La Vida Guatemalteca

     I've decided that a short note describing my average day here is in order.  Our schedule is fairly rigid, which helped in getting used to the wildly different lifestyle at first, but is now beginning to wear me out.  Laudes is at 6:00 sharp every morning (prayer is about the only thing that always starts on time here), followed by an awkward free hour which I filled with nap time for the first week, but now either fill with a run or by reading (usually reading).  Breakfast (consisting of black beans, tortillas, awesome coffee, some sore of eggs, and cereal) is at about 7:30, or whenever we arrive. I usually chat with the monks for awhile about anything, ranging from the average number of maids per nun in 11th century England (this morning) to the best cockroach traps (yesterday, after which I saw a cockroach).  I can't tell if they're actually knowledgeable about everything or if they just speak Spanish so fast that it seems that way to me.  After breakfast I usually commit 20 minutes to reading the Guatemalan newspaper.  I thought American news was depressing, but the three most recent headlines have been (in order): "landslides trap travellers," "Two police dead, 5 drug traffickers captured in parking garage shootout," and "crooked police caught robbing semi trucks."  Esquipulas is a very small town (high in the mountains where the landslides can't get me), which many people have told me is very safe (and which seems very safe to me as well)... so no need to worry about me!  
     I usually arrive at the library where I work now between 8:00 and 8:30.  Work there generally consists of hanging out with the people who work there, "adjusting" to Guatemala, and occasionally cleaning books.  There is another awkward 30 minutes between the end of morning work and lunch (black beans, tortillas, some sort of meat, some sort of vegetables, and soup), which begins around 12:30.  We get an odd hour after lunch free, which I fill with a nap, and work begins again at 2:00.
     Work in the afternoon is much the same as the morning, and ends at 5:00.  There is then another odd hour and a half free before Vísperas, which start at 6:30.  Dinner (black beans, tortillas, some sort of meat, some sort of vegetables, and soup) is directly after, followed by the desire to go out and explore, a desire which is usually repressed due to the fact that they lock the doors to the monastery at about 8:30.
     On Saturdays we only work mornings and play soccer in the afternoon, an Sundays we don't have work.
     I'm quickly adjusting to life here, to the point where I want to branch out and explore what Esquipulas has to offer.  Once in a while this desire makes me feel trapped here in the monastery, but most of the time I realize that life here is good, slow, and easy.  I know that eventually I'll get used to the pace of life here, and I'll probably have to start a blog describing how hard it is to live a normal life.