Pijo and Penda are also on the way
I am sure that a lot of you never heard about this holiday. Аnd I would like to explain you why for me is so important. In my country we celebrate every year 1st of March and we call it Baba Marta (Babica Marta). On this day the winter is slowly starting to go and spring is coming for us  :). In sign of that we give to our closest friends and family Martenitsi – that is a symbol of health. Looks in this way: 
One of the legends about Pijo and Penda that you can see on the photo is called “The legend of Pijo and Penda – the brother and sister”.
“Before a lot of time in Rodopi mountain was living a modest and hardworking family. Their biggest pain was that they can’t have children. One time in their house came one old lady. She said to the woman that she can help them to solve this problem. She can give them possibility to have a twins but the kids needs to be called Pijo and Penda, when the girl will be 16 years old the old lady will take her. The woman was so happy to hear that they will finally have children and she didn’t hear the last condition. 1st of March she give birth of her beautiful kids – the boy with the red chicks was with name Pijo and the girl with the white face was called Penda. The time was passing so fast and came the day of their 16th birthday and the old lady came to take Penda. The mother tried to safe her daughter, but the grandmother turnеd her to a tree. After that she took the life of Penda and went with it. Pijo was praying to the old lady to give back the life of Penda. She was going but he didn’t stop to walk after her praying. At the end she told him that if he love her so much he need to pay with his own blood to be with her again. He was ready for that, so he agree. Pijo hug his sister and suddenly on the roof of the house apear 2 storks and when the father comes back he saw the big tree and in the leaves with white and red strings were tied Pijo and Penda… staying there forever.”

Usually is enough to put just white and red string on your hand in different kinds of bracelets that we make. 
And what we did with the students of Tone Okrogar on this day? We create a lot of nice Martenitsi. We put them on a tree after one week when we saw a stork, like is in our Bulgarian tradition. Now infront Tone Okrogar primary school you can find the result of our work :) More then 100 kids already had a workshop of creating Pijo and Penda. All Zagorje now know about it, also in Mladinski centur Zagorje ob Savi we had the workshop like afterschool activity. Thank you kids! You are great!

Your small “ućitelića” Tony