Excursions in Bulgaria

Wow, what a crazy day.

This morning, we boarded the buses at 9am and we drove a few hours outside of Bansko to visit the American University in Bulgaria. We mostly just took a tour of their new library and some of the other buildings on their campus, which were all brand new and very Western-looking. It was interesting, but at the same time kind of irrelevant since AUBG only offers undergraduate programs and most everyone in FISI had already graduated from uni. Nevertheless, the campus was still really nice:

After that, we had lunch at a traditional Bulgarian restaurant (read: never-ending servings of potatoes and watermelon) which was situated right next to a farm/petting zoo/animal reserve type place:

The last thing that we did was the coolest - we visited a small church Dobarsko village, and it had a beautiful garden. We were serenaded there by some old women who sang traditional Bulgarian songs, handed out corsages and served us their local yogurt drink (apparently made the previous day with milk straight from the cow's udder. yum.). I'll let the pictures speak for themselves because I'm freaking tired. More about this day later.