A day with the monks

Okay, I should be doing homework right now, but since we just ran to get me food from Taco John's, so I'm giving myself until I finish eating to blog tonight.

So Friday afternoon our little band of writers (Dr. Dyer, visiting poet John Poch, Liberty, Dan, Matt and I headed out to Blue Cloud Abbey, which is just over two hours drive north of Sioux Falls. When we drove past Brookings, I excitedly pointed out our water tower to Liberty, and she thought that was funny. We had dinner with the monks that night. They don't speak at dinner, because one of them reads instead. What they were reading seemed rather odd, it seemed to be part of the memoirs of a random monk.

Liberty and I went exploring after dinner and wandered all the way around a little lake. Apparently the water had frozen rather deeply, because there were all sorts of dead fish floating by the shore at the far end. At about that point we had to take a detour through a cow pasture to get around the point of the lake and head back to the abbey. The cows just sort of ran away from us. Do cows constitute an adventure? If they don't, then I don't think we had one all weekend. We sat up a while after the monks went to bed, eating their Fritos and pretzles. ("There's just something about Fritos in a monastery"-John Poch) It's funny how 10:15 can feel like 2:00 a.m. when a building is asleep. I wrote a poem that night that might have potential, but it needs work. I always try to put too much into poems and they end up going twelve different directions at once. So even though the current state is rather rambling, I like the idea and will return to it later.

The next morning we woke up rather early to the monks' 6:30 wake-up and call to prayer. I think the bells were ringing for at least ten minutes before I woke up and actually heard them. In any case, we had an early breakfast and then I spent the rest of the morning in my room. It was a great time with God, but I really don't have time to expound upon it right now. Perhaps I can do it justice in a future post.

At any rate, I've now run out of time and must actually do some homework. One last thing before I go--my phone had a miraculous healing while we were with the monks. I turned it on upon returning to school, and the screen worked again! I guess being in a holy place is good for everything, well, except fish, apparently.

Oh yeah, and I managed to sunburn my face and half of my neck Saturday afternoon when Liberty decided to draw me. It turned out really well--the girl is an amazing artist. But now my face is pink and hurts, so we went to WalMart today to get some aloe vera gel, and I'm much happier now.

-Kim