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Friday, August 20th, 2021AD
Iâm ready to move on from this place. Later in the day weâre going to a monastery called âbeautifulâ.
I feel like the first part of the trip has been a bit of a flop. Not too bad, but not great either. Maybe Iâm just tired (that is, lazy), but I donât want to do anything today. I canât really talk with anyone because my command of the local language isnât very good. I can understand whatâs being said and whatâs going on, but I canât really respond well. Being in that weird place where you understand but canât 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 âoff-roadingâ, 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.
It absolutely lives up to its name â 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 weâll go to Liturgy.
Weâre staying on the third floor of the trapeza/guesthouse.
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 thatâs dumb and shortsighted. America would Balkanize faster than fall to some spectral communism. Itâs not the 19th-century anymore, things like ideology and politics just donât work like they did in 1955.
In America, we have people treating politics like itâs sports and other people (conservatives mostly) who âjust want to grillâ, 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 âThe Squadâ within the Democrats or blm, theyâd be misidentifying racialist-socialistoid political idiotism with actual Stalinism Ă la Warsaw Pact.
Itâs all so tiresome.