Where I am staying and the long trek

 Here is a look at the small resort in Bulgaria that we are staying at during the week of camp. It is located in the mountains of Bulgaria, in a beautiful area. This is a picture of the restaurant area. We eat inside or out depending on the weather.

This is an example of the buildings that house the rooms. Each room has 2 or 3 beds and the campers are in these rooms. This building is where the girls are staying. The boys building, where I am at, is located in another part of the complex. There are recreation areas and even a large meeting room for us to use.

 Today we went on a longer hike. Here is a picture from up above looking down on the area we are hiking to. This area has a small waterfall emptying into the pool you see below. As you can see we had to hike down quite a long way, and since we went down a long way of course, we had to hike back up a long way on our way back.

 But, it was worth it as you can see from this picture. We are at the waterfall and sitting down and enjoying the view for a while. The students were able to go around almost to the waterfall on the rocks that you can see at the left of the picture. Even I went over there to be closer to the waterfall.

Here is the closer view of the waterfall from the rocks near it. It was quite a peaceful area to sit in and just think about nothing.

Camping with Vista

 Yesterday we went on a hike to a local canyon. Here is Miss Tony giving directions  to all of the campers prior to us leaving. She told me that I had dressed just right for the hike :) I was very pleased since I had told Miss Tony that I had always wanted to go to summer camp. If you look on the wall behind her (not the parking sign on the fence)you see a word written. It starts with an O, what it says is office.

 Here are some of the campers, waiting to begin the hike. They look a refreshed and energetic now but not so much when they got back. It was a hot day, so they were tired, happy campers.

Here we are at the place where we stopped the hike. We kind of had to, just ahead the river covered the entire canyon floor and so it was impossible to walk any further. The campers had fun climbing on rocks and playing in the water. It was a fun hike in the hills of Bulgaria.

At Summer Camp in Bulgaria

Well I am here, and there is internet connection, just not a great one so I will not be uploading any picture from here. I will save them and upload when I have a better connection. There are 20 kids here at the summer camp that is being held in a nice little resort complex. Yesterday I had my first class with them and we talked about what they liked to do. I showed them some pictures from Livermore and Yosemite. Today we will start a class in US History. I am not sure what they want to learn, but we will have fun. So I will post more as I go on. We will be here until Friday. Talk later.

In front of Gara de Nord

Just meet the bus in front of Gara de Nord. That was the directions I had on where to meet the bus that would take me from Bucharest to Varna to begin the teaching part of my trip. No problem right. Except that Gara de Nord (the North Train Station) is an L shaped building with entrances on all sides. The long part of the L is were most of the people enter and exit and where most of the taxis park. To me that meant that was the front of the station. Well there is another  entrance at the leg of the L, and it even has fancy columns and a big clock. I had to be there by 5:45am so I had scouted out where the bus might come the day before. I had three possibilities in mind as I arrived this morning at 5:30. As I was looking at my three areas I noticed a group of people gathering across the street from the area with the big clock and columns. As I walked over to the area it became clear to me that this was the entrance that the reservations man had talked about. Boy did I feel dumb, it was so clear that across the street from this area was where the bus would pick up. Now I had reserved with a company named Sud-Mercado and they had told me to look for the bus with Leon on the side. At about 5:45 a bus rolled up and stopped in this area. It did not say Leon but I heard people talking about Varna. I thought maybe this is mine. The driver had a list and when he had a free moment I asked if this was the bus to Varna, he answered yes and showed me the list of passengers. My name was not on the list. I asked if he was with Sud-Mercado and he said no and pointed to a smaller bus that had just stopped behind his. When I went to that bus a lady had a list and ta da my name was on it. I got on the bus paid my fare and 5 hours later arrived in Varna. I was met at the Cathedral of Varna (the place where they drop off) and taken to my cozy home for the next month. Tomorrow I go to the mountain area to join a summer camp and teach some English and also some U.S. History. I do not know if there is internet there but if there is I will continue to post here.

You ask, I answer

 First for Kaitlin, here is a look at part of the menu in the drive thru at that McDonalds. They even have a Quarter Pounder (which is new to me). This is a value meal menu, so you can get the main item with fries and a drink for 16.1 lei. That comes to about $4.60. Notice that they write it 16,1. In numbers where they use a , we use decimal point and where we use a comma they use the decimal point. So instead of writing 10,000 they would write 10.000. It can be a little confusing sometimes.

