Not knowing what I am singing

So, I have joined a choir. Not just any choir but "The First Bulgarian Choir," meaning the first choir established in Bulgaria to sing Western and Central European style classical music. We also sang a Christmas concert in "The First Bulgarian Chitalishte." Svishtov, as I've mentioned before is first in a lot of things, and Svishtovlia (the unofficial term for people who live here) like to remind me and each other of these first as often as humanly possible. Here is the recently and quite classily renovated interior audotorium in said "First Bulgarian Chitalishte."


The program consisted of mostly traditional English language carols translated into Bulgarian. The one exception was one verse of Jingle Bells, where the English words were transliterated into the Bulgarian alphabet. Luckily, I, like most Christmas celebrating Americans, had studied these lyrics extensively in my youth (AKA, I sang it over and over with my little friends). More exiting is that I will continue to be in the choir in the new year. I hope to make some new friends, and maybe improve my Bulgarian pronounciation with all that singing! I will keep my readers posted, of course!