Day 14

~1 day left (Слава Богу)

Tuesday, August 31st, 2021AD

Больше хочу быть домой

One day left. Just one more day. Oh my gosh. Soon we’ll be outta here.

We spent the day walking around the downtown area of the city. We visited these beautiful and ancient churches, and saw the monastery where the first printing press in the country was. The saint who established the press printed church books in Greek, Arabic (especially difficult), Slavonic, Romanian, and Georgian.

Nia gvidanto had a set of meetings today, so we went with one of the monks up to the massive national cathedral that’s under construction. It was very pretty. Most importantly, we venerated a relic from St. John Chrysostom at the small chapel that’s been completed next to the big national cathedral.

The walk with Fr. Antipas (/anˈtipas/) from the monastery was the most enjoyable part of today to be honest. Everything else felt rushed and tense, partially because nia gvidanto uses this trip as an opportunity to buy homeschool textbooks for his kids, so he wanted to rush between bookstores to get all the books he’ll need. He got them, and I’m happy for him, but it was really boring to be stuck in these shops full of books you can’t read.

I was talking with the one other lady on the trip besides my sister and I about how a particular saint is always depicted wearing a brimless woven hat. Nia gvidanto didn’t hear “brimless”, assumed I was wrong and corrected me by snapping “not always” at me. When he realized later that he was wrong, he halfassed something that implied an apology. I’m so done 🙄

Tomorrow we’re taking a COVID test so we can fly home. Hopefully it’s negative, as the last thing I want to do is stay here any longer.

Dinner was fine, unremarkable other than the brief political episode that nia gvidanto and the other lady had, which can be summarized as

> socialism is when the government does stuff,

> the more stuff it does, the most socialist it is,

> and if the government does a whole bunch of stuff, that’s communism⭐️

What a waste of time.