Bulgaria

Unfortunately I do not have too much to say about Bulgaria. It was a country that reminded me of a European Mexico, where people just go there to relax and lay on the beach or go shopping. I just got back from Turkey though and will have a lot to say about that in my next blog!
The first day in Bulgaria Danielle, Mary and I went out to find a place to get some lunch. We hadn’t had an opportunity to exchange our money yet, and none of the places we found seemed to want to accept credit cards. We found a restaurant that a few people we knew were at and they said they took credit cards. We visited with them for a bit and then one of the kids Dad, who came to see him in that port, bought our lunch for us and told us we could just buy his son a drink at some point, which was really nice of him. After lunch, we went on an SAS trip that took us to the “highlights of Varna” lets just say I knew right then if what I saw were the “highlights” Bulgaria would soon be my least favorite port. We went to an archaeological museum, some Roman ruins which were just some pillars and stones where there used to be a bathing house, a Cathedral which was very beautiful, and a typical old fashioned Bulgarian house, where we saw the types of tools, clothes and food they would eat.
The next day we went to the beach for a couple of hours and then went to the mall. Yes I know that is sad that we travelled this far just to go to the mall, but there wasn’t anything else for us to do or see without traveling several hours away. After that I went out to dinner where I proceeded to get food poisoning and was therefore in my bed for the rest of the night.
On wednesday, I went to lunch with Meghan and Ashley and then went to the beach for an hour before going on an SAS trip I had. The restaurant we went to was called happy bar and grill and they had all sorts of wraps and skewers that were really good. My SAS trip took us to a botanical garden with waterfalls and all sorts of flowers. Next we went to an old palace which was very interesting because it was not how I would have imagined a palace looking like. It was fairly plain, yet charming. After the palace we went to a cape that is the furthest jutting cape in Europe. It went very far into the ocean and had incredible views, definitely the most beautiful thing I saw in Bulgaria. After the cape, we went to a dinner and show. The dinner was buffet style and had typical Bulgarian food which was very interesting to try. The dance show was really neat because they performed a few traditional dances, and then incorporated some more modern dances. The neatest dance I saw was a girl that did a hula hoop routine where at some points she would be spinning up to 10 hula hoops on her hips, legs and neck. At the end, a woman threw hula hoops to her which she would grab and put on while still spinning all of the hula hoops she had on her. The dance show ended with a man and woman walking on coals together. We didn’t get back until 11:30 at night.
The last day, I went to lunch with my friend Abby and we tok our computers so we could email and skype. I was able to skype with my mom for a few minutes although the quality was really bad because of how many people were on the internet, but it was really nice to see her face for a minute. I then got back on the ship and wrote some post cards before it was time for us to take off.
The next day we only had one class which was our global studies class and it was 2 hours long instead of the typical 1:15min. We talked all about Turkey, and different things to know about the history and monuments. After class I had a paper to write so I spent the next 3 hours locked in my room researching and writing it. That night we had a preport lecture that informed us about the weather, current political situations, money exchange and two speakers who were from Turkey that told us about what to do or see.
That's all for now, will write all about Turkey soon!