Observations From an Almost Apricot

Thanksgiving/Name Change

After I found out about the article written about my Thanksgiving lesson plan, I immediately found it online and translated it in google. What I found at the end of the article surprised me for two reasons: 1. it was supposed to be a quote from me, and since I didn’t even know there was a journalist and photographer there, I found it hard for them to have gotten a direct quote, and 2. it said “Apricots said, ‘…’”. It took me a second to realized that the “Apricots” in this sentence was me. As it turns out, my last name Casey (Кейси in Cyrillic) is very close to apricots (кайси). I was immediately reminded of something Dena, the Fulbright in Lovech before me, had written once about her own name being close to “watermelon” in Bulgarian, and how the headmaster at our school used to tease her about that. (He doesn’t tease me about my close association with these smaller fruits, but instead says something about Obama every time I see him.) I found it both funny to be known as “Apricots” and that, for two years in a row now, our school has had “fruit” American teachers. So, looking back on this incident so many months later, I have decided to change the name of my blog to the “Observations of an Almost Apricot,” and now you know where the name comes from.

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year, I thought the best way for my students to really see what Americans do to prepare for the holiday, and get a sense of the food we eat, the atmosphere of family, thankfulness and the joy of being together that is represented by American Thanksgiving, or can be represented by this holiday, would be for them to see it firsthand. While I couldn’t fly them all to my parents’ house where each year my mom’s side of the family, about 25 people total, gathers for a pitch-in lunch in my parents’ kitchen, my mom and I had been joking about setting a place around the table for her laptop and that I would be able to skype with my family while they ate, which would be at about the same time I would be eating dinner in Bulgaria. So, the night before I was thinking about this when I thought, why can’t I do that with my students. I knew my mom would be up early preparing the turkey and cleaning the kitchen, and that my aunt would be arriving before anyone else to put the stuffing in the oven, so, with the time difference, it would mean that my classes would be at the exact same time that my parents, and later my aunt, would be doing all of the preparations and could show my students everything that goes into our family’s Thanksgiving. My next step was just to ensure that it was okay with my parents, and that I could use either the English center, which has a large screen and a projector; a portable projector for in the classroom; or the newly renovated theater hall, both of which were handled through a quick email to Pavlina and simply asking my mom, who I was already talking to on skype. My mom gave the okay, but told me that she wouldn’t be awake in time for the first class, but that she could talk to the second and third. And then I went to bed. 

When I woke up the next morning, I realized that I had received a quick response from Pavlina who seemed thrilled by the idea and insisted that I use the theater. At this point, the renovation on the theater had just finished, and not only it had it not been used, the school had not yet had the official opening ceremony for the hall, so I was a little nervous to even ask if I could use it at all. While I thought skyping with my parents might be fun for the students, I still only saw this as something sort of small, no big deal, and I had other lesson plan options as a back up in case it didn’t work for some reason. When I got to school, however, it seemed my idea had spread seemingly overnight. Pavlina asked if her ninth grade students could also join, which was fine with me, but when I tried to explain that my mom wouldn’t be available for probably another 40 minutes because of the time difference, I don’t think she understood or, as we were standing in the hallway surrounded by her 9th grade students who were already there waiting to talk to my parents, could hear me. Either way, my first class of 8th graders, who I had planned on doing my back up lessons with, as my mom was currently sleeping in Indiana and wasn’t available to skype, suddenly became a combined class of around 50 students and me as the only teacher. Not only did my plans work better with a smaller group, it was also a writing exercise, and of course none of the students had brought either a writing utensil or paper. The idea was to have the students work in pairs to answer the following prompt, “Imagine you are a turkey, and Thanksgiving is coming soon. Now, you really don’t want to be chosen for the dinner table. Write a speech explaining why your partner is a better choice for the dinner table,” which seemed okay to do with 8th grade, but for whatever reason, began to feel really juvenile for the 9th graders. Either way, I plowed ahead for that first session. I was having trouble keeping my 27 8th grade students quiet and focused during our 40 minute classes, so why wouldn’t I be able to hold the attention of 27 more students I didn’t realize I would be teaching until a minute before class started?

It certainly wasn’t my best lesson ever, but right before the bell rang, my mom finally got on skype, and everything turned around. My 8th grade students left, but the 9th graders were still hanging around the theater and started trickling back in when they realized that it was up and running, and then didn’t want to leave when their next class was supposed to begin. For my next two lessons, again with around 50 students in each, everyone was engaged and curious and focused on what my parents had to say. It was going so well, that I offered the first 8th grade class a chance to come back at the end of the third lesson so that they too could see and talk to my parents. For the most part, the questions stayed on topic, or at least about life in America and what my parents’ house and life was like, but my mom made the mistake of mentioning my younger brother and then showing my students a picture of him. Jarrett is 24 and a professional baseball player, so my female students immediately “fell in love” with him, and have since joked about skyping with my family again, but this time forget about my parents and only having my brother on. 

While all of this was going on, and unknown to me, a photographer and journalist with a local newspaper found out about my lesson and decided to run an article on it, making my parents, as my neighbor told me later, local celebrities for a short time in Lovech. Here is the photograph that ran in the paper.