When Dave Kahill was applying to a teacher exchange program a few years ago, he was open to going anywhere in the world. His selections on the form were somewhat arbitrary.

“As I put down my top three choices,” he says, “a conversation I had in college with a Bulgarian friend popped into my mind, so I put down Bulgaria. It was a little bit random.”

The South Portland native spent the 2002-03 school year teaching in a village in the eastern European country. When Kahill returned to the US, he took a position teaching history at South Portland High School, while coaching track at Westbrook HS and assisting on the Gorham HS football team.

Now, after receiving an offer to teach at a high school in the capital city of Sophia, Kahill has decided to return to Bulgaria, drawn by the experience of living in a different culture. It wasn’t an easy decision.

“Coaching the Westbrook team was great and the support system was great,” says Kahill, intently watching his Blue Blazes athletes compete at the SMAA league meet. “It’s a tough spot to give up, and the kids are awesome. It was a really tough choice.”

Kahill, 30, ran track and played football and baseball for the Red Riots before heading off to Bowdoin College, where he continued with football and track. Originally a biology-chemistry major, he switched to history in his junior year.

“I didn’t go into college thinking I was going to teach,” Kahill says. “My granddad was actually a teacher. He taught history at South Portland for 30 or 35 years. And my dad is a lawyer, but teaches off and on. I took some education classes and loved my professor, so I kept taking ed classes.”

During his first teaching stint in Bulgaria, Kahill taught history at a private school, where the students learn to speak English fluently. At times, he went to the American School in Sophia, a city of one million, to get some resources. He made some contacts there, and those contacts led to the current job offer.

As a new faculty member, Kahill is at the bottom of the list when it comes to housing options, so he’ll be living on campus. Though the average Bulgarian teacher makes about $125 a month, the pay at the American school is better. Taking into account the lower cost of living in the former Communist country, Kahill says he’ll be making roughly the same as he is now.

Eventually, he does want to settle back in the United States.

“It’s a two-year contract, but I negotiated in an option to opt out after a year,” he says, “and I just did that in case there were opportunities here I wanted to pursue.”

This time around, Kahill will have a much easier time adapting to one small, but crucial, cultural difference: In Bulgaria, noddng your head means no; shaking your head means yes.

He’ll be heading to his assignment in the Slavic country in late August.