Happy Halloween!

Where does one go to spend an entire weekend in silence? A monastery!! This past weekend we piled onto a bus and made the 3 hour trip to Esquipulas, Guatemala to stay at a Benedictine Monastery for two nights and three days. It would be an understatement to say that I was thrilled at the prospect of a few days of rest. I got my own room, my own bathroom, luke-warm showers, and plenty of time to sleep, read, walk around aimlessly and look at Monks, and catch up on homework. But I must confess…I wasn’t completely silent. But neither are the monks, so I really didn’t feel like I was cheating. One of them really liked to tell jokes. Here’s his favorite:

As the story goes, once Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit God expelled them from paradise. But some say that Adam never really left paradise. Why you ask? Well, because he never had to deal with a mother-in-law!

Okay, so maybe you had to be there and hear it in Spanish from a slightly rotund and balding monk. Trust me, it was worthy of a good number of laughs. Oh, and I also got to milk a cow! I didn’t really enjoy this, but it was exciting nevertheless.

And now I’m back to busy days and nights of little sleep. But everything is a lot easier now that I had some time to catch up on a lot of rest. And tomorrow I’m off to the department of Chelatenango, El Salvador (about 4 hrs. on bus). I will be staying with another Casa student with a family in the campo (countryside) for a week so that we can gain some sense of the everyday life of people who live in very rural areas of the country. It’s about a 45 minute walk from where the bus drops us off, and we’ll be carrying a big basket of food to give the family. Because of such a long haul, it is suggested that we only take one backpack with us for the entire week. So somehow I have to fit in a towel, bed sheets, clothing and toiletries into my little green backpack. I guess this means I can’t take my usual arsenal of supplies for all of the “what if_____ happens?” Well, I’ll figure it out.

Tonight we´re all celebrating halloween. The five of us who live in Casa Ita have been thinking all week of something we could do together that wouldn´t require much time, effort, or any money. So I think we´re set on the ¨five senses.¨ I better get back there before they claim all the good senses and I have to be smell...

Have a wonderful weekend/week and don’t forget to VOTE on Tuesday!!!!!!!

Hasta Luego,

Chancita


P.S. I just got back from immigration and was able to get another 60 days in the country. Hooray!