Long time no wright! Well it doesn't seem like long ago, we were welcoming the end of school and the beginning of our summer break. It turns out that it is now the end of summer work and back to our more relaxed full time jobs. Don't get me wrong, summer was a blast! It was action packed from beginning to end, leaving me feeling like I've been beaten and left in an alley. Sounds good doesn't it? It all began with a harmless three week summer camp in Blagoevgrad (a beautiful town about two hours south of Sofia) at The American University in Bulgaria. I remember summer camp as being sort of laid back or at the very least care free. I now have a greater appreciation for teachers/counselors/administrators/anyoneelsors who have the responsibility of organizing and implementing a three week international English language extravaganza. 
In fact, Alana has been busily writing a resource guide(novel) for other PCVs about organizing and surviving summer camps. Despite the 14 hour days, the camp turned out to be a wonderful learning experience that I will never forget. I am only gratefully that I had absolutely no idea of the immense commitment beforehand.
At the end of the camp, we returned to Razgrad for a brief four days before heading back to Sofia to pick up Beth's mother at the Airport. Yeah guests! We were truly happy to have people visit. This was the beginning of our vacationing segment of the summer. WOOHOO! Well I could go on with the wonderfulness of the rest of the time that we spent this summer . . . and I will. Most of the time that we were in Bulgaria with Beth's mom, we spent in Razgrad, which was really nice since we hadn't been at home much for the past month. It was nice to have another American around. Interestingly enough, as a side point, I began to notice many more foreigners around Bulgaria, than I had before, when we didn't have people visiting. After a refreshing few days at home, we headed for the Airport to fly out to ITALIA! OH-a Roma, I-a love-a the Italia! FOOD-a! PASTA! 
. . . Colosseum-a and lots of old stuff-a! . . .
This trip reaffirmed my love for Italy. I have been to Rome and Florence before, but I appreciated different things this time around. Actually, when we first arrived in Rome, I said that we could see the Forum in about 5 minutes. Man was I wrong! It really is an interesting place that deserves a good look. I learned a whole lot more about the Forum this time around, special thanks to Rick Steves and my wife, Alana (a.k.a. Beth). For pics of these places you can visit our Flickr page: www.flickr.com/photos/inbox.**
**at the time of this writing, we haven't uploaded any pictures of the trip to flickr. Stay tuned!**
After Rome we headed to Florence for a day where we ate Gellato! among other things. We also saw a bunch of Renaissance art. For lunch we ended up in a small local restaurant which had extremely tasty pasta . . . mmm. I have come to realize lately that traveling for me is all about the food!
On to Pisa. It was great to see the leaning tower of Pisa again, this time without huge cables holding it up, it was only me! . . .
What I didn't get a picture of are the thousands of tourists standing next to me in various poses, essentially doing to same thing.
After Pisa, we headed to a new place for me, the "Cinque Terre", which means five lands. Absolutely amazing! The Cinque Terre is a series of five small villages in the cliffs and hills that meet the sea in the Italian Riviera. The villages are connected both by train and a hiking trail. The hiking trail was a lot of walking but far worth it. The scenery . . .WOW!
This was a pretty adventurous stop actually. We went to the Cinque Terre at the absolute hight of tourist season. I mean we read in the tour guides to avoid going on weekends in
August. Best part of it, we didn't have reservations for a place to stay. We had called like every hotel and guest house listed anywhere! No rooms available! We went anyway. It was really a nice coincidence that 5 minutes after we got off the train in Vernazza (one of the towns), we noticed a sign posted at a wine shop, "Rooms Available". We went in and there were two Americans working there. One of them took us to show us the Room, which was actually at Luciano's place, the guy who owns the wine shop. What was really weird is that she had been there all summer and was traveling back to the states out of Milan on the same day that Beth's mom was flying out of Milan. So she made a great travel buddy for Carol, Beth's mom, on the way back as she planned the whole trip from Vernazza to Milan. Apparently she was quite familiar with Milan and she showed Carol around the shopping hot spots as well. We stayed in Vernazza for two nights. Our last night there, we ate at a great seafood restaurant by the marina where our older waiter claimed to have been in charge of a Carnival Cruise Line's restaurant. I don't know if he was telling the truth, but he sure new how to humor tourists. He left us with this quote "Life is-a beautiful-a, if you don't think-a too much-a!"
Anyhow, the next morning we left Carol to go to Milan from Vernazza as we traveled back to Rome to return to Bulgaria. Despite Beth's excessive vomiting for 6 hours as a result of seafood poisoning, it was nice to have an extra day in Rome before we left Italy. 
Back in Bulgaria! We returned to Sofia where we had two days of medical appointments (Mid Service check-ups) before my parents flew in for a visit. . .
. . . to be continued, I'm tired of writing right now . . .
