Okay, this isn't going to be a very long post but I went out this afternoon to buy a notebook and came home with these awesome things:
<ul>
	<li>an orange notebook with purple lined paper (it's French!),</li>
	<li>a copy of Hardy's "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" (a book I think all English majors should have read and I never did.  And, it's racy--there's seduction--but of course it's also a tragedy.  It is Hardy after all),</li>
	<li>three pairs of socks (two are knee high and one pair is striped.  I am wearing the striped ones right now.  Wow!),</li>
	<li>a pair of earrings (which I'm wearing) and</li>
	<li>these great sparkly red-pink bobby pins (which I am also now wearing).</li>
</ul>
I am really pumped up about everything I bought. I guess maybe that goes without saying seeing as I am currently wearing half of the things I purchased today.

The other amazing part: I bought everything for less than 20 Leva  and given the exchange rate between the Lev and the Dollar I feel like these things are almost free--okay not free exactly but much, much too cheap.

I seriously don't understand this country sometimes because on my afternoon of shopping I also stopped in a store where nearly all of the clothing was 52.99 Leva.  For starters, why such a weird price?  It doesn't make sense to me.  It would seem much cheaper to me at 49.99 Leva because it was still under 50 Leva but given the fact that the price is over 50 Leva why not bump it up to 54.99 Leva.  I mean, the store could be making an extra 2 Leva on every sale this way.

<!--more-->Aside from the pricing, the other thing that stood out to me was that the quality of the clothing seemed fairly low given the prices.  In the States, I would say that the clothing quality was some where between Forever 21 (yes, I know, I know--insert eye rolling right now--I've shopped there before), H&amp;M and Old Navy.  It's one of the kind of stores that has fashionable colors, up to date styles but sacrifices quality in order to do so.  Only in the case of this Bulgarian store they've also kept the prices up.  Needless to say, I didn't buy anything at that store but there is a sweater that I have my eye one.

Then I found the best store ever.  (Okay maybe not ever but it's pretty wonderful.)  I've been by it a couple of times but I'd never gone in.  They have tons of scarves out in front of the store and then I've seen shiny things inside.  Shiny things like earrings, hair things, necklaces and what not.  I have no idea what the name of the store is but located on Vasil Levski between Angel Kanchev and Rakovski--right across from the corner of the park in front of NDK.

I know that Shakespeare warns against being overcome or being fooled by shiny things when he wrote in <em>The Merchant of Venice</em>: "All that glitters is not gold often have you heard that told" but, ahch, I wanted lots of things from the store.  And they were all shiny. I managed to restrict myself to buying only the earrings and the bobby pins but I looked at lots of sparkly hair things including a metal and rhinestone butterfly clip.  I didn't buy it but even as I am writing this post I am beginning to think that this is something that I need--even though I never knew I needed it until today.

Crazy, I know.  I guess that this is what Shakespeare was warning us about.  And I guess that as my reader you never thought I'd be able to make a Shakespeare reference on a blog post on shopping.  Well surprise, surprise!!