Postcards & school
Postcards have arrived recently from:
Melbourne
Houston
Tel Aviv
Springfield, MA
Vancouver
Ottawa
Amsterdam
London
Yakima, WA
And probably others I can't think of. The total is now up to 52. Great!
In not so great news, my counterpart is out of town for a couple days, so I had every class today and will again tomorrow. The kids seem to see me as the "fun" teacher who lets them get away with screwing around and I'm having a really hard time getting anything done. Frustrating. I really hate yelling at them, but the Bulgarian school system doesn't have much going for it in the way of consequences for bad behavior.
Today we had a "Europe on Wheels" tour come through town. It was just a van filled with goodies about the European Union. Amusingly (to me, anyway), I inititally translated this to myself as "Europe on Bicycles", because the Bulgarian word for wheel and bike is the same. I was envisioning some kind of bicycle drill team. Anyway, our school folk dancing troupe performed and they were fabulous. Bulgarian folk dancing is a well-loved art, everyone learns it in school and if you go to a party, people will start to horo as soon as the music comes on. But in general, it's more the adults who dance, the kids stand around in the corner horrified by their embarrassing parents. However, here in Pavel Banya, the school troupe is very popular, so folk dancing is the in thing to do. Which I think is just great. I've seen the kids dance before, in the summer, but now that I know them better, I enjoyed it more. Plus, my little kids got to dance today, which I have not seen before, and they were ridiculously cute.
Pictures soon.
Melbourne
Houston
Tel Aviv
Springfield, MA
Vancouver
Ottawa
Amsterdam
London
Yakima, WA
And probably others I can't think of. The total is now up to 52. Great!
In not so great news, my counterpart is out of town for a couple days, so I had every class today and will again tomorrow. The kids seem to see me as the "fun" teacher who lets them get away with screwing around and I'm having a really hard time getting anything done. Frustrating. I really hate yelling at them, but the Bulgarian school system doesn't have much going for it in the way of consequences for bad behavior.
Today we had a "Europe on Wheels" tour come through town. It was just a van filled with goodies about the European Union. Amusingly (to me, anyway), I inititally translated this to myself as "Europe on Bicycles", because the Bulgarian word for wheel and bike is the same. I was envisioning some kind of bicycle drill team. Anyway, our school folk dancing troupe performed and they were fabulous. Bulgarian folk dancing is a well-loved art, everyone learns it in school and if you go to a party, people will start to horo as soon as the music comes on. But in general, it's more the adults who dance, the kids stand around in the corner horrified by their embarrassing parents. However, here in Pavel Banya, the school troupe is very popular, so folk dancing is the in thing to do. Which I think is just great. I've seen the kids dance before, in the summer, but now that I know them better, I enjoyed it more. Plus, my little kids got to dance today, which I have not seen before, and they were ridiculously cute.
Pictures soon.
Labels: horo, postcard project
posted by Blogaria at 9:40 AM
4 Comments:
No harm in being the FUN teacher,Kyla--esp. for two days! Keep up the good work..The first few months of class are ALWAYS challenging..Love, your cousin, Kathleen
Yay for Tel-Aviv! Didn't take as long as I feared after all.
BTW, is the Bulgarian "horo" in any way related to the Israeli "Hora"?
Dani ("Noone Special")
I was listening to some great live Balkan music (including traditional Bulgarian and Roma tunes) this last Friday! The Brass Menažeri (The San Francisco Bay Area's "premier Balkan Brass Band") [http://www.brass.menazeri.com/] was jamming for the Balkan folk-dancing group that I often hang out with. Much dancing of the horo ensued.... unfortunately I can't join in at the moment, but it was still a great opportunity to listen to live music and watch other people dance!
*Dani*, the "horo" and "hora" are essentially the same dance (in Bulgaria, "horo" is singular and "hora" is plural). Good web page (with horrible background!) here: [http://www.angelfire.com/folk/hora/] plus the Wikipedia page is also useful: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hora].
*Kyla*, I know that you already have multiple postcards from the Bay Area, so I haven't sent one (currently, getting around is rather hard for me due to back problems). I'd thought of taking a photo of the sign outside the Google HQ in Mountain View (presumably your students use Bulgarian Google for Web searches?) but that probably couldn't compete with the postcards that you already have of the Golden Gate Bridge etc.
Ian (aka "Antonius Block")
Re: Postcards from the Bay Area --
--I've had some from SJ, but that's it!
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