Sorry about the past month of vast nothingness on here. In all honesty, I feel a bit sheepish now because my blog has been picked up by this thing: http://www.peacecorpsjournals.com/?showcountry,ro@blog. My blog is no secret, I just don't want it attached to some other website without my knowing it, but whatev. I'll get over it.
Greece was great (see pictures found at the flickr link to the right). MST was ok (I got horribly ill one night and spewed my brains out, but I also got to see some good buddies). Now I'm back at site and startled by the fact that tomorrow is our official one year swear-in anniversary. All during PST and for a long time afterward, I told myself not to go nuts traveling all over the place because I'd have two whole years to see everything, but it's becoming painfully clear that two years is not nearly enough to both be a good volunteer by peace corps' definition and see as much of Romania as humanly possible. It occurred to me on the train yesterday as we wound along the snakey tracks from Drobeta Turnu Severin to Bucharest, passing a particularly pretty valley being overlooked by a tree specked mountain, that I will never be able to see as much of Romania as I would like. I wanted to see that valley, with all its vineyards and cows and leaning houses and hobbling, hardworking inhabitants, from the top of the mountain, but I never will. I will never see the vast majority of this place. Even in a life time, it wouldn't happen. I had this goal back home to walk the full length of every street in Reno, but after pulling up a detailed street map on google earth, the goal withered away into a silly idea, one that couldn't compete with the ever pressing need to work and produce things and participate in society. A wanderer internally battling it out with a workaholic, but losing more and more every day. Bit by bit.
I like to think of travel in terms of scale and if you zoom out far enough, say to 1:1,000,000, you're looking at the entire world. In those terms, I've seen Romania. Erin has been to Romania and can check that puppy off the list. As well as England, Germany, France, Greece, Ireland, Canada, the US. But if you zoom in more, to see Romania in its entirety, that solid field of "check" turns into a few simple lines showing the trains I've taken to the few cities I've wandered around in. Zoom in even more, over the north western corner of Romania, and I've seen nothing. I don't know what their traditions are, I don't know what their dialect is, I don't know how their food tastes or what their mountains smell like. It's a Romania I haven't been to and, for the most part, will never experience. It makes me sad to think how little we really get to see and do in the 80 odd years we're allotted, give or take a few.
2 comments:
hey erin, this reminds me so much of my PC times. especially there was this road I lived off of when I was in training, and I always wondered what existed beyond my turn, but I never went and found out, and it has always represented for me those places you never see. i think realizing that there are places you'll never see is a great realization, most people don't even realize there is something beyond their little bubble.
Even though you won't see everything, you should take sometime after your service is over and check out some of the areas you really want to see. Maybe I could join you!!!
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