From: Adrian Francisco at Semester at sea
Sent: Wed 7/27/2011 1:32 PM
To: ukuleleadrian.postgamereport@blogspot.com
Subject: Final Days In Varna
I can't put into words my self-hatred. In my pursuit, in my moment of running like the wind to track down a potential tag target, feeling as if I was home on some football field, I threw away, in a sense, a sense of freedom and independence to do whatever juke, spin, or jump I please. When I woke up the third day I couldn't walk without limping. It's gotten better since then, and I've learned to adjust my walking pattern to stay in stride, but gone for now are the moments of dashing ahead of the group, of leaping over cones and railings. And for certain, there's no way I can play in the upcoming basketball tournament on the ship. It may have only been a toe, but it's a pretty big toe between me and happiness. I feel useless.
On day 3, we decided to check out a local Archaeological Museum. From the exterior, it seemed promising, as if we were in for another long afternoon just as we were in Athens. I was wrong. Apparently the museum is under heavy construction, entire wings of the complex blocked off from visitors. Essentially, all we could access is about four rooms worth of icons, coins, and artifacts. We covered it in a minute fraction of the time we covered Athens. Safe to say, I was disappointed.
We decided to go to the mall called Grand Mall. I thought it was an okay idea, thinking "hey, it's just like hanging out with the dudes at the Mall in Columbia." I, however, didn't consider the facts that A) I wasn't going to the Mall in Columbia, and B) I wasn't hanging out with dudes, but three girls. Estoy loco y/o estupido, si.
But patience has its rewards. After we did a little shopping, we found a bakery selling a cake, and we were meaning to get one for Hang since her birthday was the first day in Varna (We raided her door with post-it notes and made a video with pics and videos of her to celebrate, for my own future reference). There was also a movie theater in the mall, and so we watched Bad Teacher. It was a pretty trashy movie, with no clear sense of morality (I should expect none from a pot-smoking lazy teacher played by Cameron Diaz) but I really enjoyed the LeBron James/Michael Jordan clip.
In the end, no matter what country you go to, a mall is a mall is a mall.
Day four, I woke up, ate breakfast, went back to bed. Woke up again, ate lunch, and then found Ginny who wanted to go the post office urgently to get stamps. Something happened back home and she really needed to send a letter. Fortunately, the post office was a relatively short walk away, close to the train station. We got confused talking to the older locals though, trying to figure out where in the complex the post office was. It's only relatively recently that Bulgarians began learning English in schools. But after walking into the bank and being redirected, Ginny got the postage stamps she needed. She then bought me a second lunch of bread topped with cheese and what I would analogize as pepperoni. I'll never be sure, but it tasted good all the same. Getting the food was also a bit of a cross-linguistic gesturing adventure, with her pointing at a calculator for us to give her change so that we could get a straight up five leva bill.
Otherwise, the day has been uneventful. The other girls went to the beach without me. I can't go in the water anymore because of the wound. I hate being a recovering cripple.
We have only two ports left, but I have developed on the third day a clever diguise/lie to tell people to make sure they don't think I'm American. Because quite simply, if they know you're American, the worst of them, the sketchy money exchangers and whatnot, will get in your face. I'm now telling people I'm a Filipino-born citizen. I only happen to be working on the MV Explorer, thanks to . If by chance I'm travelling with someone I can't lie about not being American, I belittle the relationship as to make me seem not American by saying I clean their room. I managed to keep the lie going with a taxi driver. I'm going to keep it in the back of my mind when talking to locals I think are trying to take advantage of me...
Alright, so tomorrow we have one Global Studies class, and then we're docking in Turkey the next day. Looking forward to exploring Byzantium/Constantinople/Turkey!
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