solemn is hard to spell

Today is "Ден на независимостта." (And yes, the last word is very hard to remember!)

It is the Bulgarian Independence Day, when Bulgarians celebrate their liberation from the Ottoman Empire.

Last night, Nasa and Vania were explaining this to us. I asked Vania if it was going to be like our "4th of July." She said no, that the meaning was the same, but it was not celebrated in the same way because of all of the horrible things that Bulgarians have been through to get their independence. I asked, "So it's more of a solemn day?"

This led to a interesting problem, because Vania did not know the word solemn, and Joe and I didn't quite know how to explain it. We tried to look it up in our dictionary, but we couldn't find it! We tried solomn, solum, solumn, solom.... and finally, we found it... s-o-l-e-m-n. It was embarrassing, but amusing.

Finally, when we found the Bulgarian translation for solemn, Vania said, "Yes, it's kind of like that."