Bulgaria Trip 1 - Part 3

Destination – Sliven, Bulgaria – current home of Bojidar.

An uneventful trip….350 kilometers East of Sofia. We drove through beautiful countryside watching sunflowers being harvested and passing McDonalds at roadside stops.

As we pulled into Sliven we see a beautiful mountain range on the North side of the town. Our driver stops and asks for direction to our hotel ‘Sport Palace’. A man with a t-shirt on that says ‘I Like Beer’ gives us accurate directions.

Technically, we are in the ‘village’ now, so my expectations for our accommodation decreases. I’m pleasantly surprised as we pull up to a beautiful hotel…with all kinds of tennis courts, tracks, swimming pools. It’s a place where athletes come from all over the world to train.

We pass by an authentic Bulgarian wedding (exiting the hotel as we enter). A young lady approaches us and we discover it’s our interpreter (Galina).

Good conversation w/ Galina as we learn more about Bojidar, the orphanage he grew up in, and his current foster family. Everyone is excited…they feel like this is such a ‘positive story’ when they are used to dealing with negative ones here (single Moms, abandoned babies, failed adoptions, etc).

We agree to a few details of the week…then…we are set to meet Bo. We finally meet him finally tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. Stay tuned for the next segment of this adventure….