Saying "bye"

It's funny how you get to spend several years with certain people, get to know them, make up all those special bonds, and then, suddenly, you realize that you're not going to see those people as often any more. Of course, it's all part of life and, I guess, the beauty of life; and it's not like you'll never see those people again... it's exactly the opposite: you will see those people, and what's more, you'll have so much amazing stories to share with them. It'll be practically impossible to have the "uncomfortable moments of silence" when no one has anything to say simply because you've already shared everything with the person sitting across from you. Yes, the excitement is just beginning! Here's what some people will do next year:

Misha is going to Yale where she'll become a genuine genius of the freaky nature.











Milena is going to go wild in Germany.










Katya will be hitting the great plains of Ohio and Kenyon College.








Iliana (the one in front) will chill out in Amsterdam.









Vessi, my sista, is going to make sure Bulgaria stays healthy and happy.











Trina and Joe will be going to teach kids in the exotic, hot, and dry Syria.











Teri will show Koda what Canada is all about.











Only here, you've got 8 different stories of 8 different people who will keep getting back together, telling each other what their adventures are. Hee hee, I can't wait to hear all the stories :) Perhaps first we should all at least get to where we're headed, and then we'll start having stories. Yaaay!

Right now the sky's falling down outside. It's pouring! Rain, thunder, lightning, hale! I think the only element missing is snow, but it's a bit too late in the summer for snow. Oh, the crazy weather. My dog's freaking out (he's not one of the bravest pooches I know), and I can't really sleep so I'm listening to music and will switch to watching Gilmore Girls later... Seth Cohen from the O.C. is now a character in Gilmore Girls as well :)

Well, I think that was all for tonight. It's actually July 1st now. Whoever's enthusiastic can go watch the July Morning in about 4 1/2 hours. Not me, though... Plus, I don't think anyone will see the sun through the hale and clouds. Happy July Morning nonetheless!

PHOTO TIME

The group photo of the hikers. Courtesy of Patrick Love.

Our table in Borovets

Getting closer to Moussala

An icy lake

Anne crossing the river

Trina and our lake

Joe and the peak with the two goats (that you can't really see, but believe they are there)

Rocks and snow, and water

Waiting for our dinner - a long and exhausting process

No chronological order: this is the ceiling of the monastery kitchen at the Rila Monastery

Our beautiful hut

Chad and Joe on their special rock

Our lake and a peak

Crossing a river on the way to our hut

A curious horse greeting a biker

The Last Hike

About 18 hours ago, I arrived home after 4 thrilling days, the first two of which are known as the "Ex-senior freak out in a village house," and the next two - as the "Official end-of-the-year overnight hike (also our last hike with the Hiking Club) :'( These days were totally terrific, completely crazy, and memorably magnificent (or magnificently mad, depending on your preference of the alliteration).

Day 1, June 22:
Five girls... Five "Billa" bags... One car... One house... This could only mean one thing: a trip to the heavenly village called Rayovo. *A note on the "heavenly" part. Don't be confused by thinking that the village is a heaven; it's far from it. There are chickens, cows, old women, a river, decrepit houses, and the pleasant smell of, well, a genuine village. I call it "heavenly" only because "ray" means "heaven" in Bulgarian; however, "raya" means "servant" (during the Turkish yoke), so it's not very clear where exactly the name of the village came from.*

This was our first trip together where I got to drive all alone outside of Sofia. It took about 2 months of persuading my Mom, and about 4 drives to that village with my parents for them to let me go there alone. It turned out to be a wonderful experience.

Katya, Mihaela, Iliana, and Mariana were the other girls in the car. Originally, we were all supposed to go to the Overnight Hike, but Mihaela and Iliana had to leave early and couldn't come. When we arrived at the village, we unpacked all the food which immediately filled up the tiny house. Sure, we tried to unpack all our bags, but severe hunger possesed us, so we simply had to eat while watching soccer games. After 90 minutes of chewing and kicking balls (for some, at least), we got back in the car to go buy water from Samokov. Naturally, there had to be something wrong that day: we had no water (tap or mineral) at the village. Once we arrived at Samokov and bought a 10-liter bottle of water, we felt like going for a drive to a random place. We headed to Borovets, then took one winding road to an unknown destination. The road was beautiful, going through fields and hills; there wasn't a single soul (or car) except for us. After some time, we reached a village, which turned out to be Beli Iskar, a pretty place surrounded by mountains where you can go horse riding. We didn't do the riding part, yet we still had fun. Every single villager looked at the girls-only car with such amazement that it always made us laugh. After that drive, we went back to our village where we had a small dinner and watched 2 more soccer games (the TV, by the way, only has 3 channels).

Inside the house. "Food" and "fridge" were the two most frequently used words.

