First day of the Bulgarian School Year

Many Bulgarian children typically leave the city during the summer and spend time with their grandparents in their summer home in the mountains. But today, they were all back in full force for the start of the school year.

We live right near a school. When I left the house for work, I was confronted with the sight of lots of school children, accompanied by their mothers, on the way to school. Although I’ve been told that there are no school uniforms, the younger children were all dressed in a uniform – girls with a dark plaid skirt, and jacket, and the boys with dark pants and the same jacket. Maybe this was a requirement of this particular school.

But the most unusual thing for me was that all of the children, from all age groups, were bringing fancy bouquets of flowers to the teacher. We’ve mentioned before that giving flowers is a Bulgarian custom, and this seems to be one more occasion where flowers are called for! I just wish that I’d been around at the end of the day so I could see how the teachers managed to carry all their flowers home.

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