All is well

This is weird writing a blog about just normal things now. I don't have any crazy travel stories or adventures to write about. Everything is going well over here. I got my Polk audio system for christmas and I love it. I'm currently lying in bed listening to it while I'm typing. I also got the perfect companion for this system by getting an external hard drive. I got an 80GB one at first, but it encrypted everything and my itunes, etc. couldn't see it. Then I synced it to my comp after i had put everything onto the drive and deleted it from my comp. It almost deleted all my pictures and music forever! Thank god i had put my most important photos on my mp3 player. I returned that one and got a much bulkier, but reliable and simple, 160GB hard drive. Now I will never have to worry about losing space again. I'm just downloading everything i've wanted and the speed is really good over the wireless network in the house.
I've been eating like a king lately, we had fondue last night, I just had croissants for breakfast and all the normal kind of dinners for christmas before that. I've been to jarryd's a lot and I have fun over there. Then again, jarryd's house is the place to be after christmas, lol. I'm going to go paint balling with him and some other people on friday, should be fun. Everythig is going well between carolyn and I, we've been enjoying ourselves while working through the list of things each of us has to do before we go back to school.
I am very happy with the way that everything is going now and I couldn't ask for more. I'm off to bouquet gardens on tuesday, funny, the fact that i'm staying there is the only reason i'm not dreading going back to pitt. Everyone's busy helping with preparations for indonesian dinner tonight, 15 people need a lot of food. I think we're going to go out for dinner for new years and then i'm gonna have a little something here at home. I won't get plastered, but i wouldn't mind enjoying myself with my friends before it's off to pitt once again.

Going home

So this is my last entry in bulgaria. It seems like my flight will be leaving on schedule and everything should work out. I'm sad that i'm leaving here, i really enjoyed it. It's going to be hard to leave and i know i'm going to miss everything and everyone. if i could spend more time here, i definitely would. Not much to say about this, don't want to dwell on it too much. I'll be home in a few hours!

Done!

Finished, klar, finito, the end. I'm done with everything! I just finished my finals and all the other paperwork i had to do. I have nothing else to do but pack and be on my way! We have dinner at 4:30 and then we're "hosting" a party in our suite tonight. It should be a lot of fun. I have had such a great time here and it's going to be hard to leave, but at the same time, I'm very ready to go home. I'm going to find a book to read on the plane tomorrow and pick up the thank you letter for donating my books to the library. My science prof was so impressed at how good i was at his class that he tried to persuade me to have a minor and science when i gave him my final. Tomorrow is going to be a relaxed day filled with packing and goodbyes. It's both a wonderful and terrible thing.

Good and bad news

Last night was great. I came back to my room to find that I had finally got my room assignment. I was convinced that they were just going to stick me in towers, but to my wonderful surprise, I have been put into bouquet gardens! These are by far the best dorms on campus. It's 4 bedroom apartment style room with a kitchen that includes a stove, fridge, and microwave. I get my own room to sleep in and I can make my own food. It is also located right in between the two buildings that all of my classes are in. It is incredibly hard to get into these apartments and I cannot even fathom how lucky I am. Dad also started looking into the internship for Deloitte, so I can start preparing for something.
The bad news is that the fog is back and in full force. I can barely see across the courtyard it's so thick. I really hope it clears for my flight, otherwise i don't know what I'll do. Rasika left to go home last night, it's weird now that he's gone, the room feels more empty. I have written 5 pages of my paper, only 10 more to go. It shouldn't be too hard, I just have to do it.

Nearing the End

So Rasika is leaving tomorrow night, even though technically it is later today. Everything is sort of winding down as everyone is studying for finals and having dinners together before we all disperse. I managed to break my headphones a little more today, so i decided to tape them severely, they should hold on for a good while longer. My favorite socks have also worn through pretty much, it's a shame that they're the thinnest pair, would've been better it they made any difference in the weight of my luggage. I don't think there is going to be a definite problem with my flight, they have left on time the last three days. I managed to get a hold of Carolyn today and we chatted in amongst our studying. I am going to be home for such a short period of time that I'm planning things out a few days before I leave. I still don't know where I'm living next semester, and I still continue to get offers for apartments, I'm getting sick of telling all these people no. I realized that I really do miss home now because I feel that I haven't been talking to people from home enough. Sometimes I get anxious when I don't talk to carolyn for a while. There's no real big reason, probably just that I'm really far away and want to talk to someone from home. I learned today that the Internship Cafe that I signed up for in January might have a Deliotte representative there, hopefully it's the lady that dad has worked with. I have this paper to finish writing, which is due on monday, not tuesday; and then german on monday and science on tuesday. I have to get a bunch of signatures so that i can order a transcript and send it to pitt. I got a car to drive me to the airport at 2am. The school is organizing it, so i have faith in the fact that it will show up, otherwise i'm screwed. That's it for now.

