great way for me to see their creativity and writing capabilities as it involved a lot of everyday, useful information. Plus, it made it a lot more fun for me to grade them (reading about people I actually know). Some of the information came out pretty hilarious. 

After school this afternoon there was a dance competition between the choreography students at my school. They danced in pairs and were judged by my counterpart as well as our school Principal. It was very fun to watch, here are a few clips for your own enjoyment (though it was couples from 5th to 12th grade I have only included the top 3 pairs):

11th Graders:

Sorry, the video was somehow deleted instead of uploaded, on my computer and the blog. (They 11th grade pair is in the back of the Improv videos below.)

12th Graders:

12th Graders:

Then the 3 couples had to improvise to 3 different songs:

And this is how we killed 10 minutes waiting for the judges to tally scores and sign certificates:

Finally, I ended the day with 1st grade. I let 16 kids come today instead of the usual 12 which actually went pretty well. For a teacher who speaks little Bulgarian and students who speak relatively no English we work things out just fine. The video below is how we ended things today (they may not know right and left, but they are learning the body parts). The video's a bit crazy but hey so is our class.

Once again, I would like to wish the Peace Corps a happy 50th Anniversary. And congratulate the Peace Corps Bulgaria Family on a wonderful 20 years. PC Bulgaria just received the Presidential Medal of Honor. Plus, there is a photo display near the National Theater in Sofia from now until March 27th to show what volunteers are doing here in Bulgaria. Here's an article for your reference:

Presidential Medal of Honor

 For all of you who haven't seen it I also wanted to share the poster that was created by Shepard Fairey to celebrate this important anniversary.

If you're not familiar with Shepard Fairey I've included a few links below. The poster's style may look familiar to those of you who have seen the poster of President Obama that was also created by this artist. 

OBEY

Shepard Fairey

Peace, Love, Literacy, and Reckless Curiosity. 

Saturday Afternoon

It's a beautiful Saturday afternoon and I'm about to sit down to knit and watch Wasteland but I thought I should put up a blog first. A large group of boys are outside of my building playing football (soccer) in the school yard while I'm writing this. Some of my students are now starting to read these and I promised them I would have something new up on Saturday so here it is.

I just a late breakfast/early lunch of peanut butter toast (thanks mom and dad for the PB), strawberries, and kiwis. It was quite delicious and now I have some coffee ready to enjoy the Documentary. Lately I've just been so tired when I get home from school that I don't feel like doing anything so I have a to-do list for this weekend. Things I need to get done for Monday are:

- Correct the 5th graders' tests
- Finish making my powerpoint of photos for our schools concert/celebration this month
- Plan out my lesson with the 1st graders
- Clean and organize my apartment
- Laundry

This week was an all-around good week as from my previous blogs I saw Kukeri and it was Women's Day but since then a few things have also happened. On Wednesday I met with an 11th grader and two 10th graders to speak English at a cafe. It was a good time as we ended up spending about 2 hours there. We talked about all kinds of things and I learned quite a bit about topics I never would have guessed we would have talked about. Best of all we got to telling some jokes so I thought I'd share one of the PG jokes for all of you at home:

A vampire bat is looking for his dinner when he sees another bat with some blood around his mouth. He asks the bat, "where did you find your dinner". The bat says, "in the next village over". So the original bat continues to fly on to the next village in search of food. When the bat gets to the second village he sees another bat with even more blood on his face and he once again asks, "where did you find your dinner". The bat says, "oh there was a herd of cows in the next village over that were delicious." So the original bat continues on in search of something good to eat when he runs into a 3rd bat whose face is covered in blood. The bat says, "okay, I've been looking all over for food, where did you find so much blood?" The 3rd bat says, "you see that street lamp over there? Yeah, I didn't".

Other than that I had Spelling Bee practice on Thursday with some of my students. This year is the first annual Bulgarian National English Spelling Bee or BNES. Some great B25 volunteers here in Bulgaria have been organizing things and now that the competition is supported by several organizations it will hopefully stick for years to come. Our local competition here in Sliven is in a week and a half so hopefully the students are studying their words. Two of the main reasons to start this competition are to give 9-14 year olds a chance to compete in an English competition and to provide the opportunity for students to spell out English words with the correct letter pronunciation (many students will just say the sound instead of the letter name when spelling a word as the Bulgarian language uses a phonetic alphabet and they are not used to having names for letters).

Thursday also brought my decision that there was no way for me to keep my secret of visiting Minnesota this July any longer. I called my friend, Miss Elyn DeCook, to let her know that I will in fact be attending her wedding and that I can't wait to see her along with my other friends and my family back home in the good old US of A. I can't wait!

Other than that today is the holiday of St. Theodore's Day (Todorov Den). This means a few things. For one it is the name day of Todor, Todorka, Teodor, Teodora, and Dora. And it is also the celebration of all things related to the horse (and a day of rest). Look for more information via these links:

 St. Theodore's Day
Todorov Den

Finally, I'll leave you with a few photos from my walk to the center from school on Friday.

Peace, love, literacy, and reckless curiosity.

Happy Women's Day!

"Women are the real architects of society." Harriet Beecher Stowe

Today was International Women's Day which I must say I truly enjoyed. The day started off with some of my 6A students giving me flowers and the rest of the class combining their efforts to give me cups and saucers. A good gift as I do not have any fancy tea/coffee drinking items at my place. I haven't bought any since I rarely have guests but I guess I'll have to invite some people over now. Our classes were shortened to 35 minutes with no long break and all students came in the morning instead of half of the elementary students in the afternoon. This was for two reasons. First, to make sure all the teachers were free to first attend the concert put on by some of the 1st through 5th grade students who are singers. Secondly, we all went out for lunch at a nearby restaurant to celebrate. It was very nice and in honor of women's day and the fact that I am one I also received some shower gel and soap from my school (Bulgarian's are such practical gift givers, I love it). I'm including a few photos to this post however all of my photos from the day can be found under the "links" section of my blog by clicking on:

International Women's Day

All of the photos below are from today:

My gifts:

My gift to the teachers:

5A:

One of my 1st graders burning off some energy before his performance:

Though she wasn't singing "I whip my hair" she was SO doing it:

Student made cards to celebrate:

At our lunch:

Oh, and my 6A students cleaned during their class hour:

They're sanding (we just got new doors):

Peace, love, literacy, and reckless curiosity.