<img class="alignleft" title="Me at the Sofia Pride Parade " src="http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/hs326.ash1/28467_1472974115414_1565506440_31145712_5659505_n.jpg" alt="" width="481" height="720" />Hey, I know that this is a late post but my MoM said that people in the States want to know about the parade. So something like two weeks late, here's my post. Yeah, I had the best of intentions but somehow in the last two weeks there was never enough time. I guess it's better late than never.

I went to the parade with a group of teachers from ACS. There were probably 20 of us total and then we joined up with some non-ACSers. So it was a nice sized group. We met at the metro and then walked to NDK--the national palace of culture where the parade was starting. Arriving at NDK was interesting, there was a huge police presence and when we got there they weren't letting people gather on the bridge which was the gathering site. So we waited. Then they slowly let people through and all of the walkers received an arm band. I guess as a security measure.

Then the waiting started. More and more people showed up. There were rainbows, signs and flags. The whole event seemed very well put together. I guess that there were more than 700 participants. That's pretty great--something like double the number from last year. <!--more-->

Generally though I was surprised by two things: how many police officers were out and how much media there was covering the event.  There was almost as much media as police.  Okay I know that this was only the third annual parade but I didn't expect the media to be out in full force.

While marching, I ran into my camera guy from the Nova television series. He wasn't filming when I said hi to him. He recognized me and said hello back. Then he asked me why I was there. <em>Um, to march?</em> I told him that I was walking with friends from school. He nodded and then made it very clear to me that he was there for work. <em>Okay</em>.

Luckily the whole parade was pretty uneventful. No violence, no running required. Marchers were encouraged to wear tennis shoes just in case. There were some protesters--with signs in Bulgarian and crosses. I assume religious protesters. And there were apparently some neo-nazis but I didn't see them.

What was there? Plenty of smiling faces, loud music, lots of dancing and generally a sense of enthusiasm for the day. And lots of people who support diversity in all shapes and sizes. It was really inspiring to see.

But this was just a single day. So, now what? Well, I will continue to be supportive of sexual, racial, and religious diversity (just to name a a few).  And in a more concrete expression of this day, I will be buying safe space stickers to bring back for interested teachers and administrators at school.