Day 3 (for real this time)

Friday, August 20th, 2021AD

I’m ready to move on from this place. Later in the day we’re going to a monastery called ‘beautiful’.

I feel like the first part of the trip has been a bit of a flop. Not too bad, but not great either. Maybe I’m just tired (that is, lazy), but I don’t want to do anything today. I can’t really talk with anyone because my command of the local language isn’t very good. I can understand what’s being said and what’s going on, but I can’t really respond well. Being in that weird place where you understand but can’t respond outside of the most basic responses is frustrating.

We had a short tour of the surrounding area. Nia gvidanto told the priest driving that we were ‘off-roading’, which was very true. That same priest before we left for the beautiful monastery gave us very large diptych icons, a copy of the New Testament, a copy of the paraklesis, and a book about abandoned children rising above their circumstances.

Monastery 1: The Beautiful Monastery

It absolutely lives up to its name — this monastery is beautiful. It took an hour or so to get here. Most of the roads are good, but because the monastery is basically in a national park the final stretch is roughest. No complaints though, as it is absolutely beautiful. We went to vespers and had a good soup dinner. Tomorrow and Sunday we’ll go to Liturgy.

We’re staying on the third floor of the trapeza/guesthouse.

Yet more COVID concerns

People here are completely back to normal regarding goronervirus. Outside of the city, few people are wearing masks or pretending to care about social distancing. Concerningly, I have heard some dry coughs here, moreso than before. Most of the monks (kaj nia gvidanto) think coronavirus prevention measures and vaccines are means to bring capital-c Communism back starting with America. I think that’s dumb and shortsighted. America would Balkanize faster than fall to some spectral communism. It’s not the 19th-century anymore, things like ideology and politics just don’t work like they did in 1955.

In America, we have people treating politics like it’s sports and other people (conservatives mostly) who “just want to grill”, i.e. centrists. Our communist organizations and our democratic socialist organizations are jokes, and the Democratic Party is big-tent. If they think other organizations are communist, such as ‘The Squad’ within the Democrats or blm, they’d be misidentifying racialist-socialistoid political idiotism with actual Stalinism à la Warsaw Pact.

It’s all so tiresome.