Bittersweet Halloween

As I sit down to write a blog about this week’s Halloween festivities I can’t help but thinking that this is the last Halloween I will have here in Bulgaria. It’s somewhat bittersweet to know that every day becomes that much closer to me leaving Bulgaria as I’m much closer to my close of service date than I am to the date I became a volunteer. Every event is now a last and so I want so badly for things to work as well as possible. However, things don’t always work out the way they are intended. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not heading into a depressing, things didn’t work, not doing this again message because this blog definitely is not about that. Though, while some things about yesterday’s carnival worked other things definitely did not.

After counting all the tickets, there were 238 students from 1^st through 4^th grade who attended yesterday’s carnival with a parent or adult. That’s a lot of people at once but I had no idea when I first put up the posters how many of our elementary students would buy tickets. There are about 500 students in 1^st through 4^th grade at my school so I’d say we had a great turnout for the first year. If you're a numbers person, or just plain interested, here you are:

The attendees included:

• 80 first graders (31 boys, 49 girls)
• 63 second graders (35 boys, 28 girls)
• 43 third graders (17 boys, 26 girls)
• 43 fourth graders (21 boys, 22 girls)
• 9 students did not mark their grade (3 boys, 6 girls)
• That's 107 total boys and 131 total girls equaling 238 children (who each brought an adult)

I really hope my school tries again next year as I think most of the activities were well received. The problems of yesterday inherently stemmed from the carnival being a new thing at my school. It was organized in stations and there were 15 different activities for kids to participate in. However, with so many people around, things got somewhat more chaotic at times than I’d hoped for. Also, we had a spur-of-the-moment “costume contest” which definitely did not go very well since it wasn’t even planned for. I believe all the kids had a great time and it was the parents who made things a bit more difficult. The idea was for parents to help their kids and do things with them however there was a lot of standing around.

Several teachers along with students from 6^th, 7^th, and 12^th grade helped out which was awesome! Our activities ended up being face painting, photo booth, hand ghosts, how-to-draw cat/bat/spider-web, bobbing for apples, word searches, mazes, coloring, making English words, stick the mouth on the pumpkin, Bulgarian mad libs, basketball toss, football (soccer) kick, relay race, and bingo. It was a lot to organize and though I received a few negative comments, I’d say it was a great first attempt and they could hold a successful carnival next year only by having the students come by grade and removing most of the parents from the mix. There were some awesome costumes and many of the students brought carved pumpkins which was wonderful. All the comments I received today from students and staff were excellent so that made me feel it was much more successful than I felt leaving school yesterday.

All of the Halloween Carnival photos can be accessed HERE or under the “links” section by clicking “Halloween Carnival 2011”.

Today we continued with the theme of Halloween in my 3^rd grade English classes through singing two different songs and playing letter bingo. If students got a bingo they won a piece of candy however all students received a spider ring at the end of class. It was a fun day. Here’s a few clips of 3 "V":

Not many of them knew I was videoing until the end:

This afternoon I met up with Amy (another volunteer) to have lunch and get photos from here that she took yesterday. Tonight I’m going to a student’s dance performance which I’m excited about. It’s nice being invited to so many things this year. I hope all of you reading have a wonderful Halloween!

Also, don’t forget to check out my Peace Corps Partnership Project I’m trying to fund at the moment. It can be found here (please email me if you know of any people who may be able to donate):

English Enrichment Workshops

And lastly, thank you for everyone who is reading as I have now hit over 10,000 views! 

Peace, Love, Literacy, and Reckless Curiosity.