Ever wonder what I do on a day to day basis? Well, I am here on a Fulbright Fellowship and I am teaching English at the <a href="http://www.fels-sofia.org/" target="_blank">First English Language High School</a> in Sofia, Bulgaria. I teach English conversation to 7 classes of 8th graders.  It means that I get to work with them on topics related to American culture, to pronunciation, to vocabulary usage and more.

The school I work at I am told is one of the best public schools in Sofia.  The school used to have the reputation as the best school in Bulgaria (this may be changing but I don't know how these things are judged).  Based on what I've seen, I think it is still a very good school (the thing is that I don't have experience or exposure in any other schools in Sofia or Bulgaria to compare to).  What's exciting about my school is that the teachers are serious, their knowledge of English is excellent, their commitment to their students is high and the resources at the school are good (not excellent but good).  What seems to be the most telling about the quality of the school, the teachers and the students is that even though the students I teach have only been studying English for six months, I've seen tremendous improvement in their spoken and written English.

The funny thing is--I tell people all of the time that I am a teacher of English (учителка по английски) but I didn't really think of myself as a teacher until this week when I saw a picture of myself in the <a href="http://bulgaria.usembassy.gov/uploads/images/zkdNOsnjhgFWxS8NWuKg9w/newsletter_jan09_en.pdf" target="_blank">US Embassy Newsletter</a> for January/February (page 4).  The class had a visitor from the Embassy before Christmas.  She came to talk about the holidays in the States and brought a staff assistant and a photographer with her.  So the photo he captured of me might not be the most flattering photo but I look like a teacher.

I guess it's official.  I am a teacher.