This will be really funny in about two years

For the last two weeks the health trainees have had practice school. Last Saturday some of us in Rusestii Noi decided to go to Bardar to hang out with the rest of the health trainees and have some pizza and drinks. By the way, pizza here usually comes with mayo on it. Not sure why. Anyway, it came time for us to leave and it came down to we had to walk back to our village.

This didn't seem so bad at the beginning of the trip. We had an older volunteer with us and there was allegedly a path between the two villages that took about 30 minutes to walk. So we set out, got some directions from some locals and found the path.
Or so we thought.

First the path ended in a gate that we thought was locked, but Mia discovered was not by simply pushing on it. So we continued along the path that probably had been somebody's driveway, but we kept walking anyway not really realizing this. After going for a bit more Jessica promptly fell in a ditch. There was a fence on the other side so we got her out of it and the rest of us hopped over. All except for Ahmad (our older volunteer/ male escort for the evening) who also fell in the ditch and then asked "Why is this so hard?" We all climbed over the fence with each others' help (good job team) and continued along the semi-path.

Which promptly ended as a corn field.

We could see the street and cars across the field, but there was absolutely no way through it. So after back-tracking two more times and Jessica falling in another ditch we found what we all figured was probably one of the streams that runs through our village and decided to follow it. This involved fording it, and it was mostly a muddy sink hole. So those of us in back learned from the troubles of those in front and took off our shoes so as not to loose them in this gigantic mud puddle. Mia's shoes were pretty much eaten by the thing and, while she got them back, she was not able to wear them for most of the rest of the trip. While I was crossing the river/ mud some plant decided to have a disagreement with me and ripped into my arm. I'd say it was a similar experience to when I had that nail go through my foot. 1/3 surprise, 1/3 frustration, 1/3 actual physical pain. I don't know how the other girls who walked though the field of thorns barefoot did it, but kudos to them.

Long story short, when we started to see discarded beer bottles on the ground we knew we were getting close to something. I had never before been so excited about trash. That something turned out to be the actual path we should have started on in the first place. We made it back to town, washed ourselves off at the school well, and all got home about an hour and a half later than we planed.

Good times. Kind of.