I just realized that yesterday in the states we celebrated the "discovery" of the Americas.  Thanks Columbus.  This said it seems fitting to write about all of the great questions I've been getting from my students about life in America.

This past week, I asked students to get out a piece of paper and write down any questions they had for me or topics that they hoped we would discuss in the next year together. I told the students that they didn't have to put their names on the piece of paper and that any questions were fair game.  I warned them that I might not answer a question but that they should ask them anyway.

The sheets of paper that I received were wonderful.  The hand writing was a little hard to make out at times, the spelling was British (awesome) and the questions revealed that students had a wide range of interests.  They were funny, smart and empathic.

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What I was unprepared for was reading each page of questions--these notes were like their own amazing little poems.  They warmed my heart and they made me think: humm... there's a good blog post here.

Here are a couple of the funniest: "Is blond the original colour of your hair? Do you watch football? Or any other sport? What's your dream?"  Another wrote, "What kind of music do you listen to? What's your favourite movie? Do you have a boyfriend?" Also: "Do you like Sum 41? Do you like David Beckham?

A longer excerpt from these questions follows--poem like.  I didn't change any of the spelling, grammar or language that the students used when they wrote to me.  The one thing that I wish I could do is to keep the paragraph breaks so that you could read what each individual student wrote to me as a "stanza" in the poem but right now I can't get the blog to do this.  When I am back in Sofia I'll post a word attachment so that you can read it as a poem.

<strong>Tell Us:</strong>
<p class="MsoNormal">What is it to be American?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What is the difference between the USA and Bulgaria?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Can you tell us some interesting cities in the USA?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tell us about the mountain of the four presidents “Mountain Rush More”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How do you feel in Bulgaria?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How do you like it in Bulgaria?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Do you say the "n" word?"</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Can we listen to Tupac in class?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How do you like it in Bulgaria?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Where have you been in Sofia?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Where have you been in Europe?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How do you celebrate the Thanksgiving day and Christmas?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What are the differences between the high school in Bulgaria and in the USA?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What’s your birth date?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What’s the life in USA?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Is it cool?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Do you like working with us?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What’s your favourite colour?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Do you miss USA a lot? Do you miss your family?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Have you read Harry Potter?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Have you ever danced ballet?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Do you like our language?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Why did you come to Bulgaria?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Where did you graduate in the USA?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Is it nice to live in the USA?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Do you live in a house?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">DO YOU WATCH SOCCER?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How do you feel in Bulgaria? Are you feeling ignored or not understood by others?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So the real question now is: how do I answer these students? Some of the questions are easy, straightforward and uncomplicated. Other questions seem almost rhetorical.  Still some are cutting.  They seem to batter me.<span> </span>They want to know who I am and what life in the United States is like but they also want to understand why I am here.<span> </span>They ask me questions out of curiosity but also a desperate need to understand why I would come to their country. Many of the questions get to the same point, do you like it here? Why? What do you see in this country that I might not? In other words, why would you choose to come here--given all of the other places you might have gone?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It's this tension between life in the states and life in Bulgaria that I think makes these questions so difficult to answer.  The truth is that I like it here.  It's not the States and yes I do miss my family and sometimes I do feel ignored by others but the good outweighs the bad.  I have a lot to learn from Bulgaria and from my students.  Life is different here but not worse than the United States.  More over, how I can I even try to begin to compare these two countries?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But, I will.  The questions that my students ask suggest that they want to know more, that they want to try to understand who I am and where I came from.  Of course, their point of reference is Bulgaria. So for better or worse, I am going to try to answer these questions and I too will use Bulgaria as a point of reference--probably clumsily.  The challenge it seems will be to convey the nuances of these two different cultures, people and histories so as not to discredit either.  We don't live in a world of black and white--and in Bulgaria there is much more gray than I ever imagined.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Still in thinking about how to address the different questions my students asked, I am reminded of the way my students think in opposites: I hate taking the bus but I love taking a taxi.  Last week when I worked on talking about the range of emotions one can express between love and hate they were able to express in English the emotions to like and to dislike and with a little coaxing I don't mind.  These don't seem like enough to express what it really means for me to live in Bulgaria nor does it seem enough to explain how complicated life in the United States really is or how complex I believe that life in Bulgaria is.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, I've got some thinking to do to be able to answer the questions I've been asked but I am looking forward to doing this work.  It's a good task to engage in--this critical reflection on one's home, culture and self.  Funny, I thought that this would be an easy thing: ask students to write down their questions and I would answer them.  It has turned out to be anything but and I love my students all the more for that.</p>