How can it possibly be the end of October?

It’s been about a month since I last updated this blog, but the time has flown by! That’s a new phenomenon for me here. This is probably because I now have more things to do each day and I’ve also had several pleasant diversions from the routine.

The most recent was my birthday. I celebrated in Devin the day before by meeting up with several fellow volunteers. We shopped at the pazar, café hopped, and had a nice relaxed dinner together. Here we are together having cake:

On my actual birthday I was in Gyovren…when I taught at the kindergarten, the kids sang Happy Birthday to me and it was so precious that I ended up in tears! They actually don’t have a Bulgarian birthday song, so they sing “ours.” Birthdays are a little different in Bulgaria because the person with the birthday is expected to give treats to everyone throughout the day (usually chocolate) and they pay for their friends if they go out. I abided by these cultural rules :) I also received several presents, cards, and words of encouragement from people back home—thanks so much!!

In early October we also made two field trips with kids…The first was to Devin for the town festival. Rufie (the director of the kindergarten) choreographed several dances and the kids performed there. It was great fun—I felt like a parent, sitting on the front row, taking pictures, and clapping extra loud!

The second was a trip to Trigrad (where Ryan is the volunteer) to play soccer. Ramadan (the director of the chitalishte) had the idea and told me what day we were going, but that was about the extent of the planning. We found a 10-passenger bus that we crammed all 15 kids and three adults into. And, when we arrived no one in Trigrad knew we were coming, but after waiting around for about an hour in the school yard, some kids showed up who wanted to play. In the end, it was a great outing! Here is part of our soccer team :)

I got to have guests in Gyovren—Ryan and Cameron—volunteers from my training group who live nearby came over after the Devin festival. We also had a mini training group reunion because our language trainer, Momchil, came to Smolyan. It’s always incredibly refreshing to share ideas and struggles with friends who can relate!

I’m continuing to spend most of my time teaching English. And, it’s becoming a lot of fun! I restarted the adult course on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the factory where Sarah used to teach during the lunch hour. It’s just a conversational course for now because I don’t want to tackle explaining grammar quite yet! So, I choose a topic and we have different exercises centered around that to help us discuss it and to build vocabulary. Showing pictures from home has been a nice way to make it more personal and interesting.

I’m getting more comfortable with the kids as well. The school has been closed after lunch several times because of teachers being out sick, so I’ve had tutoring sessions with different classes in the library instead. I love getting to see the kids using the library. I installed Mavis Beacon typing on the library computer and they fight over who gets to type first! They ran out of funds to pay for the internet there, but it’s almost been a blessing in disguise because the typing program is the only “fun” thing on the computer!

I light my stove in my room almost every night and we did see snow early in October, but the last few days have been really pleasant and sunny. The fall colors here are amazing!

P.S. Rufie and I made a web page for the kindergarten (using blogger). It’s all in Bulgarian, but it’s here if you want to check it out: radostgyovren.blogspot.com