Varna, Bulgaria! July 24 - 27

First, I want to mention that during the two "at-sea" days between Greece and Bulgaria, Melissa and I co-led our professor's two classes because he went home to Ohio to meet his new grandson, Brody :) Most of the time was spent viewing a video on children's perspectives from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict called "Promises" and we then facilitated discussion relating the concepts from the video to our personal and professional experiences. It was nice to know that Ken (our professor) felt comfortable with us 'taking over' his classes for 2 days.

The night before arriving in Bulgaria, I also facilitated my first ever "panel discussion". I organized the formation of a group on the ship called "Future Teachers" so that the undergrads who are studying to become teachers on the ship are able to meet and network. Sidenote: many of the students studying to become teachers are NOT taking the education course taught on the ship...mainly because their home university will only recognize it as an elective-so they decided to take some other course they were interested in. Anyway, this discussion was a great success :) Almost 20 people attended and we had a great discussion about licensure, resumes, interviews, etc. I'm organizing another panel discussion on how to incorporate the SAS experience into the classroom and also discuss opportunities to teach abroad.

OK..now its time for Bulgaria :) Bulgaria happened to be the country that was added to our itinerary after our stop in Egypt got canceled.

SUNDAY, JULY 24: ARRIVE IN VARNA & SAS TRIP TO A BULGARIAN VILLAGE

On the bus on the way to the Village Visit....we passed so many sunflower fields. It was absolutely beautiful :) Our tour guide, Vicky, was the cutest Bulgarian woman who referred to the sunflowers by saying "This yellow flower is filling up the soul with positive emotions."

Our warm welcome to the Village of Donchevo. The entire village came out to see us. Aside from 6 American students who came to stay in the village a few years ago, no other international visitors have come to this village. It was a HUGE deal. We were in their newspaper the following day. Many of the villagers planned a "traditional style" welcome & dressed in traditional clothes for us :) Bulgarian hosts traditionally welcome guests by offering a warm piece of bread to show a warm welcome. The bread is then dipped in what they call "colorful salt" to add flavor. We were also presented with sprigs of geranium which symbolizes good fortune.

Me enjoying my "warm welcome". The bread was delicious :) And we got to eat itmultiple times throughout the day. Everyone wanted to show us their warm hospitality :)

Me with the mayor of Donchevo and the town police man?

Top left: Donchevo's school....children go to school here until 4th grade. Then they go to the larger city to finish...........Top right: Me and Melissa sitting in a classroom inside the school. Bottom: Me and Melissa with our new friend Bozhidar, who is home for the summer after finishing his first year at university studying engineering. He spoke great English...and said he learned it mainly from watching American movies.

The gorgeous children of Donchevo

I LOVE sunflowers!!!!!

After frolicking in the sunflowers, we went on a tour of the village and were invited into some families' homes....Every home has their own garden to provide food for their family. They are very proud of their gardens...they are beautiful and the produce is DELICIOUS!

Exploring the streets of Donchevo.

Singing and dancing time!! The village "grannies" put on such a great performance for us!

Even though we didn't speak the same language, it was amazing being able to communicate through dance, laughter, and smiles :)

I LOVE this little girl! What an AMAZING day this was. THIS is what Semester at Sea is all about...interacting with locals and valuing our similarities and differences

JULY 25 - EXPLORING VARNA

Me, Ashley, & Melissa on the "Hop-on, Hop-off" bus in Varna today after a failed attempt to locate an 'adventure excursion' travel agent we found online....it turned out to be a great day though!

Our walk from the ship to the beach in Varna and then into the city.....The church in the center of the city

We "hopped off" the bus at the 'Oriental Marketplace'....shopped around at the clothes and souvenier shops, then we found the food & produce market where we got the best lunch ever: fruit, olives, cheese, homemade bread, and beer. YUM!

Our next "hop off" visit was to Golden Sands beach where I went into the BLACK SEA for the first time ever!!! This beach area is extremely touristy but soooo relaxing. Except when a guy dressed as Sylvester harasses you to take a photo with him and then wants to charge you 10 Leva for it (about $8). Its a good thing I snapped this photo without him knowing...lol

Got back to the ship early that day and spent ALL NIGHT working on my thesis. I literally spent the entire night (9pm until 7:30am) working in one of the classrooms on the ship. I got a lot done....but it certainly made for a rough day since I had to leave for my SAS trip at 8:15am.