Day 2: It may be hard to believe it, but we had actually planned this day the previous evening. We didn't put a time frame in our plans, so we weren't completely off-schedule when we woke up at 11:20 a.m. We left the house at 12:30 and headed to Malyovitsa, a peak in Rila. The weather was cloudy and rainy all along, yet on our way to Malyovitsa, we entered a hale storm which we swiftly escaped from, and then headed in an opposite direction (i.e. the Rila monastery). On our way to the monastery, we drove through pouring rain and lightning storms (no hale, thankfully). We were very relieved to get to the monastery where it was only drizzling. We took about 100 pictures of the famous monastery, then hid from the rain in a restaurant nearby. We had a late lunch, and at 5 p.m. we drove back to our village. It was really enjoyable, especially if we ignored the bad weather. Oh, and we had home made lasagna for dinner :)Day 3: Early in the morning (9 a.m.) we slowly started crawling out of bed. That day, the rest of the hikers came to Borovets with a bus, and we met them there so that we could all hike together. They were waiting for us near the gondola lift where I parked the car (slightly hitting the sidewalk while rearing, which seemed to be the favorite teasing subject of all the boys on the hike :) Katya, Mariana, and I joined the hikers, bringing the total number of people up to the impressive 23. That's the largest group we've had on an overnight hike. The more the hikers, the more the fun! :) The idea was to hike from Borovets to the Moussala hut. The path we had to take was steep and long, and it took us 3 hours of hauling up the mountain to reach our final destination. The first part of the hike was annoying because of the mud and the swarms of flies that hovered around us. As we climbed higher, though, the mud was replaced by bouncy grass, and rocks, and gorgeous views (while the flies lended their air rights to a pack of pesky mosquitos). Then, amongst the panting and sweating, there it was, by George, our hut!! Oh, but alas, 'twas beyond another slope that was totally exhausting. At least we took our arrival at the hut for a tremendous achievement and were quite happy to finally be able to sit at a bench.

Our first job when we reached the hut was to check out our room(s). It turned out that all 23 people had to sleep in one room, a situation which yelled "There'll be no sleep tonight." Facing the prospect of not sleeping at all, we decided to at least enjoy our evening. We all went to the mehana at the hut where there was almost no food because there was no electricity. Charming as usual :) Several people decided to hit the slopes for an afternoon walk (which turned into the afternoon hike to Moussala for two overly energetic boys), while the rest stayed near the hut and the mehana waiting for the electricity. The hut was old, therefore the solution to the lack of electricity was an old generator which is about as reliable as a 40 year-old broken down car. To start the generator, you have to kick a special handle like crazy; the handle then pumps up gasoline to the engine of the generator (or whatever it is that starts the generator); it's particularly difficult to pump up the gasoline when the pump itself is not working too well; bottomline: lotsa' kickin' and prayin', and the generator may start (I'm speaking from experience here. I got to help out with starting the generator). Once we got the generator working, we had the luxury of ordering all 20 meatballs that were available at the hut, several soups, and 4 portions of French fries. We also had 1 cheesecake and several hundred random snacks from students' bags. Favorite pastime that evening: playing cards and waiting for the food. At 10:30 p.m., the generator decided to die, so we ended up in complete darkness (naturally, the darkness brought about hysterical screaming and clapping). Everyone lit up whatever electrical appliance he/she had (no hair driers or mixers; only cell phones and cameras), and we all headed to our room. 6 people decided to stay and watch the stars; 3 boys were very stubborn and ended up not sleeping in the room, but in the mehana instead. After 1 1/2 hours of giggles and jokes, the room swept into silence and we fell asleep, listening to the rain and thunder storm that were going on outside.

Day 4: 5:40 a.m. Why, oh why, was I so curious as to check out who was creeping up the stairs?? It was Rado, a boy in 10th grade. I looked around the room and saw that 3 boys were missing (at that point, no one knew where they were). In a state of half-asleep panic (not that there was anything to worry about, but for the sake of the principle I had to be worried about oru 3 hikers), I went looking for the boys with Rado. We found them sleeping on a bench at the mehana. It was sooo early... Too early... Rado and I watched the sunrise (of which I have no proof since I didn't have my camera with me). Pretty soon everyone else woke up, and at 7:50 we were all sitting in the mehana gobbling down stacks of hot French toast (and "raw bread"). One hour later, we started heading up to Moussala. The "highest peak on the Balkans" may sound like a scary peak to climb, but for us hard core hikers, so used to conquering the steepest slopes, getting up to 2925 meters of altitude was like a child's play... only the children were very tired and sleepy, and not too eager to climb all that much, but oh well... The path to Moussala was rocky, and there was even a metal wire which you could grab in case you started slipping down the rocks. With the wonderful prospect of falling down from 2900 meters, everyone was being very cautious not to take a step in the wrong direction. Once we reached the peak, we were all amazed by the gorgeous view we saw from there. Thankfully there were no clouds, so we gazed upon miles of mountains, lakes, and valleys (maybe a bit exagerrated; beautiful nonetheless). We took a group photo at the top and then headed back to our dear hut. Going down was amusing because it was fun trying to lean on the metal wire while jumping down from bowlder to bowlder. We spent about 30 mins back at our hut, then went straight to the gondola lift. Nooo, it wasn't like we were tired or anything; we just weren't quite in the mood for more downhill adventures. The smooth gondola ride had an incredibly relaxing effect. Of course, as we were getting closer to civilization and electricity (OMG!), we felt the natural urge to eat something that didn't take forever to prepare. Some of the boring people left back to Sofia with a bus, missing out on our official lunch, which turned to be an ex-teacher ex-senior late lunch in Borovets. Once our tummies were filled, we started back to Sofia; the seniors-by car, the teachers-by bus. We all got back weary from our adventures, but very, very happy.

