On with the show

Point for technology

About a month ago my zip drive stopped working. It was due to my technological savvy or the fact that the computer I was on was in Ukrainian. Sure I could look up all the technological words in Ukrainian before I hit up the internet but really I don’t feel like it. At the end of the session I attempt to safely remove my drive. No go. Feeling distressed I just pulled it out. Now, in retrospect, that was a bad thing to do. So now I have the dilemma of having no way of taking in something I wrote to the internet to send stuff out. Or so I thought.

A problem for me is that I own a Mac. I like my Mac. It’s durable, dependable, and user friendly. Only downside is that my iPod only works with the Mac. It’s only formatted FOR Macs. But while staving off boredom I found that I could put notes on my iPod and I can look at my iPod and simply retype the information. Not as easy as just using it as storage but hey, it’s something. So this is my first attempt at doing so.

Fortune favors

These are some things I’m glad I don’t have to deal with:

1. Mass Media. Oh how I hate the celebrity gossip stuff. Who really cares?
2. Fast Food. Sure I miss the easiness of driving to whatever I’m in the mood for and stuffing my face. But you lose weight when you actually have to make your own food.
3. Family issues. Sure I love my family but the pressures of the family suck. I once received an email attempting to bring me into some drama in which I simply replied back “I don’t care. I’m 5,000 miles away from everyone. Give me the decency of not trying to bring me into it”. I got another email, I may have to send something similar again.

Hot wine, shashlick, wenches…oh my!

A week ago I was eating lunch with Ezra and preparing for my unknown work week ahead. As we were getting ready to go our separate ways he told me about a Medieval Fair the coming weekend and asked if I was interested. Knowing I had nothing planned, except maybe some reading and watching movies, I said okay.

The days went by, with a slow pace. An update came, definitely Saturday. I passed along the invite to Adam, Ashley, and even Linda. They were in, except Linda. On the eve before, i.e. Friday, I got a text from Katie asking about my plans for the weekend. I let her know what I was doing and a text message came back 30 minutes later with “I’ll see you tomorrow”. An event for three people, including Ezra’s girlfriend and now included Dayna, turned into 7. Crazy Peace Corps.

The next morning I woke up with the thought of “I should just make up an excuse and not go”. But I relented and continued to get ready. Ezra let me know that he would be late, that Adam, Ashley, Dyana, and Katie would be traveling together, and we’d meet them there. An hour and a half later we were off to only God knows where. It’s a little scary going absolutely nowhere you don’t know. But by God we did it. Eventually we found our second marshruka and waiting for us was none other than the other four. As a group we headed to Tustan in the Carpathians (pronounced Two ston) where the smell of horse crap filled the air. The games began.

After a well-deserved meal of shashlick we were off to watch some dressed up knights beat each other up. That itself was worth the trip. We eventually trekked up the hill to look at the castle’s remnants and enjoyed some good picture taking. Afterwards we headed to look for the stone lake. Alas we never found it.

Through the jokes and the laughs, especially at some girl that kept making out with people, we headed out. We were of course stopped from doing so. Ezra found it first then my eyes caught it. A chance to dress up like a knight in chainmail. Only downside to it all is that the guy that put on the stuff was behind us and therefore ruined a lot of the pictures. We also hit another snag. No transport. Marshruka’s were apparently only going TO the fair and not FROM. So we broke into groups and had to hitchhike back to the main road. Unfortunately for Adam and I is that the girls, who went first, got the last marshruka to his site. We now had to play a game of risk to see if we could make it to my site before the building closes. We didn’t make it. So we had three options: hope that we could stay with another volunteer (the married couple), cough out some dough for the hostel, or stay with an American in town. Fortunately the American was cool with it.

All things considered, a good day. It was cold, fun, full of laughs and walking. I could kill for more shashlick though.