Весели Празници!!!

(Veceli Praznitsi or happy holidays)

So I had a little party on Friday night and got out the old camera to document the merrymaking:



The director of my school is the one waving his hands in the air like he just doesn't care.

Here are two American volunteers from the neighboring town of Rakitovo, Brandy and Apryl, who also attended the festivities.



Velingrad was buried in snow again over the weekend, and I trekked around town with my camera yesterday in order to document for you guys how crazy deep the snow gets here:



So I'm leaving for London Wednesday morning and I'm still debating whether I should bring my laptop (I probably won't) - so it will doubtful whether there will be any new updates until after the holidays. I hope everyone has a joyous holiday season, and I'll see you in 2006.

Of Note

Great piece by former Peace Corps Volunteer in Malawi and author Paul Theroux.

Spiders Are Filling Out Tax Returns

The days are winding down before Christmas and the kids are getting antsy. Which is shorthand for saying that they have ants in their pants. After they have taken their class exams, we have what I hope are fun activities.
Here's my incorrigible 10 Б class:



We played Jeopardy yesterday, which they enjoyed, especially since I let them buy candy from me with the money they earned. I copied a bunch of fake $100 bills which is useful for any number of classroom activities.

Money changing hands:




Doing my part to promote the spread of global capitalism . . .

Praise the Grammar Police

In my previous post I mentioned my friends from Hisar, Kate, Rymen and Asen:




Rymen the dentist is on the far right, Asen the Russian teacher is in the middle, and Kate the American is obviously on the left. They are at the table (?? ??????) which is where we spend 90 percent of our time when we hang out.

Also, here is an old (from April) photo of my host family in Hisar. Ivan (host brother) actually looks pretty angelic in this picture.



This will be another short post as I need to write the final exam for my 11th graders. One week from today I'll be in London!

I Wanna Wander Through the Night

I spent the weekend in Plovdiv and Hisar, visiting host parents, hanging out with Kate, Asen, Rymen. Had a little trouble getting the bus back to Velingrad on Saturday so spent an extra night in Hisar. Do not trust bus schedules on the internet!!!

Anyways, yesterday I had a couple of hours to kill in Plovdiv so I walked around the park near the center of town. There are a lot of interesting statue/monument things in the park but my favorite was this one:




















And the inscription:




Apparantly Plovdiv is the sister cities with Okayama-shi in Japan. Don't ask me the meaning of the dog and monkey.

So I'm still learning the ins and outs of this blogging thing. Bear with me. Time for class!

Let's Forget How to Dance

So this is another attempt at keeping a regular blog of my adventures in far eastern Europe. I still don't have internet access in my apartment but am able to connect my laptop at school. Occasionally, however, the internet is prohibitively slow, so bear with me! I'm dealing with technology that is 5-10 years behind what we have in America!!!

I'm going to send my blog address around and am expecting mainly family and friends (if anyone) to visit. Feel free to use the comments and let me know how you're doing, whether you think my writing sucks or I'm an idiot, or to generally abuse me. I like it. It keeps my ego in check.

This picture was from a couple of weeks ago when Velingrad was indundated with сняг (Bulgarian for snow) which has since all melted off. It has been unseasonably warm this week (temperatures in the 50's?)