A little history

Last saturday a group of students to a visit to Blagoevgrad's natural history museum. They had displays relating to the region's geological make-up, flora and fauna, and a lot of stuffed animals. They also had a decent amount of artifacts from the Byzantine and Middle Ages. They also had examples of traditional Bulgarian clothing. Probably what was most interesting and definately what they had the most information on was the Bulgarian revolution. Until the late 19th century Bulgaria was still part of the Ottoman Empire (or what Bulgarians call the Turkish Enslavement). They had displays of different revolutionaries, guns and muskets, books, and letters from that time. We had a tour guide who only spoke Bulgarian but Savina translated for us. It was still kind of hard to understand completely what the guide was telling us. But they are very proud of this part of their history. Blagoevgrad was named after the founder of the Bulgarian Communist party, Dimitar Blagoev, and it is only one of five towns in Bulgaria that didn't change it's name after the fall of the Soviet Union.

I'm on the AUBG website!

My picture is in an article announcing new international students. This was during our diversity night during orientation. We're trying to come up with 20 cities that start with a P. Two of the guys are from Bulgaria, one guy is from Moldova and Kim and I, the two girls, from the USA.

Here's the link to the website:
http://www.aubg.bg/template1.aspx?page=news.ascx&menu=000001&nid=72

More Pictures!

This is the river that runs by the dorm

I walk through this park to and from class. It will be pretty in the spring. There are always workers picking up trash and trimming branches.

Those are the dorms to the left.

A street close to the dorms.

This is a public bathroom/washroom. The water is from a mineral spring and you can shower there if you so desire. I haven't tried it out yet.