June 17, 2000

Wednesday was the last class for the pensioners and the librarians and we decided to celebrate at an outdoor restaurant in Silistra. We have been studying English since September once a week. It sounds like an odd group of people to be teaching English to, but I look forward to this hour every week. It encourages me so much to see adults ready to expand themselves and learn something new. And to study a language at the age of 70 is ambitious and I am very impressed by this.

About 25 of us met at an outdoor restaurant and I was bombarded with surprises. One of the members of the group was a part of a band and had brought his group along to play some Bulgarian folk music for us. The group was composed of an accordion player, guitar, mandolin and an alto and soprano. It was a lovely sound! We even talked one of the ladies from the English class that used to sing folk music into getting up and singing for us.

Another surprise was all the flowers and gifts I received. Seems like everyone had brought a flower and they all chipped in to buy a necklace for me and before they gave it to me they had translated a Bulgarian text into English and read to me in English! What a joy to hear your students speak!

The last day of school at Ivan Vazov was on Friday June 15^th for the 5-8 grade students. The 1-4^th graders had ended two weeks prior. I was not well informed about this, so I did not get to say goodbye to these students, (oh well, I will see them next year) but I was informed about the fifteenth. There was a little ceremony behind the school in which they give out certificates to the 8^th class and then have some entertainment. They begin these ceremonies with the raising of the flag and the national anthem. The national anthem that the school has sounds a massive choir played from a tape. The tape sounds to me like what I would imagine in communist times and is quite eerie sounding to me. Usually no one sings they just look at the flag for respect.

One fun part of the ceremony was a group of girls performing cheerleading acts. They made some pom-poms and cheers and performed them for the school. It was fun to see Bulgarian students being cheerleaders, because cheerleaders are basically non-existent in Bulgaria. They wanted to do a cheer in English, so I got to write the words for this cheer, and they did it pretty well.

My favorite part of the first and last days of school is watching the students bring flowers to their teachers. On the way to school the students crowd the flower stands choosing the perfect flowers for their teachers. I love to see, especially the boys, running up to their teachers with smiles on their faces and flowers in their hands. It is such a wonderful way to show respect and thanks to teachers. I even was surprised with a few flowers of my own even though I am not a classroom teacher. My favorite flowers came from the duo of 7^th grade girls that sat in my front row of my class all year and were reminded daily to stop talking. They would reply O.K. with sly smiles. They loved to speak to me in Bulgarian to see if I would understand and answer in English. So today with sly smiles and a word in Bulgarian they handed me some flowers.

-Kate