Bulgaria was one giant adventure, and I absolutely LOVED every minute of it. Who would have thought Bulgaria would be my favorite place I've gone so far? I wish I could be here for another week or two... I'm sad to be leaving already! It is such a beautiful country. We got here on Sunday, and on Sunday morning I just walked around the city of Varna to get a feel for it, and then spent the rest of the day at the beach... it was nice and relaxing, but I got so sun burned! That night we went to the music festival that was in town, which was very fun and really cool to get to see. On Monday, I went on a jeep safari, which was awesome to say the least. We all packed into these really old jeeps (our driver called them Russian Hummers), and got to ride around and see all of Varna. We stopped in this beautiful sunflower field, where sunflowers were all you could see all around. We also go to stop and taste fresh honey, which was so good... so good, in fact, that I bought two jars of it to bring home, and then we enjoyed a barbecue lunch and watched a little skit that our drivers put on for us. All of the jeep drivers were so funny and crazy... I seriously thought that the jeep I was in was going to flip over a couple of times. My friend and I were talking about how funny it is that at home whenever we get in a car we always put our seat belts on no matter what without even thinking twice about it, but here we are standing up in the back of safari jeeps off roading in Bulgaria with drivers that don't even speak English. That night after the jeep safari we went bowling. Bowling in 'Bowl'garia... cheasy, I know, but still how many other people can say that they have been bowling in Bulgaria? On Tuesday, my friend Jenny and I went on an amazing adventure. We had planned to take a bus to Burgas, which is this city that's about 3 hours away by bus and is known for the salt lakes and healing mud baths, and then wanted to go to Nessebar, which is this little harbor town that is on the way to Burgas. So we left the ship in hopes to catch a bus to either Nessebar or Burgas, but when we got to the bus station the lady who was working couldn't understand us. We couldn't even buy tickets for the bus because we couldn't communicate well enough to buy a ticket to where we wanted to go. It is crazy being in a country where you can't communicate with the people at all. Hardly anyone speaks English here. The only word I actually know how to say is "da" which means yes. I also know that "zdravei" is hello, but I can't even pronounce that, and "ako boicahte" is please, but I can't pronounce that either. We were told that we should say "az ne govorya bulgarski", which means "I don't know how to speak Bulgarian", but do they really expect us to remember how to say that when we are out and about? So anyways, since Jenny and I couldn't get bus tickets, we decided to try to find a taxi driver that spoke a little English. We found one that spoke okay English, and he said that he would drive us to Burgas and stay the day there so that we could get back to Varna later that day. It should have normally cost 200 leva (it's normally about 1 lev/kilometer, and Burgas is about 200 kilometers from Varna), and our taxi driver charged us 70 leva each way so 140 leva total, which is an incredible deal.... Jenny and I each payed about a total of 50 U.S. dollars, which is way cheaper than we expected it to be and we got to Burgas in an hour and a half instead of three hours if we would have taken the bus. So once we got to Burgas, Jenny and I walked to the salt lakes and healing mud baths. It was an amazing site to see... all of these local Bulgarian men and women were laying in three different lakes. One of them was pink, one was clear, and the other one was black and murky. As we learned, you first sit in the pink lake, which is filled with all this natural salt from the ocean and you exfoliate your skin in it... I'm not sure why this lake is pink, but I do know that all three of these lakes are natural springs that were created from the ocean. You then move to the clear lake and rinse off all the salt, and then you move to the black lake, which is filled with mud and you rub mud all over body. This mud is known as "healing mud" and has natural cleansers and moisturizer in it. You then let the mud harden and dry on your body, and then wash it off in the ocean. So Jenny and I spent the next four hours enjoying our Bulgarian mud baths. We sat in the salt and exfoliated our skin, rinsed it off and proceeded to rub mud all over our bodies. After letting it dry, we ran into the ocean and washed it off. Needless to say, it was a very cool experience. We then met back up with our taxi driver and he drove us to Nessebar, and we walked around Nessebar for a while before going back to Varna. Yesterday I spent the morning at an orphanage in Varna, and it was so wonderful to get to play with kids! I miss all my kiddos at home so much! They were all so cute, and it made me so happy to get to be there and see them enjoying themselves. I wanted to take this little boy home with me... he was so precious, and he wouldn't let me put him down... he cried when I had to leave, and it broke my heart!
I'm now back on the ship and will be in Turkey tomorrow. I can't wait, but at the same time I don't want to go to Turkey yet because that means I'll only have one more country to go to! This trip has been going by way too fast!
Once again, I'm sorry for the low resolution of these pictures... I'm posting them from the ship so I am only to upload very low quality images.