by Abby S. (10th Grade)

This summer my family went back to California for a few months, as we are wont to do. We went to get more supporters and also to remind our current supporters we exist (which actually did end up necessary). Every Sunday we would go to a different church and set up a board, like you might see at a science fair, with pictures and descriptions to tell people what we do. My parents would give a half-hour long speech about it too, which became very tedious to listen to. We also constantly visited friends and supporters. They are nice and all, but it was very boring. Apparently it’s “rude” to read in front of them even when no one paid me any attention. I didn’t have to go to all the meetings, luckily, because I am officially old enough to stay home alone.

The best part of the trip was eating all the candy and food you cannot find in Bulgaria (at least without looking extremely hard) and seeing family. I love Bulgarian foods like banitsa, boza, and excessive mayo, but it was really nice to eat pop tarts and Kraft mac & cheese. Also, the avocados! Oh, the avocados… I could go on about the avocados for ages and ages….except I really could not. They are better in California, is all.

In fact, my mom’s friend owns an avocado farm and we stayed with her and her family for a few days. This is important for three reasons. One: I need to mention that her house has way too much avocado themed decor. Two: while we stayed with her, we visited colleges for the graduating senior my family is housing. Three: I thought you might want to know that we went to Disneyland, which we also did when we stayed with her.

As I previously mentioned, it was nice to see my relatives, but if the younger cousins hadn’t come over as often I wouldn’t have minded. I wish I had gotten more time with our cousins that live four hours away, though. We only saw them three times, which is not a lot. We got to see a lot of our grandmother, because we stay at her house whenever we visit, which is really nice because she is the only person in our family that appreciates my sense of humor.

Of course, I also have to mention how amazing it is to go to bookstores with books in English. No hate to Bulgarian, but I don’t yet plan to read Bulgarian books for fun. It was nice to get some physical books from Barnes & Noble.