Guests, and the Great Firewood Enterprise

The evening before we left for Craiova, we had Nicu* and his family over for dinner. They were officially our first guests which seems hard to believe since we've been here almost three months.
While I don't believe in the notion that a house must be "finished" before inviting folks over, (a house being finished is something of a myth, yes?), there is a baseline of organization that I need in order to be able to focus on my guests rather than wondering where the forks are, or trying to fashion chairs out of boxes so people aren't sitting on the floor. That baseline was finally reached and thus, we finally had a dinner party.

After we returned from Obedin, we hit a second milestone by having our first overnight guest—Marian—who came to help us with the wood project.
Wood project, you ask? Yes, as if we hadn't done enough manual labor on Silviu's driveway, this week we chopped and stacked nearly 5 cords of firewood.

In this region, most households own a portion of land in the nearby forest and from that forest you are allowed an annual allotment of trees for firewood. All you have to do is call the vice mayor, request the delivery, and within a day or two the logs arrive.

Obviously the logs have to be rendered into something portable and to that end, there are local folks who can be hired to do the work. First there's the Chainsaw Guy who cuts the logs into fireplace-long lengths, then comes the Chopping Crew to cut it all into firewood. Because we don't 1. own a chainsaw and 2. don't trust ourselves to safely use one, we hired the Chainsaw Guy. (I have no photos of the Chainsaw Guy because he's incredibly proficient and cut up all the logs in the time it took me to fold the laundry)
The next logical step would have been for us to hire the Chopping Crew. There's no shame in hiring them, after all, that's what everyone else in the village does. However, Mihai decided he wanted the challenge of chopping it all himself, by hand. He decided it would not only be good exercise, but a bit of fun.
Marian, for reasons known only to Marian, decided he also wanted to chop firewood by hand, and so he took the train from Constanța.
We began early Saturday morning, (so early that city folk probably would have called the police, but this is the country and everyone is used to early morning noise) and throughout the day the neighbors stopped by to give encouragement and advice. They also gave us water, homemade cherry juice, and a variety of tools to make the work easier.

They all seemed to find my role as wood hauler and stacker particularly amazing. More than one person asked if I'd ever done such work in America, the implication being that an American might not even be aware that firewood comes from trees, much in the same way we may not understand that pork chops come from a pig.
We finished Monday morning by about 11 and had time to rest and take Marian for a little sight-seeing before driving him back to the train station where he solemnly vowed that never again would he volunteer to come and chop wood in Viștea de jos (or probably anywhere for that matter).

Along with sore hands and backs, we now have enough firewood for a cozy winter, and Mihai has wonderful sense of accomplishment. If you have a personal challenge you've set for yourself this week, no matter how big or small, I hope you enjoy it as much as he did.
Thank you for reading.
Be well

*Nicu is a new character, his story will be explained in a future post