Kiril i Metodij Celebration

May 24th, the day of saints Kiril i Metodij (the creators of the Cyrillic alphabet), is a big holiday across Macedonia, however, my town knows how to do the day right. The school where I worked is named after these two brothers and recently we just had a name change to include the "saint" aspect into the school's name. With the new name change came new school logos and everything with the school name had to be reprinted, just to include Св (the Cyrillic abbreviation for saints).

On May 24th, everyone has off work to celebrate, however, because it is my school's Patron's Day, some of the teachers worked a little, helping put on a school performance and the local Opstina had several employees working quite a bit. Their hard work, however, made for quite an enjoyable day for the viewers of this spectacular event. I will let pictures do the rest of the talking.

Some of the preschoolers I worked with at the kindergarten/daycare

Getting ready to perform a traditional dance

The choir- quite a few of these girls are my 6th graders

Brothers Cyril and Methodius, the creators of the Cyrillic alphabet (or adorable children dressed up as such)

A play by the youngins about the importance of learning the alphabet. This was one of my favourite acts of the show because I was able to understand it all, thus proving my fluency in Macedonian is at the level of a 1st grader.

Some of my 6th grader girls reciting a piece about the alphabet

A couple of my 4th grade girls recited a piece about the alphabet as well

More 4th graders

And a play by my 6th graders. I didn't understand a whole lot of what was going on here- they were speaking super fast.

Traditional Oro dancing

The opener's opener- a group from Kochani I believe called Shine

The opener- Dani who is supposedly a famous Macedonian pop star

Some of my students posing with Dani

The main star, Vlado Janevski, with some of my students. The openers had live music. This guy sang along to a CD player that I think had the words as well so if he forgot the lyrics.....

And despite the concert finishing around 11pm after events had been going on since 1:00, the day wasn't complete without a mini fireworks display. I think I will have many other PCVs coming to celebrate this day in my town next year!