The 8th of March

We celebrated International Woman's Day on Tuesday. Obviously there are no boundaries to this holiday, being international and all, but people take it more seriously in Europe and don't really know about it in America. All the female municipal employees went over to a conference room in the other buildings where this was awaiting us:

Drinks and Snacks

The mayor set this up and gave a speech and a champagne toast, some of his staff (men) read off passages about why women, moms, wives and grandmas are so great. Some people got three flowers, Stoyka my landlady and friend was one of the special ones. Everyone else got one flower and free reign of what they wanted from the table. I stayed to help clean up after and got some leftovers. Then the work day was over at 12:30 and we got the rest of the day off for being women.

Champagne Toast

Stoyka

I tried to track down some expat women and share my leftovers and general Woman's Day celebratoriness with them but I didnt find any. I went to the school instead, since all the teachers are women, and brought them cookies and snacks. They already had a giant cake and gave me some, and this cake was decent by American standards. It tasted like what we know as cake and had what we would consider frosting so it was awesome. I got a flower from the director too, which is currently with my other one in my makeshift old wine bottle vase, an idea that I stole from Hannah.

It got really cold here this past week, back bellow freezing and with snow, so everything is quiet again around town. Good thing I planned stuff inside with the kids. They are going to participate in an artwork  contest through the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). Each kid draws or paints a A4(8.5/11) piece of paper with the topic "Life in the Forests". The art is due April 15th to the European office in France. There will be places awarded 1st to 5th and  a winner for each region who will all attended the Tunza International Childrens Conference and receive their awards/money.