Bulgaria with Noodles

Last Saturday, it came round again: the World Scholar's Cup. (Why can't the apostrophe be after the "S"? Is there only one scholar in the whole world?)  Although the WSC wants to get into the Guinness book of Records for the most tacky trophies given out to children, it is a lot of fun and the young people who take part do get to debate some very tough motions. In the Junior Rounds, we had some tough motions and in the Senior Rounds they were even tougher: "Resolved: That schools should teach classes on how to make mistakes", "That only the original writers of a movie should be allowed to write the sequel" and "That leaders of big countries should first practise being leaders of smaller countries." I did not have to do any judging in the morning, as we had quite a surplus of judges. I went along to the training session for the judges, up in the "penthouse" at St. George's, and then I went along to see a few...

Okay, here comes the good news. The Bulgarian Minster for Education has wisely and judiciously decreed a week’s holiday for all of the students of the schools in Sofia because of the influenza epidemic that has hit schools all over Bulgaria. (What a good and sensible chap!) Yes, I know that this might seems a bit crazy, dear reader, as I have only been at St. George’s since the beginning of January and now we have ten days of holiday. That is not bad, eh? Yesterday I was terribly busy, even though it was a Saturday. Yes, we had the Sofia round of the World Scholar’s Cup at St. George’s. Justin Kilcullen-Nichols, my new headmaster, looked very pleased as he welcomed hundreds of students (and their parents and teachers) from all over Sofia. I must say that St. George's new theatre looked super-swanky and very impressive.  I was one of the judges for the junior and the senior debating competitions. In a nutshell, you have two teams making speeches about a particular motion a...

Just over a week ago we had the World Scholar’s Cup at Green Oasis. For most of this semester I have been coaching the twenty-four students in Years 5 and 6 who were going to take part in this competition. It is a rather academic mixture of general knowledge quiz, essay writing challenge and debating competition.  All of the students who took part in the WSC were given an alpaca. They had to promise to be good alpaca parents, to look after their alpacas properly and not eat them. I was also given a small alpaca, but it looks as though he is going to be left behind in China. I know a little girl who would be a good alpaca parent. Judy and Wyatt, two students from my own Year 5 class, did rather well and of course I was very pleased about that. What was not so good was that it went on (and on) and in fact I did not get home on the Friday night until 9pm. After a long week of school, that was tough. Yesterday the man from the AGS freight company came to our apartment, t...