So I went to camp for these past two weeks with hopes of having an opportunity to speak more Bulgarian than I do in my normal day-to-day routine in Sofia and to have an interesting experience.

I am happy to report that I was successful on both counts. It was great fun to go to Bulgarian summer camp and to see the differences between the kinds of camps I attended when I was younger and the Bulgarian summer camp experience at ChillyVilly. I also got to speak much much more Bulgarian than I normally do.

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What was most interesting was that while working with the kids at camp, I realized that I actually do have a big vocabulary of Bulgarian nouns.  It happened slowly over the course of a couple of days but when working with the younger students on the topic of what is your favorite food and what kinds of toppings go on pizza I realized--hey, I know all of the words that these kids are looking for in Bulgarian.<!--more-->

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="614" caption="Grapes in the sunlight"]<a class="tt-flickr tt-flickr-Large" title="Grapes" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/29050866@N06/6044625249/"><img src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6201/6044625249_4259e5f3fb_b.jpg" alt="Grapes" width="614" height="410" /></a>[/caption]

It went something like this. Oh, well cheese goes on pizza. Tomatoes too. And in Bulgarian...gubi... student looks around desperately for help from her classmates to come up with the right word in English and someone shouts out, mushrooms.

Then we'd get to a noun like luk in Bulgarian and no one could come up with the name in English. The faces of the group would fall and I'd say, tell me what it looks like even though I knew exactly which word they wanted in English. (Oh the power I have as an English teacher!!) So the kids would say it's round and white and show me the size in their hands. I would then question them and say, is it an <em>onion</em>? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. They'd say.

Similar things happened with garlic, parsley and dill. By the time I'd guessed dill and winked at them, they were on to me and spent the final 10 minutes of class pressing me about how much Bulgarian I know and begging me to speak in Bulgarian. I told them in the last two minutes of class, I'd answer questions.

The first question I got in English was: how many Bulgarian words do you know? Me: I have no idea. A lot.

Then the students who where mostly 6th and 7th graders started peppering me with questions in Bulgarian: where are you from? what is your name? where do you live? what school do you teach at? what Bulgarian food is your favorite? If they didn't like how I pronounced something they'd make me say it again or if I'd selected the wrong pronoun or misplaced an article they'd correct me and make me say it again. Then they'd laugh and laugh.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="614" caption="Blackberries"]<a class="tt-flickr tt-flickr-Large" title="Blackberries" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/29050866@N06/6044617615/"><img src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6071/6044617615_480c89f6c0_b.jpg" alt="Blackberries" width="614" height="410" /></a>[/caption]

I think it must be very funny to hear a foreigner speaking Bulgarian.

At lunch, the students wanted me to sit with them. (Um, how cute is that?!) So I did. They asked me more questions in Bulgarian and then in a whisper they leaned in and told me that my Bulgarian is better than the other British native speaker. <em>Oh</em>. The told me that my Bulgarian is more-pravilno (correct) and that I don't have an village accent.

With the teachers at summer camp, I spoke a mixture of Bulgarian and English and one of the teachers I spent the most time with taught German and only spoke a little English so basically we only spoke Bulgarian. The great thing about this is that she was patient with me and was good about repeating things I didn't understand. And my crowning moment was explaining the difference between Washington State and Washington DC in Bulgarian!!

Aside from this I also had a Bulgarian lesson each afternoon. I practiced lots of things and realized how funny I must sound sometimes in Bulgarian. For example, in English we have one verb for to go. We go to the store. Go on vacation. Go to school. We go straight ahead. We go to London. However in Bulgarian there are lots of different verbs for the single English verb to go. Now this is okay. I just never learned them and/or they were never well explained to me. So I've been using one verb, hodya, as I would in English. Here's the thing, over the last two years I am pretty sure that everyone understood what I was saying but no one ever corrected me about my usage.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="614" caption="Flowers through a Fence"]<a class="tt-flickr tt-flickr-Large" title="flowers through a fence" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/29050866@N06/6044624783/"><img src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6198/6044624783_01e7743348_b.jpg" alt="Flowers through a Fence" width="614" height="410" /></a>[/caption]

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Oh well, now I know. The hard part is that now the single verb hodya comes to mind much quickly than any of the other to go verbs in Bulgarian. I guess it will just take time.  But as a reminder, if you know me in "real life" and you hear me say something wrong or incorrect in Bulgarian please, please correct me. I really do not want to ingrain incorrect Bulgarian in my day to day speech. I know that it's hard to correct people especially one's peers who are speaking a second-language but in the long run it's worse not to.

So I have a couple of new resolutions study a little bit every day, watch an hour (or so) of tv in Bulgarian every day and speak as much Bulgarian as I can each day. Oh yeah, and start writing on my <a href="http://daybyeday.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Bulgarian blog</a> again after a break this summer.