Sunlight Gilds the Houses

I usually go to school pretty early in the morning - early enough to catch the sunrise and have a coffee and banitsa before classes start. Sometimes the scene along the road to school is crushingly beautiful :



What this photo doesn't show is the full moon setting over the mountains to the west and the morning star still bright over the pink horizon. This factory, ugly as it can be in the daylight, has its moments.

So last week was the grand opening of our Junior Achievement business - it's a cafe - store type of thing where we sell sandwiches, snacks and school supplies (nice unintentional alliteration).



Note the posters of really terrible musicians on the walls.

We had a little opening party which was televised, apparently -

How Much for a Bag of Rock Salt???

There is a lag period between when I take these photos and when I get around to posting them. Right now the lag period is hovering around 2 weeks.

My director and I spent three days in Stara Zagora at the beginning of the month learning how to develop projects. This was our project design group:





Here is a typical Bulgarian / Greek Orthodox church, which we had a nice view of outside of our hotel window:




It's probably a lost cause trying to be coherent in English today - I was out till 4 in the morning celebrating Vasil Levski Day. So I'll leave it at that.

My Weariness Amazes Me

Don't take the heading of this post seriously: I just felt like quoting Dylan.

Continuing with the tour of the school, the teacher's room (or учителска стая) is where I spend most of my time between classes:



This is the material book (or материална книга) where we are required to write our lesson plans down.



I took these pictures between class when no one was around - the other teachers already think that I'm a spy.

Края на Първя Учебен Срок

Last week the first semester ended, and the teacher's room at my school was a frantic scene of teachers compiling grades and filling out forms for the next semester. The homeroom teachers, of course, bear the brunt of this paperwork.

One of my 11th grade students made a webpage about our school as an assignment for her IT class. Sorry, I don't have the link at the moment, but she used my camera to take some photos of the school, which I will now share with you.

Our school is named "Vasil Levski" after the 19th century bulgarian revolutionary. More about him in a later post. There are a lot of references to Levski around the school - this is a little shrine - statue thing in the foyer:



The multimedia room, paid for with Peace Corps money (check out the old school tape machine in the back):



One of the more bizarre painting/mural things (done by a student, of course):




Also coming soon - this blog, only in Bulgarian!!!

Jimmy Carter Redux

Please read this review of Jimmy Carter's new book by Garry Wills.