I am from Seattle, but I grew up in Walla Walla, a small town in Eastern Washington. I graduated from the University of Montana in 2000 and received a degree in print journalism while also playing football for the Grizzlies from 1996-1999. Upon graduating I returned to the Evergreen State as a reporter for the King County Journal, a daily newspaper in Bellevue -- a suburb of Seattle. I covered sports and general news for the Journal for three years until I became a Peace Corps Volunteer.

On April 19, 2004 I arrived in Bulgaria. I spent the next 27 months here working as an primary English teacher. I spent my first three months in Perushtitsa, a small town 23 kilometers southwest of Plovdiv. On July 3, 2004 I moved to Zavet, a town of 3,000 people in northeast Bulgaria. It is 37 kilometers north of Razgrad and about four hours (by bus) from Varna on the Black Sea. Zavet's population is 50 percent Turkish, 45 percent Bulgarian and 5 percent Roma. The school, Kiril and Metodii, has around 400 students grades one through 12.

I taught English to 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th graders.

You can contact me at: mthomp28@yahoo.com

   Zavet

The school where I taught.