Здравейте! Now it’s a month since I’ve here and around three weeks since I have started to learn the Bulgarian language.

Actually, I tried to get started with it more less two weeks before coming to Kazanlak. My effort was over, when I found many version of Bulgarian alphabet and only God knew in that moment which was right. I said to myself: “O-o-okay, maybe it’s better to wait for a real teacher.” However, I was still excited and I wanted to know maybe just few words before my journey, so I bought a travel guide. It was very good investition and I’m still using it sometimes.

First week here was naturally first week of contact with the new language as well. “Здравейте, как сте, да, не,..” are for sure phrases which man can learn very easily in the first days. In my case it was also one not very common word in everyday conversations – “кашлица”. Yes, I was quite sick when I arrived, so I had to buy cough syrup and ask for it in Bulgarian.

It didn’t take a long and we started having Bulgarian lessons with Krassimira. Since then I can see a huge improvement in my language skills. Firstly, we had very intensive type of education, lessons had 2 and half hours every day. Honestly, I still don’t know part of vocabulary from these days, because I had no time to remembering and learning by myself. On the other hand, it was worthy because we faced new alphabet everyday, we had to write and read every day and these things, in my opinion, must to be intensive at the beginning.

Actually, I would not name this article “My fight with Bulgarian language”. I am don’t feel like fighting at all. Guessing it’s because I am slavic as well as Bulgarians and there are plenty of words which are completely the same. I would rather name this article “How I’m becoming friendly with Bulgarian language” or “Day by day closer and closer to speaking in Bulgarian”.

I would like to say that Krassimira is very good teacher. We smoothly passed from remembering words by heart and long exhaustive daily lessons to shorter ones all about writing sentences, thinking about structures of them and reading them out loud, which is for me much more useful than the previous approach.

I have also some opportunities to practise Bulgarian in “real life”. Every time in restaurants and bars, with neighbors, with kids at the presentations or just with locals.. They are very happy when we’re trying to say something in their language and we are happy we can. 🙂