Turns out that the pre-school staring Bulgarian lesson was a good and humbling experience. I went to see my favorite Bulgarian tutor (well and only) I. yesterday.  I'd already met-up with I. for drinks the week before so I knew the lesson would be all business.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="614" caption="Bulgarian Lesson: the Dictation"]<a class="tt-flickr tt-flickr-Large" title="Bulgarian Lesson" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/29050866@N06/6138849483/"><img src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6062/6138849483_207ef68c28_b.jpg" alt="Bulgarian Lesson" width="614" height="410" /></a>[/caption]

Saturday I got out my text books and my notes. I looked over the last two weeks worth of grammar and homework from June to try to brush up. You know to make sure that I knew what we were studying and to ensure that we were on the same page.

I was greeted with a page on "Past Continous Tense" and found myself unable to remember any rules for how the past tense is formed and when I should be using this tense versus "Past Simple Tense" while far from simple I like because it has the word simple in the name. <em>Awesome</em>. I brushed as best I could. Then I begged I. to review this in our next lesson.

So in our lesson, I talked about my summer--where I went, what I did and all of the different foods I ate. That wasn't too hard or painful.

The painful part? <!--more-->

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="614" caption="My first Bulgarian Lesson of the year"]<a class="tt-flickr tt-flickr-Large" title="Bulgarian Lesson" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/29050866@N06/6139399046/"><img src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6078/6139399046_32433c8d70_b.jpg" alt="Bulgarian Lesson" width="614" height="410" /></a>[/caption]

The dictation that followed the what-did-you-do-this-summer conversation.

I. had selected a short story from a contemporary Bulgarian author for the dictation. The trick with a dictation is listening, writing and spelling all at the same time. The problem I have is that I often am more concerned with what is actually going on in the excerpt that I forget to pay attention to spelling and what not. Then sometimes I get hung up on the fact that I don't know very many of the words and then I can't always hear the letter combinations.

Anyhow, it's anxiety producing and my head and hand were moving very, very slowly on Sunday. Luckily I don't have a grade resting on it. That might have made me cry. Also I was pretty glad that we only did the first paragraph of the story.

So the whole thing was a good reminder of the fact that my Bulgarian students haven't really been speaking English over the summer and they will be rusty too.

After this experience, I went home talked to a couple of friends on skype and then before bed I re-wrote my dictation. That's the neat on in black.