wood

Ciprian is always making the breakfast when I go downstairs to make my own breakfast in the morning - boiling the water for tea or putting pink salami slices on buttered bread. Breakfast is when Ciprian and I get our business done because his work schedule is irregular and sometimes I only see him in the morning.
What business do I have with Ciprian? Well, without him, I would have to travel to a nearby town to pay for electricity, would not know as much as I do about the orthodox church, and would not have wood for the winter.
Last fall, soon after arriving in my village, I purchased three horse carts of wood through Ciprian. He spent a couple days in August chopping the wood into stove-sized pieces (the size of fat dictionary) and I carted and stacked the wood.
Apparently, August is a little late to buy wood for the next year. Beginning in March I would be walking by my neighbor's yards and see logs piled into their yards, awaiting chopping.
"So when will we buy our wood?" I asked my breakfast conversationalist one morning.
"In May."
May is here and for the last week Ciprian and his father-in-law have been going up to the mountains for wood. Last night, just as it was getting dark, a monstrous truck crept up our road with an equally monstrous pule of logs in the back. Cipri and I were playing soccer in the front yard and watched the truck inch its way up the road, taking out the occasional cable line stretched across the telephone poles.
The truck drove to the back of the house and stopped. The driver moved from his cab to a rotating chair in the back of the truck from which he operated a skill crane with a monstrously sized claw. The claw would pick up 2 or 3 logs, lift them over the fence and deposit them in a pile in the yard. Cipri and I climbed a nearby apple tree and watched the whole process, Ciprian yelling instructions over the noise of the crane, the huge logs being treated like stuffed animals in a machine at the exit doors of wal-mart.
So I have my wood for winter! in log form at least.
Skip to a couple days ago at breakfast.
"You will need to find someone to chop the wood for you," Ciprian announces. "I won't have time next week." He mentions the closest male volunteer, "he could come chop it for a day."
I audibly laugh. "I'm not sure he knows how to chop wood," I tell Ciprian while I imagine this keyboard-playing, yoga-doing volunteer with an ax.
"Or you could just invite a bunch of peace corps volunteers for a barbecue and wood chopping party," he suggests.
I imagine several other peace corps volunteers who live in this general area with axes and chuckle.
"Or you could just pay someone to chop it for you."
"What if I chopped it?"
Now Ciprian guffaws. "It's very hard work and you don't know how."
"Point taken. But still, I've always wanted to learn how."
As of now, I'm still not sure how my wood is going to go from log-form to fat dictionary size, but I still want to try to chop it myself. You will be updated.