Frankfurt

I'm officially no longer a Peace Corps volunteer.

I'm on my way home and I'm eating scrambled eggs and bacon in the Frankfurt International Airport. The eggs aren't that great, but man, I missed bacon. And the coffee is great.

And I'm tired.

A woman just ran past yelling "I am Florida. I AM Florida."

OK. That's all for now.

Blowin' This Other Popsicle Stand

It's been quite a while since I've blogged. In my second full year, Moldova has become fairly "normal." Things that I saw before that I thought were worth blogging about have become just routine life. Well, for better or worse, I now have something to blog about. I'll be leaving for the states next Wednesday. It seems that all the squatting I've been doing out in the outhouse and the mountain climbing-like walks to and from work have taken a toll on my knees. I visited the doctor and she took me in for an ultrasound. They found that I've got torn cartilage, a swollen tendon, and bone spurs - an annoying trifecta. I went to physical therapy for two weeks which light on the therapy and the physical part was non-existent. First, they'd hook me up to a small machine that delivered pulses of electricity to my knee from two black rubber pads which are about the size of a credit card. I'm pretty sure they were supposed to put a sort of gel or something on the pads to conduct the pulses across the entire surface, but they didn't, so I just laid there for 10 minutes while a receiving a very localized shock on either side of my knee. Sometimes the machine worked and sometimes it didn't. When it didn't, the woman administering my shock therapy would just click buttons and ask me what was happening. The one day I peered over and saw that all the controls on the machine were in Chinese. Outside of turning the machine on, making the shocks more powerful and making them less powerful, I don't think she knew what the other 20 or so buttons were for. After the shock therapy, I would be moved over to some sort of machine that I think was supposed to send ultra sonic waves into my knee to do something, uh, ultrasonic. They would squirt an overly ample amount of anti-inflamatory gel onto my knee and then I'd move this thing that looked like an antique desktop-type microphone around my knee through the gel for 10 minutes. That was it. They always asked me if I felt a difference after the treatment and I'd kind of shrug. The best I could honestly tell them would be that my knee now felt sticky against my pants, but I don't think that was what they were looking for. While this was going on, the PC doctor was talking with Washington and the powers that be decided that it would be best if I went home and got some proper treatment. So, I'll be leaving Moldova next Wednesday or Thursday. In the meantime, I'm wrapping things up, saying goodbye and filling out all the necessary paper work.

Maria is taking it all pretty well, and I think right now, we're both a little anxious for me to leave because we've been in a state of flux for the past three or four weeks, not knowing if I was going or staying. Know that we know and we know when, I think we're ready to get it over with and start the wait for all her visa paperwork to get processed.

That's all I've got time for right now because I've got lots of stuff to do. I'm sure I'll write all kinds of new blog posts when I get home detailing my re-introduction to life in the US. OK, see you soon.