 And yes they even have breakfast at this McDonald's. This is still a new idea over here. Micul de jun is breakfast in Romanian and repede si bun means fast and good. No, Kathleen I have not been here for breakfast at all (lunch is a different matter).

 Now to Kathleen's question about the Metro. On the outside the train cars look just like Bart cars. They travel in groups of 6 cars. This is the station at Dristor which is close to where I am staying. Most of the stations look like this. Nothing fancy but very usable.

Here is a look inside one of the cars. All of the seat are against the outside and face the middle. The seats are in groups of 6 and there are 3 groups in each car. So a total of 36 seats in each car. This picture was taken on Saturday afternoon, this is why the car is almost empty. Usually the car is crammed with people. I did not take any pictures inside because I am not sure how the people sitting in there would have taken to having their travels recorded. So this answer two questions from comments on the last blog page. See if you ask, I will answer.

Around the neighborhood

 Here is a look up the street that I am currently staying on in Bucharest. My building is the one after the glass building in the foreground. You can't really see it but trust me it is there. Notice the car parked on the sidewalk. The people here park on the sidewalk all the time because there are not nearly enough parking spaces for the cars that are here. The city was not designed with the idea that people would be driving personal cars.

 This is a picture of my building. If you look on the left of the building, just above the trees you can see my apartment balcony.

 Not too far from the apartment, on my way to the subway station, you will find this. Yes there are McDonald's all over Bucharest. This one even has a drive-thru. Behind it you will see a typical apartment building, called a bloc. This is the kind of building that most people in Bucharest live in.

Here is a look at the entrance to the Metro Station that I use when I want to get around. The Metro takes you to almost any place you want in the city. Of course there is also a huge bus system and a tram system. You can get to places on the Metro much faster than you could by car. A trip that takes 15 minutes on the Metro could take an hour by car. Yes, the traffic is that bad. Of course the Metro is crowded. I rode it today at 6:30 and we were packed in like sardines.

Another one for my poor students

 Here is another view I made my students watch during the school year. This is a fountain near Bucharest University. It, like the one I posted of the other fountain is a traffic camera. We used this one also to show the differences in time between California and Romania. If you look closely at the clock you can see that it was about 10 minutes after 3pm. At that time most of you in California were asleep, as it was 10 minutes after 5am. So my students will recognize this fountain. If you look closely you can see the National Theater across the street, there is a sculpture located there that you will see in a few pictures.

 The webcam for the fountain is located in the top of the tower that you see here.

 Here is a close-up of the camera.  It is the white object located on the left side of the window.

And lastly, also for my students, here is the sculpture that is located in front of the National Theater. This is located directly across the street from the fountain in the other picture.

First full day in Bucharest, Romania

 Hi everyone, here I am on my first full day in Bucharest, Romania. This is a picture of the biggest fountain on Bulevardul Piata Unirii. There is one fountain for each of the counties in Romania. This one is for Bucharest (that is why it is the biggest). This picture is especially for my students. I made them look at this picture all the time. There is a traffic webcam that views this spot. In the winter I used it to show how it could be daytime one place on Earth and night time on another. As summer approached I used it to show them how the tilt of the Earth makes the days longer. In the winter when we looked at it it was dark, but as the school year ended and the days were getting longer we could see this in light.

Here is a close up of the thing that most interested my students. The McDonald's logo on top of the mall. From the webcam it was always hard to see, so here you are, I was not lying it is the McDonald's logo. I will begin my teaching next week. This week is to try and get my body on Eastern European Summer Time. That process seems to get harder each year (could it have something to do with getting older?). I will try to post something every other day or so, depending on what is happening. Make sure that you comment ( you can comment anonymously, just tell me who you are). Like I have said it is better for me when I know the blog is being read.

Time for the 2013 version of my adventures

School is over, my classroom is closed out for the summer. Now it is time to begin my adventures version 6.0. Yes this will be my 6th trip to Europe to teach English. I will be going back to Varna, Bulgaria this year, with stops in Bucharest. I also plan to visit the famous painted monasteries in the north-east of Romania. I visited some of them in 2007 but it was so fast that I want to go back and spend a little more time enjoying them. I will be teaching English in Varna for 4 weeks this year. I leave for Bucharest on Monday June 17th, arriving there on the 18th. I will be posting here on most days. Please enjoy my writings and pictures, comment if you would like. It makes it more fun for me if people comment, then I know someone is reading what I write :)