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.