We're back!!!!

Hello all!!!! We're back from our whirlwind tour of Bulgaria. It was wonderful, but it definitely feels good to be "home." I cannot believe how beautiful this country is! I'm not kidding you ... once you get out of Sofia it rivals Oregon and Washington for beauty, and the best part is that it is pretty much untouched. There is so much to tell you all and so many pictures to show, but I don't want to bore you by writing for hours, so I'll pretty much give you the highlights:
First all, it must be mentioned that people drive like maniacs around here. I am SO glad that the school has a professional driver who took us around - I felt a lot safer. You think Pete didn't drive before ... it's definitely public transportation for us from now on. Anyway, we stopped at a couple of places along the way, but our final destination was Sozopol, which is on the coast of the Black Sea. We stayed there for five nights. It reminded me a great deal of Mexico, but nicer in some ways.
For the first couple of nights we were just trying to get on the right time zone, which caused us to go to bed between 7 and 8PM. Because of this, the singles in the group labeled us "the old married couple." Neither Pete, nor I, could believe that this was the nick name we earned right away ... if they only knew!!! By Pete's birthday, however, we were feeling a bit better and were ready for a night on the town. Some of the people we are traveling with are HILARIOUS. There are three Canadians who we have been hanging out with the most. Their names are Derek and Jen (who are a couple) and another guy named Greg who is coming to Bulgaria after two years in Columbia. As you will see in the pictures, Greg looks exactly like Ben Stiller and is just as funny. *** Andy, you will appreciate the fact that Greg does a FANTASTIC impression of Bora from Ali-G. We were using the "Bora voice" the whole time we were in Sozopol.
On the way back we stopped at some ancient ruins that were discovered in 2000. That was very cool and the area surrounding the ruins was some of the most beautiful scenery I've seen. I hope the pictures capture it.
Anyway, it's 7:19PM here and I have to make a dinner for a "potluck" we are having tonight. So here are a few pictures for now and I'll try to put the rest into a share format later. We love you all and I PROMISE we'll be more diligent about blogging from now on.