Day 6

12/23 Friday
Today we packed everything up.  We were taken to the notary office and I finally got to meet Rosi.  Many other families have been with her on their trips and have spoken very highly of her.  I’m thrilled that I got to have Plamena, she is just wonderful and helped so much!  Anyway....got everything signed and went to wait for Stephan to come back and drive us to the airport.  Got to the Sofia airport with plenty of time to do a little shopping for souvenirs....ok I know that sounds bad, but we really didn’t have the time to do it any other day except Thursday and it was snowing like crazy (at least 3 inches).  Our flight to Munich was about 20 minutes late.  As we waited I sat and knitted next to an elderly lady.  She started talking to me in Bulgarian, but quickly switched to English when she figured out my Bulgarian is really, really bad.  She was going to Munich to meet her great granddaughter.  I ended up giving her my last BIG Hershey’s chocolate bar to enjoy with her family over the holiday.  Finally got to Munich and had to be bused to the terminal....they were having really bad fog and had a lot of planes on the ground.  We had about a 40 minute delay at the Munich airport too.  Went to the duty free store and got beer for Mike and chocolate to bring to the office.  Then off to Chicago....the flight was LONG!  It didn’t help that the people in front of us decided to lay back and there wasn’t much leg room.  Landed around 6:40pm....Went through customs and had to have the customs officer tell me an adoption story.  He was very nice and explained that next time will take a few extra minutes to get through Maria’s documents.  Collected luggage and off for home.