i have an interview tomorrow to work as an english teacher. kind of exciting. well, definitely exciting to make some more money, freelance writing isn’t a real lucrative career these days. but also could be good for future prospects. the russian enconomy is doing worse than i’d expected and far worse than that of the u.s. no one is hiring these days, anywhere. so i’m happy with what i can get.
speaking of a poor economy (despite the fact that i’m currently acing my economics class), we’ve decided to embrace the idea of fair exchange labor. as mentioned in the previous post, erik and i plan on wwoofing in sweden this summer. i made contact with a few different farms and heard back from two today. one family flat out, though very respectfully, denied us because i said we were vegan. veganism, no. veganists, vegism, maybe. i don’t what to call it but either way, i don’t think i’ve ever been denied something (besides food, of course) for my choice in diet. i was a little upset at first but after thinking about it, i myself have turned down more than a few dinner invitations because of this fact. and i don’t generally say, “sorry, i’m not coming because i refuse to eat your meat-ridden meal,” but instead tiptoe around my ideals and ambiguously decline. this family, however, very bluntly and honestly stated that its just far too much of an inconvenience to accommodate someone with such a strict diet. and i agree. it sure is.
so that brings me to the next response. a family farm about 80km from stockholm growing over 25 varieties of organic tomatoes has a few openings for wwoofers. in their initial ad, they stated being vegetarian and while being generally ignorant to vegan diets, were open and even excited about learning more. they asked for more information about our interests and experiences and eventually we got an invitation to come stay with them. i was told that i could be put in charge of the some of the food preparation, which was very exciting. if i didn’t feel as if i’d already found a vague calling, i’d absolutely love to be a cook.
speak of which, my mushrooms are simmering and the broccoli is growing impatient, until next time.
[...] and we’ll spend a bit longer there, from April 23rd until June 9th. I talked about it briefly here. Both farms will have us doing general gardening tasks including weeding and planting, as well as [...]