TUESDAY, JULY 26 - SAS TRIP TO HEALING MUD AND LYE LAKES AND COASTAL TOWN OF NESSEBAR

Healing Mud & Lye & Salt Lakes ......soooo different from the mud experience of the Dead Sea in Israel

Chilling in the Lye & Salt Lake....ouch it hurt to sit on huge pieces of rock salt for 20 minutes...and boy did it stink like sulfur

Getting healed by the natural and mystic powers of yucky smelling mud :) Definitely didn't do much for my nausea after staying up all night....my skin did feel AMAZING afterwards, though!

Black Sand beach on the Black Sea :)

No caption needed.....WTF?! lol

After the salt and mud experience, we drove about 20 minutes to the old city of Nessebar. Really beautiful place, but also really touristy. I was sooo incredibly delirious at this point, I laid down on the outside steps of a money exchange place and the people that worked there all came out and started laughing, speaking Bulgarian, and pointing at me..... :( lol

Wednesday, July 27 - Ship Day

Today, I stayed on the ship and slept all day. It was a combination of staying up all night on Monday and getting some sort of stomach bug....but I didn't even get off the ship on my last day in Bulgaria. No regrets, though. I had a wonderful time on the other three days that I am absolutely content with my experience in here. I will never forget it and I am glad we got 'rerouted' from Egypt to Bulgaria.

Tomorrow is "Turkey Day" and then we arrive in Istanbul!!!!

Piraeus and Santorini, GREECE!!!!! July 17-21

July 17 - Arrive in Piraeus.

...stayed on the ship ALL DAY to work on my thesis :( Mostly everyone went to Athens for the day (which is like 30 minutes away) and since I have already been there, I thought this would be the best day to get work done. Too bad I didn't get as much done as I would have liked, though......

July 18 - Leave Piraeus to take a 5 hr ferry ride to SANTORINI!! :)

On our way to the ferry...taxis everywhere. ON STRIKE and blocking the port, airport, bus station, train station, etc.....

Power to the people!

Made it to Santorini! Me, Melissa, and Shametrice in Perissa (one of the black sand beaches on the south of the island) waiting for our AMAZING lunch. Greek salad with juicy tomatoes, olives, cucumbers and feta cheese..cheese pies..stuffed roasted tomatoes and peppers, YUM :)

Perissa beach...beautiful soft, fine black sand. Watch out! It is HOT on your bare feet!

Got a henna tattoo :) Just making sure that's the one I still want after all these years. Amra & Cathy...remember we were going to get this tattoo (nautical/compass star) in Japan back in Spring '04?!

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Melissa and me on top of the buildings constructed into the side of the cliffs in Oia (the city on the north side of the island with the most famous landscape in Santorini)

Church in Oia..I love the colors in this picture :)

Another church in Oia

In front of Oia's cliffside

Sunset the first night in Santorini. I have never in my life seen sunsets as beautiful as those I saw here. The photos can't do it justice....you just have to go!

Okay...maybe this photo can give you an idea of how incredible it was like to watch that sunset (photo credit to Melissa)

Melissa, me, Mike, and Shametrice having some wine before going up to the rooftop for some more AMAZING food. Greece by far has had THE BEST FOOD of this trip :) Tonight's highlight was the Greek bruschetta. The wine we are drinking - Kasteli Karmelego - is the product of our waiter's high school physics teacher who opted to give up his measly salary as a teacher to become a very wealthy vineyard owner and wine producer. Its delicious. Dustin..I have a bottle to bring home to you :)

July 19th-exploring Santorini :)

View of the volcano's crater from Fira (city where we stayed on the center of the island). The island of Santorini is now shaped like a backward letter C with a dot in the middle and another dot across from it. These pieces of land used to be one complete circular island. But back in the day (not sure how long ago), the volcano erupted, which caused the center of the land mass (except for the crater) to collapse. That's why the whole coastline from Oia to Fira the rest of the way down the coast is all cliffs.

Drivin to the Red Sand beach in our 'topless' car :) In Santorini, you have to share the road with mopeds and four wheelers...its quite slow moving sometimes, but slow is good...especially when you are driving on the edge of cliffs

The Red Sand Beach...well...kind of a mixture of red and black sand but there was also some sort of white sea plant that dried up and got all over the surface of the beach and then all over your body after getting wet in the water....