Somewhat good news

I looked up the flights this morning and all of them left of time, so maybe there is hope yet. I am currently cleaning up my computer because I have something like 2.6 GB of space on my computer. I am compressing my files and it continues to find multiple copies of the same trojan. The numbers are staggering, I wonder why it's only finding them while I compress the files. Hopefully this will help my computer out. I have begun studying for various finals. I have marketing on thurs and the guide that he gave us is all over the place. I have to constantly flip back and forth through the book to find things. I also have to start writing this massive 15 page paper that our prof assigned us last thursday that's due on tuesday. We might revolt in class today. Only today and tomorrow and class is over!

The Final Fling

So my trip started off well. I went straight from class to the bus station and caught the train to Belgrade. I decided to get a sleeper car because it was heated and I didn't want to run into the troubles we had to Athens. The train left on time and arrived on time, apparently an incredible event, the train is usually at least 3-4 hrs late. I arrived in Belgrade around 6:45am and walked around and took some pictures. After figuring out that I was in a different time zone, I went to the bus station to see when I could go to Sarajevo. There were a few buses, but for me it was either 10am or 10pm. I decided to take the 10am bus, which left in 10 min. I had to withdraw money because I forgot to change me leva into euros. I caught the bus, satisfied with my 3hrs in Belgrade. The scenery on the way to Sarajevo was amazing. I made it to Sarajevo around 5:30pm and tried to make my way to the center of town. First i had to struggle with my lack of exchangable currency again, and eventually found an ATM. Then i tried to find my way to the center. There are 2 bus stations in Sarajevo, one very close to the center, and one about 12km from the city. I unknowingly was at the far one. After asking people for directions i finally gave in and took a taxi that was parked on the sidewalk. I made it into the center and found a hostile for 10 euro. Then I sat around and talked to a Finnish and a French guy, who I ended up going to the clubs with. We had our fun and came back around 3am. The craziest thing happened. There was a japanese guys in our hostile who looked strangely familiar. I didn't want to be racist and just assume that they all look that same (which i don't), so i asked him whether he had been to Ohrid. Turns out that he's the same guy that I met on the bus to Ohrid. What a small world. The next day I walked around the city and took pictures and bought a souvenir for Henk. Then I went to the bus station to wait for the bus to Podgorica so that I could go to Kotor. I was sitting down and reading my book when a couple asked me where I was going. I said Podgorica and they said that they were driving there and that i could go with them for the same price as the bus. I decided to go with them. The ride was fine, but the road to the border was absolutely terrifying. It randomly went from paved to unpaved, teetering on the edge of a cliff, barely wide enough for 2 cars. It went on forever and I was convinced that these people were going to kick me out and leave me for dead. Eventually we made it to the border and went through a national park in Montenegro. Even though it was dark, I was awestruck. It was like driving through solid limestone. We must have gone through at least 25 tunnels of varying length. The silhouette of the mountains were amazing. One the way down the weather turned terrible. The fog was so thick that we could barely see the white line in the middle of the road. I thought we were going to have to pull over and wait. We made it through the fog and rain and more fog and eventually made it to podgorica around 10pm. I decided to take the 10:45 bus to kotor and got there around 1am. I had no intention of sleeping anywhere, so I decided to stay awake all night and walk around the city until day broke and then head off somewhere else. Kotor is truly beautiful. A small walled city made almost entirely out of limestone. The whole city is paved in it and the buildings range from the 6-19th century. I really liked it there and after day broke I went up the mountain to get a good view and some exercise. I then headed back to Podgorica to make my way back home. I left Kotor around 9am and got to podgorica around 11. I went to pay for a ticket too nis, serbia, only to find that I had lost my ATM card. needless to say i was thrown into a flat panic. I was freaking out because i only had leva and they didn't exchange it here. I told one taxi driver who really helped me out by trying to find someone on the "black market" who exchanged leva. He ended up exchanging euro with me and i exchanged 120 leva for 50 euro. A 10 euro loss for me, but better than any other option. he also arranged for me to take a direct bus to sofia through a private company that left at midnight from a hotel parking lot. I was grateful, but suspicious of how shady it was. Now I had to wait around and I had almost 12 hrs before the bus left. I sat in the hotel and finished my 400 pg book i had received on thursday afternoon. If this bus didn't show up in its shady circumstances, i would be screwed, so i decided to take the indirect bus to nis at 8:15pm. I slept the entire 10hr trip. Strangely enough, there was no border check b/w montenegro and serbia. I made it to nis around 8am and the next bus to sofia left at 5pm. I found the train station and there was a train leaving at 1:10, so i did that. I walked around the city to kill time and finally caught the train, which was almost 2 hrs late. The train back was insane. Everyone was smuggling something. The train was packed full at the border, even the hallway was stuffed full. I saw at least 3000 packs of cigarettes being smuggled in different ways. People hiding them in panels, around their waists, legs, everywhere. It was a good weekend and I probably left some stuff out, but i've written this entry with many distractions, the biggest one being the almost certain cancellation of my flight next week due to fog. It makes it worse that there is only one flight to philly from frankfurt each day, so it's going to be tons of fun getting back. so a warning to those picking me up, I might not be able to get home at the appropriate time, or even day. I might even have to fly to somewhere else, i don't know. I'm hoping for the best right now, and we'll just have to wait and see.

