Now that I've been back for a while it's time to sort out my posts! Busied myself with UCL's Global Citizenship Summer School in my last 2 weeks in London which included some very basic Bulgarian lessons. I have to admit that it was the language component which attracted me to sign up for it in the first place because I have some sort of obsession with European languages in general.
We started off last Monday with an introduction session and an un-conference (not UN conference) where we had to discuss aspects - basically characteristics and skills that a global citizen ought to have. I was in the same group as some people whom I already knew but anyway most of them were linguists, so we were very meticulous with the words used - for instance "tolerate" had a negative connotation so it was almost the very first word to be taken out. All the groups submitted their word lists afterwards and they made a really cool word cloud with it!
What my group came up with!
We also got a really cool map :D
After that we went for our first language sessions! I didn't specify any preferred language as I thought all of them sounded really cool and exotic - they offered German, Slovakian, Hungarian, Serbian, Romanian and Bulgarian - and I was allocated to Bulgarian, which was a good thing because I think I would've been exasperated at not knowing how to speak a single word in Romania the week before had I been allocated to Romanian. Also I've not been to Bulgaria yet, so there's a higher possibility of me visiting there in the near future as opposed to Hungary and Romania! So yes, I was happy with what I'd been given :D And everyone from my Bulgarian class were really nice and friendly! Even the tutors hehe. In our first lesson we learnt the Bulgarian alphabet which was the Cyrillic alphabet. I was glad that I finally got pushed to learn it properly because I'd been meaning to learn Russian since years ago but was always put off by the alphabet. It's quite difficult to remember because there are more letters than the latin alphabet, but generally easier to pronounce as it's a phonetic alphabet. We also did some simple greetings and phrases, and that was about it for the short one-hour class.
The rest of the days followed a schedule somewhat like this: lecture in the morning (10-11), academic tutorial / discussion on the lecture (11-12), lunch (12-1), skills lecture (1-2), language class (2.15-3.15) and project tutorial (3.30-4.30). For the project we basically had to come up with 2 "outputs" - a poster and a film. I really enjoyed all of the lectures because they covered aspects such as geography, anthropology, linguistics, politics, international relations and even the economy in relation to the Danube river. Prior to this the only thing I knew about the Danube was the Blue Danube Waltz lol :( And my favourite lecture was the one by the Hungarian lecturer Adam Nadasdy on language along the Danube! It was really inspiring and I was so tempted to study linguistics hahaha. Also went for a talk on Bulgarian writers in London in the same week and that was interesting too!
Stuff we learnt about during the lecture
Conjugaison in Bulgarian class, much to my delight (HAHA)
Bulgarian snacks that our tutor kindly brought for us!! - Bulgarian delight that was rose-flavoured (similar to Turkish delight) and this peanut biscuit sandwich. I love the Bulgarian delight because it leaves a burst of rose aroma as an aftertaste. :)
On Monday this week we also had a story-telling session by people who came from the region close to the Danube, followed by a food-tasting session! The only food I could recognise was the Hungarian noodles (only because I had those in Budapest).
Not a very good photo due to poor lighting and no filter, but photos won't do justice to the food!
Bulgarian class :D The only photo where everyone's face was inside haha
The rest of this week we worked mainly on our projects. Had to submit the poster by Wednesday so we stayed back on Tuesday to finish up! Really thankful for such a cooperative and efficient group ^_^ And here's the QR code for the Bulgarian quiz we made: (I never knew that coloured QR codes work too!!)
Couldn't attend on Thursday and Friday because my flight was on Thursday :( There was supposed to a be a guest lecture on Thursday but I had last minute things to settle so I had to give it a miss :( And Friday was the exhibition and party! Really sad that I missed the fun part but apparently our group won for the poster so well done to us!! It turned out really great:
Photo sent by Evangeline! It's quite pixelated because whatsapp reduced the quality :( But it looks good! We played with the words смел (pronounced as "smell" and means brave in Bulgarian) and "smell" because Bulgaria is famous for their rose oils! Rose petals from my bouquet hehehe they dried up but they still had some scent left I guess and glad they came in somewhat useful ... and incidentally also remembered that my favourite mask was Bulgarian Rose too hehe. But yeah I missed all the excitement, back here and sweating in this humid and sweltering weather :(
Anyway to conclude I felt that it was a well-spent two weeks! It was really intense though as compared to my usual school hours because in my last term I only had 10 hours of classes each week, but summer school was about 5 hours each day like 10-4. The lectures were very interesting and you can really tell that a lot of effort was put into the preparations for this, judging from all the materials we had and the people they invited just to speak to us. We're really lucky to have had the chance to attend everything and without having to pay :O And I'm so determined to continue with Bulgarian so that I can at least attempt to speak it when I visit Bulgaria! Would highly recommend this to all juniors, though I can't comment on the other schools hahaha. The only regret I had was that I couldn't commit to it as much as I had wanted to since my flight was on Thursday and I was busy with house-moving stuff so I missed quite a few sessions :( Nonetheless it was a still a great experience and I'm really glad to have met my fellow Bulgarian classmates and it was a good conclusion to my 9 months in London :)
Danube on Thames website: http://danubeonthames.wordpress.com/
Our group's Bulgarian documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PODoEDYwMY4
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