Open-doors Day at the College (Year 2 Term 2)

It is a long-lived tradition that on the 22nd of March the college organizes an open-door day. The twenty-second is the holiday of our town and there is a generally very festive feeling among all citizens. The college therefore decides that the student don't have to study and it is a perfect time to organize an event when all people who have an interest to come and see the college come. We usually have many parents and potential students. All in all, this year we had many people and it turned out very well in general.

Last year I was invited in the Biology Lab, where a lot of beautiful experiments were done. This year I decided to spend my time quite differently. I spent half of my time in the Psychology/Arts Workshop, because Mrs. Hristova (my VA teacher) was the first one to invite me, plus I wanted to do more artistic stuff this year. I also spent some time in the maths room, where the topic was the beautiful mathematics.

The arts/psychology workshop was meant to find the connection between colors and emotions. We had an educational presentation and also a practical task - everyone was asked to draw one emotion without clear signs (like a smiley for example) and without telling which one it is and the others had to guess the emotion, based on what colors and shapes the person had used. Such a thoughtful idea in my opinion. In the math room we were showing people some amazing graphs, which prove that maths can be very beautiful. We had also prepared some mathematical linguistic problems, which were very sweet. In fact, I love this and in previous grades I used to go to olympiads about mathematical linguistics, but I sadly have no more time.

Promoting Arcus to Potential Recruits (Year 2 Term 2)

This Monday I was asked by the headmaster to help him in the promoting of the college to parents and potential student in Bacho Kiro Primary School. This is one of the largest primary schools in Veliko Tarnovo and there are a lot of smart kids there. I agreed to participate as I believe the college is the nicest option in our town and more people should come to it.

Frankly, my main job was to answer question and particularly in connection to the IB, but parents rarely asked anything, let alone have a particular interest in the IB. Therefore, I did not do much work, which kind of made me sad, as at the end it was just two hours lost for nothing. I just hope our primary work was done and more people come to the college in the next years.

My Big Final Concert (Year 2 Term 2)

I have been playing the cello for 12 years. This is a lot of time... I've learned so very much, I've been to places, I've seen and heard other people, I've played with other people and frankly I've also made some very close friends.

The natural finale of this "era" for me was doing a special concert, in order to honor my time spent learning the instrument and in order to show people what I've achieved since the beginning.

On this special night I was not alone - I played together with Christine, a fellow musician. She has also been playing with me since first grade, in her case the instrument mastered is the flute. In fact, we were quite a big group during our first years, but for one reason or another it was only us two who stuck until the end. I was very happy to make a concert with her.

Long story short - it was an absolutely fantastic experience. Our playing was amazing, but the emotion that we brought to people was what was really worth of acknowledging. An amazing concert, which put quite some people in tears. A great ending of a very special thing for me....

Fitness (Year 2 Term 1&2)

I think they key to me being successful in the IB Program might be the fact that I never ever stopped my physical activity throughout these two years. In fact, I became even more consistent and increased the number of times I go to the gym every week. This helped me very much. Staying in shape is important so as to be healthy, but I also think it is correlated to a good mental health and stability.

I generally go to the gym 3 to 4 times a week. I prefer to go in the weekends and less times during the week, because when I have afternoon classes I come home very tired. My favorite part is definitely running, but I also enjoy the physical exercises. Sadly, I don't have a "gym buddy", so I often train alone, but it is as it is.

Meeting Zahari Karabashliev (Year 2 Term 1)

On this day we met with a very famous Bulgarian author - Zahari Karabashliev. It is a tradition that an author is invited to the college for a presentation and discussion with the students.

To prepare for the event I read his one and first novel 18% Gray, which I liked very, very much. I was therefore prepared to participate and listen a presentation, which was very interesting indeed. I also loved that we got to ask questions, because I had quite many. Mr. Karabashliev was very keen to answer them and talked to us a lot and as if we were grown-ups, which was super cool of him.

TEDxCERN Educational Videos (Year 2 Term 1)

Who doesn't know TED, the organization that makes these awesome videos. Or CERN, the biggest science center in Europe. On Sunday, the 5th of November, the two institutions combined to produce a live event. It included videos with different lectors on very interesting topics. They were far away from one another, varied from drones to physics and so on. In our town the event was held in the Faculty on Economics of the University of Veliko Tarnovo. It happens that the university is a partner of CERN, so they knew about the event. They on the other hand invited us from the American College, because we have tight connections as institutions.

In fact we went there with our biology teacher Mrs. Staykova. She organized the group from our school. We were there mainly for the biology-orientated videos. On the other hand I personally enjoyed the most the one for the recently-detected gravitational waves, finding of which was the century's milestone in physics. It was overall very interesting. At the beginning we had some technical problems but thankfully they managed to cope with them and we had an undisturbed live-streaming. It was a well-spent free time of a Saturday.

Organizing and Celebrating this year's Halloween (Year 2 Term 1)

For at least a sixth year now there is an organized Halloween trip from our school. We are an international school that wants to combine own and foreign traditions. A Halloween trip is already one. This is an event that is organized annually. The previous years it was Mrs. Petarcheva who did it, but she's no more with us. This is why me and my class (12IB) decided to organize it ourselves. We also got huge amount of help from the teachers Mrs. Antonova, Mrs. Slavcheva and Mrs Marinova.

This trip was an opportunity to also bring the young IBs in "the game". We let them organize all the entertainment stuff for the Halloween party. They did a great job. Maybe even better than us last year.  The trip is usually made for the youngest - the 8th graders, which made up roughly a half of our group. This is because the trip is a great way for them to meet each other, establish friendships and bond. In the end they were very happy I believe. The 11th graders were also, they are going to have many more trips this year. I was very happy as well, but also a bit sad, because this is probably my last such trip. It is November, but I see the end so clearly that I can't believe it.