Living what she’s learned: Soraya Keiser ’24 reflects on a year of teaching, growing, and connecting in Bulgaria

On a recent afternoon in Sliven, Bulgaria, Soraya Keiser ’24 gathered a group of high schoolers in the library of Zahariy Stoyanov Foreign Language High School—not for a grammar quiz or lecture, but for craft club. The students chatted in English as they glued, stitched, and painted, practicing vocabulary and building confidence without even realizing it. “I get filled up by my extracurriculars, and those are the students that really want to be there,” Soraya says. “They're coming outside of their class time. They have other things going on, jobs or sports or things, and they'll come and, like, hang out and do crafts or talk about books.” 

Soraya is Bethel’s first student in more than a decade to receive a Fulbright Scholarship—an award that offers recent graduates opportunities to teach, conduct research, and build cross-cultural relationships around the world. Since fall 2024, she’s been living in Sliven, a city of about 80,000 in central Bulgaria, where she served as a high school English teaching assistant. 

She works with high school students, helping them grow more confident in speaking English and engaging with American culture. “Really, my goal is to get students more comfortable speaking in English,” Soraya says. She describes her role as both cultural guide and conversation coach, and she builds her own curriculum to support those goals—choosing topics, designing activities, and finding ways to make English feel approachable and relevant.

While Soraya enjoys connecting with students through informal clubs and conversation, the classroom has brought unexpected challenges. With no set curriculum, she’s responsible for designing every lesson herself—selecting topics, creating materials, and adjusting on the fly when plans don’t land. Cultural differences add complexity, as Soraya says Bulgarians are very straightforward and open, especially compared to the Midwesterners. “My students here, they’re not afraid to tell you if they are bored or don’t want to do something,” she says with a laugh. “If I don’t present it in a way that doesn’t seem like school, they’ll be like, ‘This is stupid.’”

After attending a Fulbright-hosted conference for English teaching assistants from across the Balkans, Soraya left with a renewed focus on media literacy. The sessions explored how misinformation continues to shape public perception in the region. Since then, she’s been exploring ways to help her students think more critically about the media they consume. The topic feels especially relevant in her classroom, where students often rely on their phones as their primary learning device and are quick to use AI tools like ChatGPT. With limited access to computers, Soraya saw opportunities to guide students toward more thoughtful, discerning engagement with digital content.

That intersection of global awareness, storytelling, and critical thinking has long shaped Soraya’s work—starting with her time at Bethel. A double major in journalism and international relations, she served in leadership roles at The Clarion, Bethel’s student newspaper, and traveled abroad multiple times. She twice visited Guatemala to tell stories, first through Bethel’s award-winning Textura magazine project. Then she partnered with a professor through the Edgren Scholars program to produce Border of Dreams, a documentary sharing the immigration stories of two families—one that made it to the United States and one that didn’t.

Those experiences helped prepare Soraya for the complexities of her Fulbright role. With no formal background in education, she’s relied on the skills she developed in journalism and international relations—curiosity, adaptability, cross-cultural awareness—to build connections and navigate unfamiliar situations. “When I was applying, what they’re looking for is someone who is curious and able to interact with others and be a critical thinker,” she says. Her Bethel courses, especially in the humanities, helped shape her confidence in expressing ideas and engaging thoughtfully across cultures.

As the only American many of her students have ever met, Soraya plays an important role in shaping their understanding of the United States. She fields questions about everything from politics to pop culture—and sometimes, it’s overwhelming, especially during a divisive time. Still, she sees value in those conversations, but it can be overwhelming to feel like the students’ “primary source” on America while also forming her own opinions and reactions to current events. 

Living in Sliven has stretched Soraya in new ways. As one of the only Americans—and one of the only young adults—in her city, she’s learned to navigate daily life largely on her own. At first, that solitude was difficult. But over time, she says, she’s grown more independent and grounded, learning to appreciate quiet routines and small rhythms of life abroad. After a surprise hospitalization for pneumonia in March, she was overwhelmed by support from her students and colleagues, who visited, brought food, and helped translate with doctors. For Soraya, it was a tangible reminder that connection and care can form across cultural and linguistic divides.

She’s also built meaningful relationships with other Fulbright scholars in the region. Though scattered in different cities—sometimes hours away—they’ve stayed connected through conferences, weekend events, and shared travel. With a three-day weekend built into her schedule, she’s taken full advantage—forming a tight-knit support network with peers who understand both the joys and challenges of teaching and living abroad. She’s found a close, supportive Fulbright community. “I've gotten very close with a lot of people in my cohort just through talking about the classroom or sharing lesson plans or traveling with them, catching up when we're at conferences,” she says. 

That independence has also reshaped her faith. With no English-speaking church community in Sliven, Soraya has had to navigate her spiritual life on her own—something she says has stretched and deepened her trust in God. “For so many years I’d say, ‘Put your faith in God,’” she says. “But I didn’t really truly know what that meant. Here I feel like I’ve been better at actually embodying that.”

As she finishes her Fulbright work, Soraya is thinking about what comes next. She plans to travel for a few weeks after her Fulbright concludes, then return to the United States. Graduate school is a likely next chapter, though she’s still deciding whether to pursue journalism, international relations, or both. “This has not narrowed it down at all,” she says, laughing. “Before I graduated, I was definitely leaning more toward journalism.” Soraya is now feeling a pull toward her curiosity for history and international relations. Her time in Bulgaria has only deepened her interest in borders, identity, and regional histories. “Now being here and being able to see these places and talk to people, it’s made me even more interested in borders and history,” she says.

Though her next steps are still taking shape, her year abroad has deepened her independence, strengthened her perspective, and affirmed her passions for storytelling, cross-cultural connection, and lifelong learning. “I would love to live abroad again,” she says. And after a year of navigating new cultures, building relationships, and following her curiosity, she’s ready to keep exploring—wherever the story leads. She’s come to believe that the best way to understand a place is by experiencing it firsthand. “It’s one thing to learn about something in a classroom and another thing to live it,” she says.

Study journalism and international relations at Bethel.

In both majors, you’ll build skills in critical thinking, storytelling, and global engagement—while exploring what it means to live out your faith in a complex, interconnected world.

• Learn more about the journalism major
• Learn more about the international relations major