My kids seem un-phased by their first year at school here, yet I feel like I have been plunged into the deep end of the pool without a pair of arm bands. For starters, school has introduced a whole new vocabulary to our Bulgarian language skills; I’m constantly asked “Where’s my ranitsa (schoolbag)?” or being told “You’ll never guess what happened in mezhdou chas (break) today”. One son informed me that a dvoika (bad mark) was the worst thing that could happen in your school life, while my other son came home and said he had one.

My sons are not only bilingual now, but they have slipped into a kind of Anglo-Bulgarian patois, which we as parents are rapidly trying to understand. When I attempt speaking Bulgarian, they cry: “Mum, you make too many greshki (mistakes).” If I ask how school was, I’m greeted with “dobre” (good). And then there’s the swearing... To me some of the Bulgarian unprintables just seem like more words to look up in the dictionary, until one son cants on the other, telling me that “he just said xyz”. Should I be praising them for their degree of fluency or reprimanding them for their foul mouths? Weren’t the swear words the first thing I looked up when I was learning French and German?

Keeping up with my sons’ growing linguistic skills is nothing compared to interacting with the school. Much is demanded from Bulgarian parents in the education of their children and my half-hearted English approach of “let the school sort them out”, is totally unacceptable here. Each month there is a roditelska sreshta (meeting of parents), which, for me, means two, as my boys are in separate classes. I have tried to view these sessions as a means of furthering my own language skills, yet they leave me frustrated and confused. Parent meetings aim to encourage us to support our children and their teachers in the learning process.

Last week, my son called me to inform me that I should attend a parent’s meeting that day. He was unsure of the time and so were the three school friends he put on the phone, but finally with two minutes to spare, I arrived out of breath and unprepared.

The first half of the meeting consisted of a half-hour session about zadachki. I sat there trying to fathom out what the teacher was on about using the snippets of conversation I was able to pick up; five kids were having problems with zadachki ... we all needed to include more zadachki in our home life. Ok, it was something important and something the kids needed to learn, but what on earth was it? I began to reprimand myself for attending the meeting without a dictionary. At this point I knew I should have raised my hand and asked, but the embarrassment was too great and I sat there nodding as if I completely understood.

The next section on diktovka (dictation) was a breeze and I began to lapse into linguistic genius mode, whereby I was tempted to ask a questions just to show off. Next we were given a list of rules about school life: don’t give your kid a wad of leva to go to the shops at break time, 50 stotinki will suffice; don’t send your child in dirty wellies when it’s a PE day; don’t allow your little angel to eat gum and something about baby teeth, which I still haven’t figured out.

The final part of the meeting is so politically incorrect I applaud the Bulgarians for including it. It’s the session when kids are named and shamed in front of the whole class of parents – it’s a kind of parental reprimand for not doing our jobs. The five children who were having problems with the zadachki were named and their parents were told that it was imperative that they attend the homework club. Three other children were named as disruptive influences in the class. I sat with bated breath hoping that my son’s name would not be included after all, he had recently received this dvoika.

Finally at the end of the meeting, I gathered up my things hoping to sneak out unnoticed, when I was summoned to the front of the class. My first fear – that I was going to be tested on the content of the meeting; my second, that a dvoika was so bad that it was excluded from the regular naming and shaming. As it turns out, the teacher wanted me to meet the homework club teacher to arrange when my sons could come in for the new afternoon session.

Breathing a sigh of relief that I had survived another session and vowing to become fluent in the language by the time the next meeting comes around, I sat my sons down and said: “What the hell is zadachki?” The answer? “Sums of course.”