How loud was it last night? Well, for family in Texas and California, it sounded like a refinery had exploded. For folks back in Iowa, it sounded like the IAAP might sound if all their munitions were to go off at the same time. It was truly a "get your attention" kind of sound, but I've seen nothing on-line about it, except for some expats blogging about it.
This morning's belch was significantly less than last nights - more like a train wreck. Maybe now Fuego will calm down and play nice for the remainder of our stay.
As we walked out our front door, we could see that Fuego was still unsettled.
After reaching La Antigua, we caught a tuk-tuk and "enjoyed" the vibrations form the cobblestones all the way to Socorro School. On our way in to the library, we saw the director, who was much more outgoing to us. On Friday, I had presented her with my old ISU business card. The same thing happened to us in 2007, when I presented my business card, which indicated that I was a "director," almost immediately we received more respect. Guatemalans have a high level of respect for directors.
The morning's work on the library computer was once again slow going. I once again installed updated anti-virus software via a read-only CD. This was to prevent the spread of the infected files, of which this computer has a bunch. Around 11:30 a.m., which is when we like to eat lunch, rather than the 2:00 p.m. favored by Guatemalans, the anti-virus program was functioning well, so we headed over to the ruins of the Franciscan Monastery
on the grounds of San Francisco el Grande Church.
Admission was Q5 (60 cents) each, but we enjoyed visiting the museum again and walking through the grounds. The ruins are all that is left from the original monastery after numerous earthquakes.
You can get a feeling for the size of the monastery, by the size of their kitchen.
Thoughout the La Antigua area, there are numerous depictions of St. Michael the Archangel and the old Franciscan monastery is no exception.
There are still Franciscan monks on-site, but they have a much smaller and probably more modern monastery next to the church.
After eating lunch, we headed back to the school to continue battle with the library computer. It finally finished around 2:00 p.m., so I began running other programs that might find additional trojans, viruses, and worms. They did, but continued to lock up before completing their assignment. Finally, soon after four, when the computer locked up once again, we decided to call it a day, packed up and headed out.
When we got to the front door, we discovered that the lock was a new electronic lock that didn't seem to have a way to open manually. I went back to the office and finally got the secretary to press the button that would let us leave. As we exited, we were joined by a small, elderly nun who had also been in the office when I asked for the door to be open.
Once outside, the small nun invited us to see their home, which is attached to the Belen Church, not far from the school. Not knowing what to expect, we were led into a beautiful and well appointed conference center. Evidently, a hotel had been built in the ruins of the Bethlehemite monastery and they were able to purchase it. The facility has lodging, group dining facilities, a lovely chapel, meeting rooms and a garden that is out of this world. It was hard to believe that we were still in La Antigua, with its noise and bustle.
The nun led us on a tour of the garden area and then led us into an enclosed area with plantings, but unrestored walls. At the end of the walkway, we were shown a small, monk's cell and told, in Spanish, that this was where Hermano Pedro, Guatemala's saint, had died in 1667. There were a number of plaques around the entrance commemorating this fact.
We then walked back through the peaceful gardens, through the conference center and to the front door, where we thanked the nun for her hospitality and left. As we walked down the street, we were pleased to see a tuk-tuk approaching, so we flagged him down.
Since it was well after 5:00 p.m., we headed to McDonald's (Remember, Hermano Pedro is their patron saint here. They have his statue on display.) for dinner. Afterwards, we walked over to the street where our buses load, found one heading for Alotenango and boarded. At this time of day, the bus was filled by the time we loaded it and well filled after making several more stops for additional passengers.
Once again, there were people waiting at the cemetery to board, so we decided to exit and walk the short distance to our apartment. Tonight, we rested, did Internet research, blogged and made a large pot of soup for the coming days. Tomorrow, we will try to make an earlier start so I'll have more time to spend cleaning up that library computer. I'd really like to be finished with it, as I have another computer lab at Socorro that I haven't even seen. If its computers are as bad as the other computers I've found here, I may have my final three weeks in La Antigua already booked.
