Some of my favorite memories from the past five months are walking around the Shumen plateau nature park, finally figuring out how to use my oven and getting to bake sourdough, bringing my college friends to school to meet my students, taking the train across the beautiful Bulgarian countryside and going to Plovdiv with the high school speech and debate team. I love the foggy mornings, the fresh produce on the side of the street, the smell of freshly baked баница (banitsa, the popular Bulgarian breakfast pastry) and the elderly people sitting in the park just enjoying the sights. Life is slower here, and I have truly come to appreciate that.
I am so grateful for the Fulbright program, which gave me the opportunity to come here and teach. The Bulgarian commission (the team that supports us English Teaching Assistants) and my coworkers at Nikola Vaptsarov Foreign Language High School were so amazing in helping me along the way. I also want to thank Mrs. Baker and her incredible students for staying tuned along the way. I loved getting to share my experiences with you, as your enthusiasm to learn also made me more eager to learn about the surrounding culture. In the words of Jack Hanna, "The world is the true classroom. The most rewarding and important type of learning is through experience, seeing something with our own eyes." I hope that you all become life-long students, exploring the world with curiosity and stepping confidently into the adventures that life brings!
