On March 24, 2011 at Bacho Kiro High School in Pavlikeni, the first round of the national competition for spelling in English called Spelling Bee took place. The competition is a join initiative among the US Peace Corp., the Center for Inclusive Education, and the America for Bulgaria Foundation. There were 25 participants at Bacho Kiro High School, ranging from 4th to 7th grade.

Tyler Hurley, a Peace Corp. volunteer, led the contest, reading words out loud from an official word list, valid for all the schools around the country, who organized similar contests. In case contestants were not familiar with some words, English teacher Galya Rankova could translate them into Bulgarian on request.

The classroom, where the event was organized, turned out to be too packed to  accommodate all enthusiasts, curious to see how to spell and willing to support their peers. At the beginning of the event, every contestant received a number, which determined the order of turns.  Galya Rankova then read aloud the regulations of the competition in Bulgarian. The first round then commenced with easy words for warm up. The difficulty of the words increased with every consecutive round. A participant dropped out of the race if he or she pronounced incorrect letters or  forgot to repeat the word after spelling it.

In the end, Mina Plamenova Kalinova from class 7B, followed by her classmate Vasilena Peteva Marinova took first and second place respectively. Victoria Sasheva Stoyanova from class 5B took third place. The deserved winners received certificates and medals, as well as the right to participate in the Regional round of the Spelling Bee, which will take place in Veliko Tarnovo in April.

All other contestants received certificates for participation and notebooks with the logo of Spelling Bee.

Today (Mar. 24th) in Room No. 4, students presented their proposals for a new logo and poster for the project "Strong Enough to Be Kind". Teachers  from the project team attended the activity. The audience also included friends, interested students, and student members from the "June First" club, which aims to fight aggression. A total of 12 proposals (six for a logo and six for a poster) were discussed. These proposals were developed by students from 7, 8, and 9 grades and they will be used to introduce our project partners at a work-group meeting in Portugal in the coming week. In addition, all attendees listened to selected essays on the topic of the project by Vasilena and Ilona from class 9A, presentations by Gabriela and Anatoli from class 10A, and a short video about fighting school aggression, made by Ivaylo from class 10B.

The regional round of the Volleyball Inter-School games for grades 11-12 took place on March 23 in Pavlikeni. The following teams took place in the tournament for the region of Veliko Tarnovo:

The boys' teams first was won by the team of Staroprestolna Gimnazia po Ikonomika, while the team of SOU "Bacho Kiro" took fifth place. The girls' team of EG "Prof. Dr. Asen Zlatarov" - V. Tarnovo, won first place, and our team took second place.

Nikolay Alexandrov from class 10A and Venelin Rusanov from class 12A have achieved outstanding results at the Physics Olympiad. They are included in the list of students, invited to take part in the national round of the Physics Olympiad in 2010/2011. The list was compiled by the Regional Education Inspectorate in Veliko Tarnovo and it includes the ten best results. Nikolay earned 23 points and Venelin earned 26 points ouf of a total 30.

Nikolay Alexandrov	Venelin Rusanov