I've got a week of school things left and then I am free for the summer. I couldn't be happier. This has been a great year. it's been busy with plenty of ups and downs, books and essays, work and travel and lots of laughing students and colleagues. I am looking forward to having a little more time to myself, to doing some serious traveling and to seeing my family.

Summer break will be here before I know it.

Luckily I already know how I'll be spending my summer. It's going to be the thing keeping me going this next week. <!--more-->

I'll be meeting my good friend R. in Budapest on July 10th and from there we will begin our Balkan Adventure. You may remember her from my blog posts on Christmas in Budapest and Vienna, the Fulbright conference in Berlin, or our adventures in Sofia and Istanbul.  The highlights of our newest adventure will include Serbia (Belgrade), Montenegro (Kotor and Budva), Albania (Tirana), Macadonia (Lake Ohrid and Skopje) and Kosovo (Prishtina and Prizren). The trip will end in Sofia where R. tells me she wants shopska salad and banitsa!

Then in August, I'll hop on a flight to Seattle where my MoM will meet me and we'll drive the 5 or so hours across the state to Walla Walla! I can only imagine that I'll proceed to sleep for a day and then I'll take up residence by the swimming pool or prowling the streets of town to see what's new and great with an iced Americano in hand. I bet we'll do some wine tasting and spend a night or two at our cabin in the Blue Mountains outside of town as well. Yeah it's going to be pretty great.

After a week, I'll catch a flight that will take me from the dry heat of Eastern Washington to the muggy humidity of Washington DC where I'll stay with friend and attend a conference at the Library of Congress.  I am really pumped up about this because the conference is about integrating research into the classroom and I'll be able to catch up with all of my friends. And I haven't seen many of them for two years!!

The conference will wrap up and I'll grab a flight back to Walla Walla. I'll throw on a party dress and a smile in order to attend one of my good friend's weddings.  I'll have a second week with my family and then it will be back to Sofia!

It's funny. I am really excited to travel, to see new things, to see my family and to soak up some sun (but don't worry I'll be wearing sun screen!!). But I can't believe how I can boil down the next two months into four paragraphs! What's more, when I look at it this way, it kind of makes me think that I am going to need a vacation from my vacation.

Still, I can't complain about a thing. Well, aside from the fact that the forecast suggests that there's another week of rainy weather ahead for those of us living in Sofia.