The kids are alright.

Teaching is hard. Often times you end up in an adversarial relationship with students, or they fall asleep in your class, or they give you a hard time about grades. It's easy to start seeing them as your opponents, or as a mass of 140+ vessels to pour knowledge into. That's why it's important to occasionally have days like today.

Shannon was the lead organizer for our school's participation in a Bulgaria-wide volunteer day, sponsored in part by the American Chamber of Commerce in Bulgaria ("AmCham"). She decided our school would contribute by joining a clean-up in Vitosha Nature Park, on the big lovely mountain near Sofia. Shannon recruited over 70 teachers and students to give up their Saturday to go pick up trash in the woods. Almost half the group came associated with the hiking club, which I advise.  Thankfully the weather was just stupendous for late October: not a cloud in the sky, crisp air (temps in the high 40s F), and painfully pretty fall colors all over the mountain (boy, since I'd lived out West so long, I didn't realize how much I'd missed living in a deciduous forest!).  This weather was extra welcome as it was probably only the 3rd or 4th sunny day the entire month -- we've had a lot of cold rainy gloom.

We spent 4 hours wandering around in the woods, breaking up illegal fire rings, picking up beer bottles, plastic bags, broken glass, random scrap metal, bits of old high-voltage electrical wiring (!), some condoms, old nasty toilet paper, soda cans, chip bags, the whole bit.  Because of all the leaves fallen in autumn, we had to kick the leaves around on the ground to uncover such finds. We had 60 kids hiking to pick up trash, for fun! The only real complaint for the day from most of them was that the places we were sent didn't have enough trash for them to pick up.It was great. The kids were having a grand old time wandering through the woods, searching for "buried treasure."
After teaching in litigation-happy California, I got used to trying to keep a close-eye on students, making sure things were in control. I had to be in less control here, partly because my poor Bulgarian skills mean I had to ask kids to interpret directions or signs, but also because the students here are just a lot more independent. Sometimes a few kids would wander off out of sight as they picked up trash, and I'd get a little nervous, then they happily come bouncing back 10 minutes with a few more items in their trash bags. Trustworthy, reliable, and good-natured.

After the 4 hour trash pick-up, about half the hiking club kids wanted to stick around to go for an actual hike. We took a rickety old chair lift up to the top of the ridge, then spent 3 delightful hours hiking back down to civilization.  It was all-smiles, all-day. Happy kids, hiking in the woods. No one complained, just happy chatter on a lovely fall day.  It was nice to just talk to them, to play, to enjoy being outside together, breathing fresh air, crunching fallen leaves underfoot. I even snuck in a few ecology lessons, but only if they didn't mind the school talk. :)

As we neared the suburb of Simeonovo at the end of our hike (almost 9 hours after we first met), we came to a popular picnic area that was suffering the effects of being a popular picnic area. There was plenty of trash here, more that we'd seen in most of the areas of our trash-pick-up session.

"Mr. J, do you have any more of those trash bags left? Are there any more latex gloves?"

At the end of a long day, with absolutely no prompting, the students decided to stop and pick up more trash.
They hit that area hard for 20 minutes, until we had to push them to leave because it was getting dark. All the way down to the bus stop they picked up trash, which got a little overwhelming as we got more and more into the city. It was inspiring.

Yeah, the kids are alright.