Prom - BG style

I've been to a lot of high school proms. I attended 3 at Holt High School (with Kelly, Beth, and Lindsay), 1 at Onsted High (with Beth), and then chaperoned 6 or 7 more, at Westridge and Webb (with Laura). Last year I didn't get to the ACS prom because I was enjoying post-op at Tokuda Hospital, but this year, I was all in. Sadly, Shannon couldn't join me (it would have cost her over $100), but I'm sure she'll get her chance to attend a prom or twenty with me in the future.
At some level, all proms are the same. The kids dress themselves up all fancy: some of the guys look downright manly, and many of the girls look way too good. Families take lots of "they're so grown up!" photos, the kids get an expensive dinner, a big ballroom is rented, cheesy music is danced to, and kids stay out all night at after-parties doing all sorts of things that parents pretend/hope they wouldn't.
Some things are not the same in Bulgaria.  The main differences here were that 1. This was not a school-sponsored event and 2. All the seniors can legally smoke and drink. Which they do. A lot.

I didn't attend this year's prom as a chaperone, making sure kids were behaving. I attended as a guest, invited by the senior class, to take part in their general mis-behaving. It was a very different experience.

The prom-goers start out on campus for class photos around 6pm. With all the parents, grandparents, and siblings well-wishing (and some rented professional photogs/videogs capturing every moment), they took their places standing on the steps of Sanders Hall, just like their beginning of 8th grade photo, except now the girls were in formal gowns, the guys in suits (almost no tuxes), and they were drinking champagne out of their recently earned intramural soccer championship trophy. Yeah, they did that.  As a bulgarian senior tradition, the students chant their numbers, counting to twelve ("Edno, dve, tri, cheteri, pet, shest, sedem, osem, devet, deset, edinaiset, dvaiset, WHOOOOOOOOO!") before cheering wildly.  If you didn't know your numbers before, a few minutes at picture session would set you straight.

Teachers looking fancy: Lindsay, Pei Pei, Jeff, Hanna, and Abby

Some of the dresses were classy, looking like Jackie O or Helen of Troy. Some looked more like burlesque performers or something in a Tim Burton show. To protect the innocent, I'll skip some of those photos, though I have to say that given the rather revealing things these students wear to school regularly, I'd have to say that the dresses were overall much less whore-ish than I expected, and probably as a whole more decent than the ones from US proms.
All the kids were then shuttled downtown to the Sheraton (the first non-Socialist hotel to open in the country) in various luxury vehicles...it was a fancy car parade: Mercedes, BMWs, Audi's,  a swish Chrysler, a Lamborghini, convertibles, some classic cars, and a few students quietly getting into humbler rides.

OK Supertans: The somewhat less-swanky transit option chosen by the teachers.

At the Sheraton, with all the relatives still in toe, more counting to twelve ensued a the entrance. (" ...edinaiset, dvaiset, WHOOOOOOO!!!!!) An Asian man in his late twenties, casually dressed in a t-shirt and shorts and apparently a guest at the Sheraton, looked on with fascination, watching the whole procedure for a good 15 minutes.

All the teachers of seniors plus a few honored extras received prom invitations from the seniors. Considering how much they must have spent on the room, food, and alcohol, I considered it an honor to attend. After waiting for  more pictures and "WHOOOO!-ing", the teachers snuck inside and got seated. As a walked in the ballroom, I was handed a glass of champaign. So this is how it was going to be.
Before I got started on my plate of appetizers, a waiter came around offering healthy glasses of whisky and vodka (I declined). Sitting on the table were several bottles of tasty Bulgarian wine (and some Coke, Fanta, and water, just in case). At Westridge prom I had to help the dean of students look for drunk kids, as they would be breathylyzed and severely punished if they were caught drinking. Here students kept coming over to the teacher tables for toasts. Odd.
Besides the smoking and drinking, most of the official prom continued as any other prom would. Some awkward dancing, a dance-off for king and queen, and some teachers trying to stay awake (but mostly the teachers were on the dance floor, getting down).

Faculty table at prom

Dancing the horo at prom (I joined in)

Prom dancefloor. At this point Boyan still had his shirt on.

Teachers mixing it up at prom.

I like this shot.

At midnight the official prom ended, and most students migrated to Sin City, a popular chalga club, for the after-party. Chalga is a Bulgarian creation, a very danceable mix of traditional folk music with a techno beat, all set to insipid/degrading lyrics.  There are MTV-like channels and radio stations that play nothing but chalga. Other balkan countries have similar versions of folk-techno, I think, and each country is sure that theirs is the original (just as each country is sure that Macedonia is really theirs...but I digress).

Sin City.

And so it begins. Sin City: the after-party.

Last year only a few teachers went to the after-party. but this year I think at least 10 of us made it. After standing in line to be frisked by some mafia-goons (who were supposedly checking IDs too, as you were supposed to be 18 to get in, but I saw plenty of 10th graders there, so they weren't checking too closely), I almost turned around when I saw that they wanted 30 leva to get in the door (about $22). A $22 cover charge might not seem like much to you US city-folk, but 30 leva will get you dinner for two including a little alcohol at a medium-nice restaurant in Sofia, so it's pretty steep.  Sin City is considered the VIP dance club in town, where the celebrities and footballers go to celebrate.  I decided it would be a cultural experience and needed to do it, regardless of the 30 leva .

The inside was, well, amazing. LOUD. My ears were still ringing 24 hours later. Bright and flashy, as any good club should be. And PACKED.  The students had apparently reserved tables ahead of time that circled the elevated dance floor. I can only imagine what those tables cost, as they came with many, many bottles of very expensive booze. I'm guessing one of those tables (with booze) was 500-1000 leva, but I don't really know.


I only taught a handful of the senior class, so I didn't really know most of them. Too bad, as it was a pretty good show. This was where the booze was flying (and apparently some coke was being snorted). At a place called "sin city" packed with 100+ drunk, horny, and celebratory teenagers (not to mention the regular crowd of mafiosos and their prostitute-lite girlfriends, jammed into the corner and looking a little peeved about the high schooler intrusion), I expect dirty things happen.  I tried to leave before I saw too many of them happen.

Can you spot the teacher on the dancefloor?

I danced a bit, both on the elevated dance floor and just in the regular area, and just watched the show. There was a small live band wandering around in addition to the DJ. It was fairly insane. I was both fascinated to watch the spectacle, but self-conscious about being the creepy old guy in the corner staring at teenagers. In the end I stayed about an hour, but as I saw more and more of my current students (all underage, likely there with a fake ID or bribing the doormen), I decided it was time to make for the exits.

It's about 1:30 am, and it's starting to be a junkshow. There are 3 drunk teachers (one partially obscured) in this shot.

All in all, it was an excellent experience. I doubt Deerfield prom will be quite the same!

Short video clip from Sin City:



Social-Political footnote: I couldn't imagine how frustrating it must be for European students to attend colleges in the US, after having (legal) social outlets available like Sin City, and then having to make do with house-parties and illicit dorm room drinking for a few years. Tell me again why the legal drinking age is 21 in the US? Were the kids at Sin City going to do stupid things while drunk? Of course, but no different than US college kids (or high school, for that matter) do at a house party. It seems as if the main reason we're so tough on teen drinking in the US is to prevent drunk driving. I'm all for preventing drunk driving, but maybe it would be better to focus on the driving part, instead of the drinking part. I think drunk driving is pretty rare in Europe (I need some stats to back me up), partly because public transit and taxis are so much more accessible, and partly because driving is so much more difficult (expensive/difficult to get a license, expensive to drive, and if you get busted for DD, you lose your license. Done. You might not get it back for years, if at all). End rant.