June 8, 2002

I guess we’re really going home in a few days. We’ve got our plane tickets and we’re cleaning out our apartment. I’m not exactly sure how two years went by, but it did.

We spent yesterday with Kate’s librarian, who had us over for dinner. Before the dinner we went out for a walk on the fortress hill and through the Danube River Park. They’ve been videotaping us, as they did again yesterday as we walked, over the past year in different places and will be giving us a copy of the tape to take home. Very nice.

I was in a store the other day, when someone tapped me on the shoulder from behind. I turned around and saw one of my students from last year. He graduated and was back in Silistra after a year of studying in Germany. (If only I was fluent in two other languages!) He’s going to school at an international university with students from about 50 countries attending. After spending the entire year probably speaking little Bulgarian, his English was even better than when he had graduated and I’m sure his German had to be excellent too.

I really don’t know what else to write about at this point. I think I’ve covered it all in previous journal entries. You can probably guess that we’re excited about going home! This will be our last week with our students, the people with whom we’ve spent most of our time. While there are many other people to say goodbye to, my students are the ones I definitely don’t want to miss saying goodbye to.

We successfully put back together part of a bookshelf, which I dismantled when we first moved in here to make more space and wasn’t sure if I’d be able to put back together or if I’d remember how. I guess that college education paid off in the long run, after all. Our bags are half-packed and we’re deciding what we’ll give away and what we’ll make room for in our suitcases. We’ll be sure to make room for a little locally made Silsitra apricot rakiya.

-Josh