THE END (you could probably notice how the description of every other day was becoming shorter and shorter... Oh, funny fact: the writing of this blog entry took exactly four days. Why that long? Well, limited access to a computer was probably the biggest reason. The next entry will be of pictures only - again, from the hike).

Name

I'm an Englishman in New York

Factually speaking, the blog title is as far from the truth as can be. I'm neither an englishman, nor am in New York, alas.

This doesn't mean, however, that I won't be telling you about a guy who says he's an englishman in New York, likes to send messages in bottles, and occasionally walks the fields of gold while he's watching you. Now I'm sure you know who I'm talking about: Sting! (a.k.a. Gordon Matthew Sumner). The relation to this blog? Well, he's British for one... and although his concert wasn't in London, I still feel the sudden urge to just tell you all about the concert and our trip to Nesseber.

June 11, Sunday, 11:00 a.m. (wow, I never really thought about how many 11s there were that day...) Katya, Vessi, Dad, and I got on my car and started driving down to the seaside where the concert was taking place. I was driving cause I'm a freak for it! 5 hours and 45 minutes later, we safely landed in Nesseber, one small town which was once known as a beautiful historic place, but has now turned into a crowded construction site, much like the rest of the Bulgarian seaside. Our hotel was (thankfully) not located in the middle of the construction grounds; we were actually staying at a hotel in a nearby smaller, much more quiet town. Katya and Vessi were in one room, while I was in a separate one which was perfectly fine by me. My parents were staying at another hotel in Nesseber. We got to our rooms, changed, and headed out to Nesseber to find something to eat. We came across a reastaurant which was apparently super popular in the past. Well, it was really bad now. First, the service took forever, and we waited for 2 hours before we got our last meals. Then the fish we ate wasn't even that good either... At least we had plenty of time to talk and enjoy a night out without our parents :) After the long and rather exhausting dinner, we went back to our town and hotel, watched TV for some time, and went to bed.June 12, Monday, 11 a.m. Good morning, sunshine! (Yeah right.. toooooo early!) We all woke up and fought our usual early-morning grumpiness. After a short breakfast, we headed to the miniature beach in town. The water was about 19 degrees Celsius (i.e. rather cold!) but we jumped right in and played volleyball until we froze, at which point we crawled out of the water and curled up in our warm towels on the warm sand. At least the sun was shining, so we didn't turn into icicles. About 20 mins after we had dried up, a cold wind blew in from the north-east; we headed back to our hotel and left for Nesseber at 4 p.m. We had a wonderful lunch in a great tavern. Everyone from ACS, as well as all parents and friends, were present at that special lunch/dinner. After that, we went for a walk around town and finally decided to go in the stadium where the concert was held.
There were so many people there! In the newspaper it said that more than 20,000 fans from all over the world attended the concert. Yes, we were lost somewhere in the ocean of people. It's at times like these that you wish you were at least 1.90 meters tall... As you can imagine, a girl of only 1.61 meters could only see heads and hands in the air, but no Sting whatsoever. I had to jump up real high to try and see the spot known as Sting. The good side of the situation was that I could at least hear what he was singing. He sang some of my favorite songs ("Message in a bottle," "Englishman in New York," "Fields of Gold," "Fragile," "I'll be watching you," and many more. I couldn't take any pictures, though, because no cameras were allowed at the concert (although a great number of Bulgarians had chosen to disobey the rules and were taking tons of pics with the cameras they smuggled in). I thoroughly enjoyed the performance by Sting... We were all singing, and dancing, and having a wonderful time! The concert started at 9 and ended at 10:30 p.m. Right after the party was over, Katya, Vessi, and I went right back to our hotel and tucked into bed, for we had to wake up at 6:30 a.m. the next morning.
June 13, 2006. It was super early. I drank a "Red Bull" and got in the car. We went back to Sofia right on time for the last school meeting when students say goodbye to all the leaving teachers. It was a touching and emotional meeting, which we wouldn't have missed for the world.

