Mundanities of life at the Abbey

I got here a week ago.
There's less to write about than I thought there would be, or I could be not thinking creatively enough. This is the schedule:

6:15 wake up.
6:30 Morning Liturgy
7:30 Breakfast
8:30 Practice
9:00 Shedra Class (study of a text)
11:00 break
12:00 Lunch
5:00 Buddha Sadhana (liturgy)
5:35 Evening Chants
6:00 Dinner
7:00 Practice
about 9:30 sleep

If you add it up, it's about 3 hours practice, 2 of those Vipassana and 1 of those a liturgy. It goes by fast because I really don't know what I'm doing, and my mind wanders a LOT (which it's supposed to) but I haven't begun to have a "feel" for this yet. I guess it's supposed to be like this at first. No one's explained the liturgy to me yet and it feels like empty ritual so far, but the director who would explain it is sick, and the other one is on vacation. As it is, we're in silence from the time we wake up until 11, and then from 6 pm through bedtime.

The first three days were a rollercoaster, being exhausted from travel and just orienting to things.

The idea with meditation is- we sit in the shrine room with the ocean blooming from two huge windows on either side of a more-than-life-sized Buddha shrine- good posture, head tilted up and shoulders back, and watch our breathing (ideally, resting in it). Thoughts, images, creaking floorboards and sneezing come up. We label the thoughts as thinking and return to our breath. That's it. It's really hard to be both open to your surroundings AND focused on your breath.

I want to be here but I need to build a lot of determination concerning meditation. The dharma is fascinating and the library here is very thorough, but my heart misses the joy in art and creativity. I overheard my "big sister" say to someone, "This is a monastery, you're supposed to get bored." Just sitting with your mind, body, and breath, is supposed to lead to some kind of boredom, once your thoughts become less important and you relax with the breath. On the other hand, I feel pretty lucky because all of my self-defeating habits (referred to as "kleshas," here) are surfacing quickly.

The people here are really interesting. One woman was an airline stewardess for fifteen years, another woman oversaw construction of a power plant. My roommate, who's 26, worked for Big Brothers and Sisters of Juno, Alaska. I'm the youngest person here.

I'm still figuring out if this is a "good fit." I get the feeling that my words are like fingers pointing at the moon, they're not really getting at what the experience is like, at all. But hopefully next time I write I'll get a little closer.