Short Stories

 Ill start now and work my way backwards to the beginning of my day.  It is currently 3:43 AM.  I expected my sleep to be somewhat irregular with the whole jetlag thing.  So I fell asleep around 9, bedtime is early here at the monastery, which works for me because I enjoy going to sleep early (I’m an old man in that regard).  I wake up at midnight with this strange feeling that I am being watched. I shrug it off and just lay in my bed in the dark for a couple of hours.  I decide to turn my light on to get some water and that’s when I see on my ceiling the biggest spider in the world! It’s about as big as a starfish.  I can’t go to back to sleep knowing that I am now sharing my room with Aragog (Harry Potter reference).  I decide to play the waiting game and hope it climbs down from the ceiling, but whenever the thing climbs down close enough for me to through a shoe at it I get out of my bed and freeze.  Well hopefully this story has a happy ending; I would hate to be eaten alive on my first day here.

Moving backwards, I arrived here at the monastery and was absolutely taken back by the beauty.  The monastery and school are located up on big hill outside of Grahamstown and the views are absolutely breath taking. That being said, it is freezing cold here, I have a beanie, scarf and gloves on.  But it is so gorgeous.  I met the two current YASCERs here now Stephen and Cameron and the six brothers who live here permanently.  I made it to a vespers service, which is a prayer service at 5:30 immediately after that is supper, which was soup and home made bread. Right after that we were back at it with a compline service, which is the last service of the day.  Its 4 AM now, I’m going to try and wake up for the first service of the day which is in 2 and a half hours away, but we shall see.

Moving further backwards a funny story.  I was sitting, people watching, waiting for my connecting flight in the airport in Johannesburg.  I was across from a candy shop/ everything market when an older man walked out.  Just as he walk out a pretty younger woman walk past him, not giving him a second thought.  I watch as she passed by the man’s eyes jet over to her and he mouthed what I saw to be “why hello there” under his breath.  I couldn’t help myself; I started laughing very loudly to the point that the people sitting next to me looked over and flashed half-smiles.  I watched the man slowly walk after the woman and as she got in an elevator he sped up to catch the same one.  They left my sight, who knows maybe they had a connection and fell in love.

My trip started with a defective plane.  There was a malfunctioned part, which postponed my departure time by two hours.  There is a heat wave in New York; by the time I got to the airport it was 90.  Whatever part of the plane that malfunctioned was causing the plane to overheat.  It took the repair-people an hour to fix whatever part and another hour to cool the plane before we could get in.  This two-hour delay caused me to miss my connecting flight in Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth.  But after 20 hours of travel I made it safely to my destination.  So as the saying goes, “all’s well that ends well.”

And with that, here are some miscellaneous photos from my trip over.  More pictures to come soon.  It is so surreal that I am actually here. 

Ok, well, goodnight, or good morning, or good afternoon, depending where you are

Love,  

Maurice