That was the official end of our trip to Nesseber. It was a memorable and fun trip, which only prepared us seniors for our upcoming Bulgaria trip (5 seniors traveling around Bulgaria by car, driving everyone crazy ;)

Get a grip, girl!

So... It's only been a few days since I bought my ticket and actually realized I was going to London, and I already started some research as to what I'd like to do when I get there. Naturally, there are about a gazillion events happening in September alone. My mission: see as many things as possible in the shortest amount of time possible.

Flaws to that seemingly flawless plan:
1. Duuude! Have you heard about something called money? You need it and you don't have it in such an abundance to go spending it all in one month!
2. Duuude! As if you'll have that much free time! University's all about lectures, and reading, and researching, and not sleeping, and stuff... You can't be away on a random event every single day.

Yes, that was the harsh, cold, bitter sound of reason that kinda overrides the bleat of the stubborn restless Aries in me. Oh well...

Still, since it's always good to be dreaming and visualizing and all that, here's what I want to see in London in September (not counting the grand tour of the city, of course):

Art-related:
Rembrandt exhibition (Sept. 3)
Angus McBean photo exhibition (Sept. 13)
Designing Modern Britain architectural exhibition (Sept. 14)
Future City architectural/sci-tech exhibition (Sept. 16)
All about Leonardo DaVinci exhibition (Sept. 18)
Kandinsky exhibition (Sept. 23)
Queen's painting collection (Sept. 27)

Theater:
Chicago - live performance musical (Sept. 22)
Evita (Sept. 30)

Concerts:
Robbie Williams (Sept. 15)
Stomp! (Sept. 24)

Misc:
The Last Night of the Proms (Sept. 9)
Great River Race (Sept. 17)

Talk about ambitious... We'll see how much of this I'll be able to actually do... Maybe 10-15% of all that, if I'm lucky. I'll let you know what happened when the time comes. For now, I'm going back to some final projects I have to complete... Yeah, there's always work! Hooray! :D

For the sake of a picture :)

One thing I love about blogs are the pictures, so here's one shot of Richmond U.

My Academic Calendar

This is my schedule for the upcoming school year. I love the long breaks and the fact that classes finish on May 11. That means I'll be home on May 12 for Dad's birthday... And I'll also be able to go to ACS for Graduation... Sweet!

Fall Semester 2006
Move-in Day for New Residential Students Tuesday August 29
Orientation (check-in from 9:00 A.M.) Wednesday August 30 – Sunday September 3
Registration Thursday August 31 – Friday September 1
Residences open for continuing students Saturday September 2
First day of classes Monday September 4
Add/drop period Monday September 4 – Friday September 8
Priority registration for spring and summer 2007 Monday October 9– Friday October 13
(registration after this week will incur a late fee)
Fall break Monday October 23 – Friday October 27
Last day to withdraw from a course Monday November 27
Last day of classes Friday December 8
Study days Saturday December 9 – Sunday December 10
Examinations Monday December 11 – Friday December 15
Residences close Saturday December 16

Spring Semester 2007
Move-in Day for New Residential Students Tuesday January 16
Orientation (check-in from 9:00 A.M.) Wednesday January 17 – Sunday January 21
Registration Thursday January 18 – Friday January 19
Residences open for continuing students Saturday January 20
First day of classes Monday January 22
Add/drop period Monday January 22 – Friday January 26
Priority registration for fall 2007 Monday February 26 – Friday March 2
(registration after this week will incur a late fee)
Spring break Monday March 12 – Friday March 16
Easter break Friday April 6 – Monday April 9
Last day to withdraw from a course Monday April 16
Last day of classes Tuesday May 1
Study day Wednesday May 2
Examinations Thursday May 3 – Friday May 4
Study days Saturday May 5 – Monday May 7
Examinations Tuesday May 8 – Thursday May 10
Residences close for non-graduating students Friday May 11
Commencement Thursday May 17
Residences close for graduating seniors Saturday May 19

The ticket

Every new adventure must have a begnning.
I must say, my hard-core London adventure began today as I walked out of the British Airways office with an original ticket in my hands. Yes, I spent only 367.28 euro, which was more expensive than I thought, but in the name of London, any price is just ok. Plus, I do have to be prepared for hair raising prices there, so I've heard... as for breathtaking beauty. Can't wait!

So it's official now.

August 29. 14:40: I leave Sofia airport only to arrive at Heathrow airport 3 hours and 20 mins later. London, prepare!

I'm ready :) So happy and excited, jolly good!

I'll keep you posted on the "new stuff" happening on my way to and in London.