Yay! I'm at the red sand beach! I had to crop myself out of this pic cause Melissa, Shametrice, and Mike sucked at jumping...lol

The hike to get to the beach. Its kinda nice that you cant just drive up to it :)

Red and black sand and pebbles

Bar overlooking the crater from Fira

Dinner table in Amoudi... right on the water at the bottom of the cliffs and city of Oia ... drinking Karmelego again (the physics teacher). Kinda sounds like Caramel Legos (haha Mike)

As we drink our Caramel Legos, eat baked feta, hummus, and saganaki, and enjoy a very long leisurely time at our table waiting to watch the sunset, these boats come by to view the sunset as well. We got to watch them put all the sails out, too. How pretty

All that waiting was most definitely worth it.

Shametrice, me and Melissa enjoying the sunset from a rock in the water. Notice we are all smiles now but this photo was taken just moments before I almost give Shametrice a heart attack falling on her as I tried to move from one rock to another.

Sunset in Amoudi - the fisherman that caught our dinner just came in on that boat :)

The gang (still chilling at our table) after sunset, a bottle and 2 carafes of wine :)

July 20th - donkeys, boat trip to the volcano's crater and hotsprings...ferry ride back to Piraeus

I wish I knew who this girl was....the look on her face is priceless and she has absolutely no idea that she is on my blog

In order to get down the cliffs from Fira to the old port (where we had to catch our boat) you can either take a cable car or ride a donkey. We planned to ride the cable car down, then donkey it back up. Too bad we went the wrong way when searching for the cable car entrance and ended up on the donkey traverse. We decided to walk down. HORRIBLE IDEA! I don't think I will ever forget the smell of the smushed in donkey crap on the ground and on the bottom of my shoes. There were so many donkeys going both up and down. They did not hesitate to walk right into you, forcing you to step into a steaming pile of ripe manure, and slamming you up against the rock wall. By far the worst 30 minutes of this trip. BUT....it was an experience that I will never forget. Needless to say, the walk down, and the look on the face of the girl in this photo helped us to make the decision to take the cable car on our way back up later in the day...except for Mike. he rode the donkey...he's nuts.

The boat we took to the volcano's crater. Check out how the iron near the coast line of the crater completetly turns the beautiful turquois water orangy brown...that was the color of the water in the hotsprings we swam in on the other side of the crater

Getting off the boat....Melissa was very eager to get in the water to try and get donkey stench off of her. Nice dive!

On top of the crater...yes, the volcano is still active. We saw steam coming out of the side of the crater and we were able to dig down a little bit and feel how hot the rocks got only a few inches under the surface...Don't worry mom, they monitor the volcano like crazy and would know ahead of time if it was going to erupt

July 21 - random trip to Corinth & departure from Greece

-Chris and Melissa on the bus in Corinth

Woke up this morning with a challenge from Chris to have "THE BEST DAY EVER" and go to Corinth (about an hour outside of Piraeus) where the famous Corinth Canal was constructed-thought of by the Ancient Greeks but not actually completed until the late 19th century. So there's this bridge that connects both sides of the canal that people bungee from. So...we went. Once again, don't worry mom :)...I was just going to watch Chris and Melissa bungee. If it was skydiving I would do it again for sure...but something about the bungee cord makes me nervous about messing up my back...

This is a photo I found online of someone bungeeing from the bridge. We actually never made it to the canal...which is only about 15 minutes driving from the train station in Corinth. BUT...since taxis were on strike, we learned after making it to Corinth that it would take more like a 2 hours to get to the canal from the train station waiting for a bus and transferring to another bus in the center of the city. Since it was the last day in port, we didn't want to risk missing "on ship time". So our trip to Corinth was certainly NOT 'the best day ever' as Chris had promised....but once again, it was an adventure I will not forget :)

Adrienne, Melissa, and me in front of the beautiful blue waters of the 'Gulf of Corinth'

Made it back to the port in Piraeus with enough time to call my Momma and Dustin! This is me sitting in front of the phone I called you guys from. I thought you two would appreciate this picture. I miss you guys and love you SOOOO much. One of the hardest things about this trip is not being able to talk to you both every day.