European Day of Languages/Salad

Isn't Europe like a big bowl of salad - colorful and messy? That's why we love it!

 Sofia City Library invites you to celebrate the European Day of Languages together with us, volunteers from all of Europa - Greece, Spain, Denmark, Latvia, Poland, Austria, Slovakia are making a salad and the secret ingredient is you. That means you, my beloved language fan, should come on 26th September at 17:00 to Sofia City Library (American corner) It's going to be cosy, fun, international, friendly, with games, interesting presentations, language teaching and salad eating!

 Европейски ден на езиците На 26 септември Европа отбелязва деня на езиците. Целта на този празник е да се обърне внимание на деца, младежи и възрастни колко е важно изучаването на чужди езици, да подтикне към изграждане на положителни нагласи към всички говорени езици в Европа и да мотивира за учене на чужд език през целия живот. На 26.09.2014 / петък / от 16.00ч. започваме дискусия и четене на различни езици в Руския център и продължаваме от 17 до 19 часа в Американския център на Столична библиотека, където доброволците от ЕДС са подготвили програма, с която да отбележим празника. Ще научите коя е думата, която звучи еднакво на 24 –те официални езика в Европа.Ще има игри и презентации за най-лесния начин за научаване на чужд език, както и дегустация на национални ястия , типични за дадена страна. Ще си разменяме рецепти, ще слушаме музика, ще говорим на различни езици. Заповядайте да празнуваме заедно!

 За предложения и участие, моля пишете на мейл: dialog.21@abv.bg
За повече информация:
Боряна Янкова - 0887677089
Валентина Личева – 0897 300 943
Мариета Георгиева – 0888 087 147

Pictures:

Miro in the proper attire

Zanda's salad is the only one I didn't try. :'(

Etwas Kartoffelsalat, bitte!

Maria serving the hungry crowds

Salad and language make people happy.

Food and language makes the world go round

Spanish salad - what's left- by Vicente

Greek salad -what's left- by yours truly.

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PRESENTATION 1 - EUROPEAN DAY OF LANGUAGES (PREZI)

PRESENTATION 2 - WHY SALAD? (PREZI)

State of the Workshops

We've been having our workshops for a few months already. Some of them we'll be dropping next week in order to make room and time for other activities, so let's take this opportunity to have a look at what's been going on and which of our workshops will be seeing the warm light of July!

Easy readers had potential, but unfortunately I wasn't able to reach the right audience and participants or make it clear that the workshop was for advanced learners or speakers of English. A lot of the people who expressed interest were really looking for a way to improve and practice their language, and to that effect most have discovered that the English conversation group on Wednesday is closer to their needs. Next week will be the final round of this little workshop that could.

Vicente started his film projections a few weeks ago. So far we've played To Kill a Mocking Bird, Platoon and Midnight Cowboy. Next week's film is still undecided; follow our facebook and twitter to stay posted. Tuesdays at 16:00 in the American Corner.

Vicente's other workshop, Spanish Culture in the Spanish section has been a limited success; we have to say however that we've had a few very devoted participants, which is encouraging. At the workshop itself we have passed over We even went to watch Vivir Es Fácil Con Los Ojos Cerrados together a few weeks ago at the opening of the 21st Spanish and Latinamerican Cinema Week organised by Instituto Cervantes and some of the embassies and consulates of the countries represented. The workshop will live on into July; Fridays at 16:00 at the Spanish reading room, as usual.

Zanda had a great success with her Saturday Native American Art for Children workshop. I didn't go that often because it was relatively early the morning  (three cheers for Zanda for all the sleep she missed!) but I know that it was a sensation and attracted lots of childrens as well as parents to our activities.

On one of the days fellow EVSers Florian and Gabi, normally working in Montana with puppets, took over Zanda's workshop:

Florian next to me, Gabi next to Maria

Unfortunately, Native American Art for Children is another of our activities that has run its course, but you never know!


My personal favourite has been Maria's Creative Magical Writing. This one I have attended a few times and each and every one of them I came out having written something beautiful and, indeed, magical. What we usually do is have a bit of free writing to loosen up our hands and minds and then we are given a topic to write about but under the pressure of the ticking clock. Our creative magical topics have included first-person narration through the eyes of a butterfly; being Death; painting a multisensory picture of what Summer means for us; and more.

We have new participants joining every time and Maria keeps coming up with great ideas to keep things fresh, so two thumbs up for her. You can join us on Saturdays at 13:00 in the American Corner.

Last but certainly not least, and even though it's not exactly part of our regural schedule of workshops, it's worth mentioning that the English conversation group has been given a second hour during the week, namely on Thursdays, in order to split up the participants into smaller, more manageable groups and in this way help more people have the opportunity to speak for longer. With this change, we thought it would be a good idea to also divide the group into two different levels, in this way providing speakers of varying confidence and aptitude with a choice.

On June 11th, we had close to 25 people in this small room.
Sometimes you can have too much of a good thing.

 So, from now on the schedule's going to be like this:

Wednesdays 17:30 advanced group; Thursdays 17:30 beginner group - throughout July at the very least.

Bulgarian Lessons

Здравейте! Това е първът път, че пиша в български на компютъра. Уф, е много трудно с друга клавиатура...

One of the great things about EVS is that it gives you the opportunity to have proper classes for learning the language of your host country. For us, this means at least 120 study hours over a period of a few months, and right now we've done exactly half of that.

We have lessons on Monday and Thursday mornings in Zazy Language Centre, which is located on Vitosha Blvd right next to the Palace of Justice. Quite a central place to have lessons, right?


 

This is the entrance to the building - okay okay, I know what you're thinking, but, if you get down to it, it's nothing more than a photograph of a public place! The relevant jokes one can come up with from the fact that the entrance to a fetish club is the same as the entrance to where we have our language classes are rather obvious and I'll leave them to your own sick imagination!



 This is the place where we get our капучино (cappuccino) during our почивки (breaks). Did you notice that the shop is called "Kinky"? Are you noticing a mysterious pattern here? It's not just me, right?

On a completely unrelated note, in the class itself I'm always sitting opposite this map.

 

I'm sorry, this has very little to do with our Bulgarian, but I just have to get it off my chest. What is this map? I'm a big geography and map nerd so bare with me, but what's that... peninsula jutting out from the East of Finland towards Svalbard? What's that island to the East of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, like a hydrocephalic Puerto Rico? Oh! Maybe MacMillan accidentally revealed the true location of Atlantis, what mapmakers, satellites, Google Maps etc. have been meticulously hiding for millennia. Thank you, MacMillan! The truth is out there.

Sorry for that. I just wanted to share with this little thing that continually catches my attention during the Bulgarian class.

From left to right: Oles, Hanna, Zanda, Maria,
Zlatko (our teacher), Vicente and Jeroen.
Maria from Spain was absent that day but I really
wanted to take the picture exactly then.
Don't worry Maria, I haven't forgot about you!

Now, this is our class. That's us, the Library volunteers and the guys from Smart Foundation. This is the place where the magic happens. We hope that in the following half of our 120 hours we'll learn just as much, if not more, than what we have learned already, and some day soon we'll be ready to walk up to any baba or dyado and ask them for directions, order properly at the underground cantina next to the library with the handwritten menu with the green marker (have you seen handwritten Bulgarian??), understand what they ask us at the supermarket after we say the predictable things, which usually leaves us like deer in headlights... maybe even read some Bulgarian books! Yes, that'd be great indeed.

So, until the next attempts to actually write a post in Bulgarian, довиждане! (dovizhdane)