Feeding the Birds (a bit)

So, last week I took part in my first (drum roll please) educational activity with local school kids. We (two other BSPB-ers and myself) went to a biology classroom, where we made bird feeders with several classes worth of students. I was mostly an observer and sort of bopped around the classroom speaking cavewoman-esque Bulgarian to them. Right now my strategy building relationships with Bulgarians (including kids) is to attempt to make really lame jokes in Bulgarian, and then smile and appologize if they don't go over well. I employed this along with shaking my head yes* and smiling a lot.



So the lesson went like this. One of our superstar teenage volunteers presented how to make the feeders and why they are especially helpful during winter months. Students made the feeders out of plastic bottles they has brought, and put bird-seed in them. Sunflowers are a pretty major agricultural crop here, so sunflower seeds are a common snack (and sunflower oil, rather than olive oil the cooking/ salad oil of choice). The problem is the students brought snack sized bags of seeds....and mostly 1-2 litre bottles. So everyone had an inch or two of seeds in the bottoms of their bottles. Then we went to the forest nearby, where we hung the bird feeders. Kids were up in trees, running around and generally running amok, but we had a great time. The forest at the edge of town looks a little funny with all these nearly empty bottles hanging in it, but the kids got outside and are at least thinking about birds. I am lobbying for a spring clean-up to retrieve the bottles.

It was nice to meet some kiddos here in town. I have an interview this Tuesday with a 7th grade reporter from the school newspaper. I was actually recently interviewed for local television as well. I haven't seen the segment, but apparently everyone else in town has. It is a weird experience being interviewed in a language that you have only been speaking for 4 months! If I can get a copy of it, I will post it.

*A footnote for western readers. Nodding and shaking of one's head have opposite meanings of what we do in the west. I heard once that the gestures originated among Bulgarians during the days of the Ottoman Empire, seen as a dark period in Bulgarian history. The idea is that Bulgarians would nod their heads "no" in a secret gesture of defiance when talking to Ottoman officials, who read the gesture as "yes." I have not been able to verify this, but it would be a logical explanation.