Sunday, December 30, 2007

Belated Blog of Adventures in Greece and Bulgaria: Part I

As most of you know, I got the amazing opportunity in July to go on a mission/music trip to Bulgaria and Greece. I travelled with a group called Messiah Project and basically did mission work through the arts. There was a choir of about 9 singers, a professional ballet company out of Houston called Excelsior Ballet, a professional piano player (Larry Dalton) and a Bulgarian Orchestra. We toured these two countries for two weeks. I want to tell many stories of this trip but I'm sure it will be broken down into many blog postings, seeing that there are just too many to tell in one. I hope you enjoy reading about my adventures into a foreign land!

Segment I: Sofia, Bulgaria
Of all the places I've ever travelled, Sofia stands out as one of the strangest. It was my first time to visit a former communist country. I think I was surprised at how Second-World this country of Bulgaria was. Most of the buildings were run down and there was grafitti/vandalism EVERYWHERE!

There doesn't seem to be much order of the state considering that cars park all over the side walk! It's ridiculous! People park absolutely anywhere that is convenient for them. Despite the strangeness of this country, I truly enjoyed our stay there.


We stayed in a nice hotel right on the city square. I shared a room with Megan and Tierra, two high schoolers from Branson. I truly enjoyed getting to know their sweet hearts. One of the perks of rooming with these two girls was jumping on the beds. Even more fun were the attempts to capture these moments on camera!

Another amazing thing about rooming with these girls was teaching them some old bluegrass songs in the middle of the night that my mom taught me when I was a little girl. Because we usually didn't start singing till after midnight, we always had someone knocking at the door or banging on the wall. It just made the memories that much more precious.

For most meals we walked a few blocks to a huge building that was kind of a mall but mostly a food court. It was all Bulgarian fast food. We ate a lot of gyros and had some amazing pizza covered in feta cheese. It was wonderful. Not so wonderful was the room temperature skewer of pork that I took a big bite of! What was I thinking...there wasn't even an oven visible at the stand.

Another amazing thing about Bulgaria was the ice cream! I love European ice cream, but I think Bulgaria wins as far as presentation and taste. AMAZING!!












This timershot is in honor of Kate...you inspired me and then all the girls were so excited with timershots, they were basically the RAGE of the whole trip! Everyone was doing them everywhere. See Kate...you have great influence over the entire WORLD!


Well, this wraps up Segment I of the Way-Belated Blog of my trip to Europe! Stay tuned for Roman Ampitheater visits and Senior picture post!