At this point, you probably know that I'm a teacher. I work at the American College of Sofia which we fondly refer to ACS.  It's an acronym that just rolls off the tongue.

At ACS, I teach 10th and 11th grade English Literature. I have two classes of 10th grade and two classes of 11th grade. The students are slightly older than American students in the same grade as Bulgarians start 1st grade a year later than we do in the States.

But this isn't really a post about my students. Really this a quick post about a day in my life ACS.

I am sort of obsessed with teaching so I wake up between 5:45 and 5:50 most mornings. I also love to drink coffee and I drink an inordinate amount of it each morning so I've got to get up early to do this. I also really like to read through the news headlines, check and respond to my email, see what's going on on facebook, check out my blog stats and approve any comments, and then I try to think of something funny/clever/silly/witty to say on twitter.

Aside from all of this, I take a shower and try to put together a reasonable outfit out of the five dresses, four skirts and three or so pairs of work pants and misalliances shirts and sweaters that I brought to Bulgaria. Then I make and eat a bowl of oatmeal. All before 7:10 am when I leave the house for school. Yeah, I am busy in the mornings.

At school, I head to my classroom. Unlike most Bulgarian schools, I have my own classroom. I keep all of my things there from books to classroom materials and I have a fine but very slow computer. Some people require yoga or mediation to practice patience and mindfulness. Not me. My computer forces this upon me daily. <!--more-->

In my classroom, I flip on the lights, turn my computer on and then walk down the hall to find one of my colleagues G. We get a coffee at Onda together every morning. It's routine. The best kind really. Two mornings a week, I start teaching 1st period and the other mornings I am teaching by 3rd period. Our day goes until 3:15 and as teachers we are expected to be there between 8am and 3:15pm.

I grab lunch in the school cafeteria. It's not amazing food but it's cheap and quick and for better or worse that's what matters to me most days.

Throughout the week when I am not teaching, I have a number of other things that keep me busy. Two hours a week I meet at school with a woman who teaches foreigners Bulgarian and two hours a week I meet with two different students who help me review my lesson and practice any thing I need extra work on. This also gives the students a chance to laugh at my pronunciation and say things like: Ms. Emigh why didn't you do your homework? For the record, they like doing that.

At 3:15pm, the administrative part of my day starts. I mark attendance online for our dean and in hard copy for the ministry of education. Sometimes we have meetings after school. On the other days, I make and submit photocopy requests for later in the week and then I make sure that I've got my lessons planned for the next day. After that it's time to respond to student emails (yes, they send them. In fact, they even have their own ACS email addresses.) and to grade homework/quizzes/papers. Most days I try to head home by 5pm.

Some days though, there are things to do after school. Right now there's dance practice for a fundraiser at school on Monday afternoons, Tuesdays has yoga at 5pm and Balkan dance at 6pm, Wednesday there's kickboxing and Thursdays hosts another hour of Balkan dance. Needless to say, I can't do it all but I do enjoy participating in these events. It's a really great opportunity to get out my classroom, to leave any worries behind me and to get to know both my American and Bulgarian colleagues better.

And this dear readers is a run down of a day in my life as a teacher at ACS.