Week 27: кийганов ден (Keegan's Name Day)

Jokingly, I always tell my colleagues, "всеки ден е празник в българия!" which literally translates to, "Every day is a holiday in Bulgaria!" As the daily consumption of chocolates and sweets in the teacher's lounge can attest to, there is a slight grain of truth to my statement . . . :D

One of my favorite parts of living and working in Bulgaria are the 'Name Days'. Bulgaria uniquely celebrates the "names" of people based on the Eastern Orthodox saints. For example, "Ivanov Day" is January 7th which prompts all of those with the names of Ivan, Yoan, Ivana, etc. to bring chocolate to their companions. As a teacher with a room full of Ivans (I have 4 in 1 particular class), you better believe I'm slowly becoming a gingerbread man! With all of the birthdays and name days, I decided to treat my colleagues to something special. Since my birthday will never fall on the school calendar, I decided to haphazardly declare March 9th (my half birthday) as Keeganov Den and--as tradition dictates--I brought in plenty of sweet treats! More importantly, International Women's Day is widely celebrated in Bulgaria on March 8th! With a bouquet of flowers and chocolates, everyone gave colleagues, mothers, and women(!) a treat for this day. It's very similar to Mother's Day in the US.

In other news, March has been incredibly busy. From my previous posts, you might have caught a glimpse of my time at the Berlin Conference, but another awesome highlight included a Q & A session between U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria, Eric Rubin, and my PGEE students this past Wednesday! My corporate sponsor, Contour Global, hosted the event and it was quite something!

On March 9th and 10th, 3 of my lovely PGEE students competed in the final East division tournament in Dobrich. Both my duo performance and my prose didn't move on to semi-finals, but we had so much fun hanging out and chatting with the other teams. I'm incredibly proud of the work they put into their pieces. [I've mentioned BEST (Bulgarian English Speech and Debate tournaments) previously, but I'll wait until Nationals in April to give you a more detailed account of such an awesome competition :D ]

As a person who loves Spelling Bees, I was so excited that the weeks of practice with my primary school students during Spelling Bee club culminated into the actual event! March 6th was a busy day and I'm so proud of my 2 students who moved on. Shout out to Bojidara who placed 9th at the regional spelling bee afterwards :D

Today, Friday, March 30th, is the last day before Spring Break consumes all next week and the subsequent Monday. Easter (Velik Den) is celebrated on April 7th since Bulgaria is a predominantly Orthodox nation. That in mind, I decided to do a lesson today on colors with my 9A students all while decorating eggs.

Cooking club is going really well. I put pineapple on pizza and changed lives. Now, my students want me to open up a pizza place. As the old adage goes, "You don't need a Master's when ya got mozzerella." That's an actual saying, right? Sorry for being so CHEESY ;)

Last but not least, i've been going over shapes, sizes, and critical thinking with my students with toothpicks of all things! I've been challenging students to remove/move a certain amount of sticks to get certain shapes. I've been loving those 'aha' moments!

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