Through the Griffis and Orpheus Foundation, in the Spring of 2006 I was granted a fellowship to Polk Serafimova, Bulgaria. My hosts were the beloved Poet Laureate, Lyubomir Levchev and his wife, the renowned painter Dora Levchev. I stayed in a beautiful house with another artist and friend Greg Bowerman. For six weeks in the Rhodope Mountains we painted, we ate and drank with the local people, explored the small surrounding towns including Smolyan and did some light traveling around the country visiting Sofia and Plovdiv.