Christmas Already?

Yesterday our german class was constantly interrupted by a concert going on outside and some guy yelling on a microphone. After class Kiro and I went to check it out and it turned out to be a christmas concert of some kind, on the 4th of December! The performances by kids and others alike were actually quite good, evenif Santa did arrive in a police car along with snow white. There was a dance team of girls dancing to the tokyo drift song, and they were good. The funny thing though was that there was a little girl of maybe 5 dancing with them. Afterwards there were fireworks which could be seen from almost anywhere in the city. I really hope this isn't going to continue until I leave. New years eve in bulgaria is going to be nuts this year with them joining the EU, and from what Kiro tells me, it's crazy to begin with. Everyone has fireworks and the whole country is like a war zone w/ all of them going off. God knows what this year will be like. It's a shame I'm going to miss it. I got my watch fixed and now it's solid as a rock, much better than before. I am going to be traveling alone again this weekend because I'm the only one that can leave on wed. I'm planning to go around serbia for a little, then to Sarajevo in bosnia, and then spend as much time in montenegro as possible. Bond my not have been shot there, but I can see why they wanted ppl to think it was. The landscapes look incredible, so I'm going to try and make it as close to the coast as i can. I will probably not be going to Belgrade because it's too far north and has been destroyed 40 times in 2300 years. I'm not sure what will happen on this particular trip, but it should be a blast.

Empty Weekend

After giving blood and the Sg party, both which were fun and fulfilling, I realized on friday that this is the first weekend that I'm not doing anything. It's been thanksgiving, macedonia, and everything else that I've been up to. I was going to go to Sofia for water polo, but decided to get a really good nights sleep and swim at the local pool instead. I have a really tough workout that is related to water polo training, so I think I'll give it a try. The fact that I'm not really doing anything is also magnified by the fact that a lot of people are not here. They either went home or are traveling (to places i've already been). I also thought about the fact that I still haven't been to the Rila monastery, so I have to do that before I go. I don't think I'll be able to do it this weekend because I need two other people and a Bulgarian so that we can make a deal with a taxi driver and split the fare. I definitely cannot do it next weekend because I'm pretty sure I'm going to Serbia and hopefully Montenegro. I watched the new Bond movie after dad suggested it because it's supposed to be set in Montenegro. I liked the movie and the scenery, but was disappointed when I found out that it was filmed in Italy and the Czech republic. Oh well, just means I'm going to have to go to the Czech republic. I was talking to Carolyn on Skype last night and amazingly there was barely any delay. Unfortunately I had to run out and get my pizza because they get mad when you make them wait, and when I started talking to her again, the fire alarm went off in her building! I have finally depleted all the money from my Bulgarian bank account. I literally have nothing left in my wallet. I get charged a flat fee of $3.50 for using my american Visa, so I've guessed that i'll need about 300 leva for the rest of my time here. I'll be going down to the ATM soon, I really hope the machine doesn't just give me three hundreds because I would have a really hard time breaking them. As I near the end of my stay here in Bulgaria, I'm really happy that I'm going to be back home and see the family and friends. But I also am sad that I'm leaving, because I really like my friends here, and I know it's going to be hard to see them again. They don't want me to leave either, and everyone that asks how long I'm staying cringes when I say that I'm leaving soon, and they try and convince me to stay. It's really odd, but people here are just so much easier to befriend than people back at pittsburgh. All the people that I hung out with last year don't talk to me that much anymore, and I really don't mind that they don't. My challenge next semester is going to be finding friends as wholesome as the ones that I have made here. Luckily Oksana and John will be coming back to pitt, so that's a good start. I feel like I'll be in this distant situation when I come back home, but with all my friends here because most of them are staying. I was surprised to find out that only 15 students are here for only one semester, and I know every single one of them. We have to do a ridiculous amount of stuff before we leave. We have to collect something like 6 separate signatures, write a letter to the guy who sponsors the scholarship, turn in our ID cards (which I really want to keep), and complete an exit survey. I really don't know why we have to do all this stuff, but I guess I don't have much choice.
Well, I'm tired of typing here sitting in my underwear. I'm going to get dressed and see if I can get the money, eat something, and hopefully go swimming soon.
See all of you in a few weeks!