"Dyme Pet!"

This is the Bulgarian equivalent of "Gimme five!". Yesterday one of my students said this to me after I told another one of my students that he was being ridiculous and needed to write his vocabulary words and sentences. It was pretty funny at the time because I hadn't heard it yet. However, it quickly lost its humor when neither one of the students wrote their sentences. Such is the life of a TEFL Volunteer. I don't want to be discouraging, though, so the rest of this entry will be about the happy things that have been happening.

Halloween was a huge deal and an even huger success. The Friday before Halloween, Rory and I threw a massive Halloween party after school. The teachers and everyone were so excited that classes got cut short so that the kids would have time to go home and get their costumes ready. Luckily, I only had two classes that day and so I was done early so that I could go help Rory set up. The party was in the cafeteria of the school and once we got all of the decorations there, it really didn't take that long to set up. Once the classes were finished some of the kids came in and helped with balloons and stuff. They were so excited and eager to help. After a little while, we shooed them out of the room so we could finish up and all of the kids could enter together. It wasn't long before we had finished setting up the room and got into our costumes. Rory was the Grim Reaper complete with an awesome skull mask that he made himself. He looked pretty creepy. Cveti, Rory's girlfriend, was there too and she was a zombie princess. She looked great with her zombie make-up and a fabulous dress. I was just a cat. I painted whiskers on my face and I wore all black. I couldn't think of anything super creative to be. The time came for the kids to come in. There were probably over one hundred. It was great. There were a ton of little kids, so we had them come in shifts. The kids that already has costumes went trick-or-treating and the ones that didn't, came in and got their faces painted or made masks so that they could go later. We had spookey Halloween music playing, games, candy and the kids loved it all. Some of them had some really great costumes too. One girl came as "Autumn" and she had painted her face yellow and green, put leaves all in her hair, and wore some kind of sheet with fall leaves all over it. Another kid came as a member of Al Quida, which was actually kind of hilarious. He had on a robe with all kinds of different colors on it, a round of bullets across his chest, a fake gun and sunglasses. He also had painted a mustache on himself. I almost died when I saw him. A lot of the kids had some great masks too. It was cool to see that everyone went all out. I was also happy to see basically all of the teachers from school there. They looked like they were enjoying it too and a couple of them even played some of the games. After the party, my eighth graders wanted to go trick-or-treating and they wanted me to go with them. It was a lot of fun and I told them that I hadn't gone trick-or-treating in years. They're good kids, even if they don't always do their schoolwork.

The next day was the much anticipated Volunteer Halloween party in Veliko Tarnovo. I met Kristin in Cherven Bryag and we took the train together to another city and then to VT (Veliko Tarnovo). We got there around dinner time and went to the hostel where some other volunteers were staying. We gathered a small group and made our way to the house where the party was to take place. We arrived at the house and were greeted by our friends that we hadn't seen in a long time. There ended up being probably, one hundred volunteers there. We went up to one of the bedrooms and got into our costumes. Lexi and I had decided to go as two other volunteers, Kevin and Drew. They are frat boys who talk about nothing but football and fitness. So, naturally, they're easy to make fun of. Make no mistake, though, they're still friends and they took our joke extremely well. We borrowed jerseys from them (and they had no idea why) and put their names on the back of them, the we put on the black eye stuff and had footballs with us at all times. We made our grand entrance into the room everyone was in and started acting like Kevin and Drew with the football and we got an applause at the end. It was a lot of fun and I was glad that they took it so well. The rest of the party was a blast and people came up with some really cool costume ideas. One group came as a bunch of little Rubix Cubes and wore all different colored articles of clothing. By the time the night was over, the all had to be one color. We had some people dress up like the cast of Jersey Shore, some boys were KISS, and even Justin Beiber showed up. It was great.

The next morning/afternoon when we all woke up at the hostel, a group of us decided to stay another day (since we didn't have school on Monday) and explore the lovely town of Veliko Tarnovo. Kristin, Kerri, Adrienne, Katelyn and myself went to this castel way up on a hill and did the whole tourist thing. It was nice to be a tourist. We got to eat at a nice restaurant where the waiter spoke English and then explore the castle at our own pace. We went to the top where it overlooked the city and it was absolutely gorgeous. After our trek to the castle and back down, we decided it was time for a little nap. We went back to the hostel and rested for a while. After our rest we decided to treat ourselves to a movie. We went to the mall, which was also pretty impressive, and saw the movie "Easy A". I highly reccommend it and it was just what all of us needed. After the movie, we went to the supermarket that was also located in the mall and got a bunch of stuff to make sandwiches and shopska salad. We headed back to the hostel for dinner. We had a delicious dinner of sandwiches, shopska salad, pudding and wine. We had to keep it classy.

The next day we all traveled back to our respective sites and spent the day resting. The past two weeks have been good. This past weekend was Rory's birthday and we had a nice dinner over at Betty's house. It was a lot of fun and I came out with a jar of honey and homemade lutenitza (which is a red pepper kind of spread that is delicious). Now I'm looking forward to this coming weekend and my birthday in Vratsa! It should be a good time and I will be sure to report how that goes too. Tomorrow is my actual birthday and I'm excited to spend my first birthday in Bulgaria. I already bought the chocolates to give to all of my fellow teachers!