May 22--Padre Bernardo and Gregorian Chant

Today was a bag of mixed feelings.  It was really good at some points and kind of frustrating at others, so let's start at the beginning.

The day started off RIGHT! I asked my roommate the night before if she wanted to go running in the morning, and she said YES! And man did Burgos show up for our 6 a.m. run.  The streets were clear and beautiful, we ran under these interlaced trees, we passed some other runners, we saw the sun come up.  It was fantastic!  And it was just a great run.  My roommate Emilee is super fast, so we ended up doing like 9 minutes miles for our whole run :)

Then the day continued in a good way with our bus ride to Santo Domingo de Silos (where we would be spending the day) The ride turned out to be an hour and 15 minutes long...the perfect time for a FAT nap :) Once we got there though, the frustrating part of the day started happening. We got to the city, Santo Domingo de Silos at 8:30, but the mass we were attending wasn’t until 9:00, which means for 30 minutes we were just… milling around waiting for the cathedral to open… The mass was fine, I think I fell asleep during it. I did find the QR code so I could follow the program, and I did enjoy reading the neumatic Gregorian chant they were singing. 

The next part of the day included a tour with this monk named Padre Bernardo who is literally 5 feet tall and 88 years old and the funniest, cutest man I have met. Like for real, the tour was interesting, but I was just there for THIS MAN - listen to the words of wisdom he was spitting throughout his little spiel. These are all things he said:

1. La mujer es el sexo fuerte, y los hombres son el sexo bruto - which translated means, The woman is the strong sex while the man is the brute sex. It doesn’t translate super well, but I would agree in general, women work smarter, not harder, and focus on the details while men rely on their strength and see more of the general picture.
2. Si no tiene amor, no tiene felicidad - If you don’t have love, you don’t have happiness. I mean come on, this man knows what he is talking about
3. La Paz es la tranquilidad en orden - Peace is tranquility in order. Peace is tranquility, but tranquility often comes through order - whether that be in schedule, in home, in whatever. 
4. Que cuesta decir algo feliz a las personas - what does it cost to say something nice to others. Amen, what a great way to think - say the nice things you think, what does it cost you??
5. Hay otro sistema de vivir feliz - there is another way to live happy. What I interpreted this as was, the world has one way of thinking people can be happy, but there is another more perfect system. The system God has - it will ALWAYS make you happy. 

Anyway, those are just a few things he said, and I don’t know if I’m describing him well, but seriously, this man just exuded love and happiness and contentment. I really listened to what he said because he obviously knew about these things, and he was sharing them out of love and service. 

We paused from our monastery things to have a SUPER nice lunch - it was the GOOD lamb stew meat, all-you-could-drink bottle pops, and tasty vegetables and dessert. Oh my gosh, and their bread?! I mean like the BEST BREAD I’ve had here so far - just next level stuff. 

Then came another frustrating part of the day - 1.5 hours of NOTHING. In case you don’t know me, let me tell you, I’m a planner. I love to plan, I love to know the plan, or make the plan, I look at maps, visit websites, call places so I can know the plan. Unfortunately, our teachers don’t always share the plan with us. So if I had known that we had an hour and a half to burn, I would have brought snacks, or my computer to catch up on homework, or just been organized in my mind to have that free time. Instead, I sat on a hard bench with my jacket over my head so I didn’t get sunburned, and slept for most of the time… weeeee...

One of the other highlights of the day was singing Gregorian Chant. There is a monk at this monastery who is getting his doctorate in Musicology, and his main area of study is Gregorian Chant, so for the next three hours we learned ALL ABOUT Gregorian Chant. Which honestly, talking about it with a bunch of non-music majors makes me appreciate that this music is REALLY abstract and is so complicated, and this guy did a really good job explaining it, but STILL.  The complexity of music kind of blows my mind when I view it from the outside. I would have preferred we sing a little bit more than we did, cause we only got through two relatively easy (I mean like, most of the people in our group got them within 3-4 repetitions level of easy) chants. But we did get to sing them at the end of Vespers (one of the mass-like meetings the monks hold at 7 p.m.) which was really fun!

The last kind of exciting thing of the day was that after Vespers we were talking to the monks, and they told us about this crypt under the cathedral that houses remnants of two older churches that the building was built on top of, and I just asked if we could see it...and they brought us right down! It is crazy to see the literal floor of the church above and have these remnants of columns, walls and sarcophagi underneath. 

Unfortunately, because Vespers was at 7:00 and the bus didn’t pick us up until 8:00, I didn’t end up getting my laundry done like I wanted to. I will say once again that I LOVE planning, and it was unfortunate I didn’t get to plan around this day, but it was a pretty good one anyway :)