School begins...

Got my schedule today.  Mondays and Tuesdays I teach 6 classes straight through, but that means only 8 more classes divided up over the remainder of the week.  All in all, not too bad.  School is from 8:15-3pm, except on Mondays when we start at 8:55.  I have a ton of prep to do for my new books, but in spite of that, I'm pretty excited.

  

I have a gorgeous classroom in Ostrander, my favorite building on campus.  

I'm in a quiet hallway with a view of the quad, and Onda, the coffee shop, is right downstairs from me!  

Greg is located in Abbott, a really cool tech building that has a pretty sordid history as the former KGB wiretapping headquarters.  As horrifying as the stories can be, it is fascinating to hear about how our school was used during the Cold War.  To think it was closed down from 1942-1992, and was able to reopen so successfully is really impressive.

School will begin on 9/15, but classes won't start until 9/16.  We'll spend Monday having an all-school meeting to introduce our new block system.  It's Harry Potter-esque in that students are divided into "houses" and will compete all year through GPA, attendance, athletics, and special events for a winner's cup.  It should be a ton of fun and a great way to get to know kids here outside of class.  To kick it off, we're having a mini-olympics, where they have promised some hilarious events.  I'll be sure to update and hopefully add some pictures next week.

Today was our first offiicial Bulgarian lesson.  I find the language really challenging, but I'm determined to learn to communicate with people and to be able to read.  We will be able to attend lessons during our prep time all year, which is such a great opportunity.  Hopefully I will be able to get ahead of the game with my prepping, staying on top of my grading, and be able to use some prep hours to take lessons.  People are very nice and patient with us, but it's hard to order mystery food at a restaurant!  Tonight we ended up with a crazy combo of an appetizer that was potatoes topped with sliced ham and melted cheese in a butter/milk sauce followed by some approximation of a Chinese sweet and sour chicken with fried rice dish.  We had no choice but to just point at the menu and hope for the best since we couldn't read it and our waitress spoke no English.  

Speaking of food, the list grows for items unavailable to us here.  We're missing maple syrup, buttercream frosting, baking powder, light brown sugar, beef or chicken broth, myoplex bars, chocolate chips, any pure extracts like vanilla or almond, black beans, ranch dip mix for my yogurt and lettuce.  I'm sure there are many more things that will come up as we keep shopping.  Pet food is particularly expensive, as is milk, averaging at about 4 times the price of those items at home.  Other things, like produce, particularly cucumbers, carrots, and red peppers, are very inexpensive.  

I'm off to watch some CNN.  Ciao, ciao!