Weekend Update

Some of my students.  

Friday marked the end of the semester here, and I taught my last class that evening.  It was a bittersweet moment, as I have really enjoyed all of my students this semester and am a bit sad that our time has come to a close.  Exams begin this week and run for several weeks.  I was able to schedule my exams early, so I hope to have them graded and submit grades by next week. 

In addition to wrapping up my work at Sofia University, I am trying to use my last weeks here to finish one major and several smaller projects.  I am feeling highly motivated for this and am very hopeful that it will be as productive as my time in early October. I am also preparing for the start of my human rights course back home tomorrow, with some much appreciated assistance from a colleague and friend until I return in early February. 

I hope to do some traveling as well.  Tomorrow I will be traveling to Blagoevgrad to give a talk at the American University in Bulgaria.  I’m also planning a trip to Athens this weekend.  My time there will be brief, but I will be staying near the Acropolis and hopefully will be able to explore that area.

View from near Musala Peak, above Borovets. 

The weather is again very mild here.  It is currently 63 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny.  Yesterday I traveled with my neighbor and his brother-in-law to Borovets, a ski resort in the Rila Mountains about an hour south of Sofia.  It was an enjoyable trip, and the mountains were beautiful.  We took a long gondola ride to a point near the mountaintop.  It was quite cold and cloudy at the top, but occasionally the clouds would clear revealing the valleys below. 

There was a strange story out of Sofia this weekend that some of you may have heard about, involving an attack on a politician.  It has been the subject of a lot of discussion here, and the story continues to evolve.  For the latest, see this story from the Guardian.

Doscoro!