Hello all!

Here comes an update from life in beautiful Bulgaria! Things are going well, and I am enjoying Bulgaria more and more for every day that passes! There is a lot of work to do with the Foundation, and I have been having meetings with a number of people from organizations such as UNICEF, SOS Children Villages, municipality officials and directors of the orphanages. Many positive conversations, and it's nice to see that a lot of people are engaged and working hard to improve the situation for the kids.

I am also very impressed with the people I work with at Step for Bulgaria Foundation. Being the only full-time employee, the others spend their

free time outside of school or work, be it traveling to and from orphanages, giving classes, planning events or other things that need to be done. These people have a real drive for change! Very inspiring, indeed. This weekend I went with a bunch of the girls (brilliant for me, of course, being the only guy ;) ) to Plovdiv and Stara Zagora, two cities about a 2-3 hour drive south-east of Sofia. We gave classes to the kids, as well as having meetings with people to see if we can expand our activities there. The picture on the right shows three of the kids in the orphanage in Plovdiv in the middle of an acting class!

Last weekend I went to Pamporovo, a ski resort very close to the border to Greece. My friends went down a few days before me, so I had to take a small mini-bus on the windy, bumpy and not-so-comfortable-Bulgarian roads - I expect that a popcorn in a very hot microwave feels similar to the way I did when I got there..! :) But we had a fantastic weekend with spring-weather, sun and 15 degrees! In the picture at the top of this blog, you can see the beautiful Bulgarian landscape and also get a glimpse of the rocky mountains bordering Greece.

A few days ago I had the highlight of my stay so far: teaching English classes to some 11 year old boys in the Pencho Slaveikov orphanage here in Sofia! Super eager to learn, and intruiged by the bearded guy speaking in a weird way and constantly giving them high fives, the kids learned the latin alphabet (in Bulgaria they use the Cyrillic alphabet) and learned simple things such as how to say their names. They also got to learn where Norway is on the map, and was astonished that it could only take 3-4 hours to fly such a long distance! I am thrilled to meet my enthusiastic kids again tomorrow, and will continue having English lessons with them three times a week. In the picture on the left, you can see Tomy and Isus writing the alphabet in their new notebooks!

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Today, on March 1, the Bulgarians are celebrating Martinetsa - a Bulgarian tradition related to welcoming the upcoming spring. The month of March, according to Bulgarian folklore, marks the beginning of springtime. So, Честита Баба Марта :)

Knut