Fast day 2

It's 39 hours since I last ate.

John warned us that today and tomorrow are likely to be the most horrible days of the fast, with things like headaches, stomach cramps and irritability. I seem to be doing remarkably well, apart from throwing up my vitamin tablet this morning (too much on an empty stomach, I'll take the vitamins after I come off the fast). I managed to do the 7am yoga class, and then go to spanish school and study for an hour or so wihthout feeling especially brain dead. Now I'm here, sharing my fasting experiences with everyone.

I think the boredom is the worst thing. As soon as I got home yesterday I felt like I was in the big brother house - and it sucked. All the fasters were just lying around, some doing jigsaw puzzles, others competing in the freecell tournament, juggling or reading. Although I don't object to these things per se, doing them to kill 5 days is a very different sensation to doing them as a relaxation or break in between doing something else more productive.

Yesterday afternoon I suddenly became utterly miserable and dispondent, feeling as though pretty much most of my life has been a disaster, and what the hell am I doing sitting in a room full of gringos in Guatemala? I was also really distressed about what I'm going to do for a job when I get back home, and maybe it was a really big mistake to waste 6 months of my life coming here.

Looking back on this, I see that all these thoughts are really freakish, and not the sort of things that usually trouble me at all.

The days seem really long also because of the lack of food, I don't mean that I am miserable and weak because I'm not eating. Doing this fast makes me realise what an enormous proportion of my life is spent thinking about food, like planning what I'm going to have for dinner, buying food, preparing it, eating it, clearing up after eating it. I'm not actually hungry anymore, but about 2o times a day I think, "hmmm, what shall I do? I know, I'll make a sandwich!" And then I remember that I'm on a fast, so I can't make a sandwich (well, I could, but I couldn't eat it!), and then I have to find something else to do, and that's when I feel bored and miserable.

There is so much pleasure for me surrounding the whole food thing. I love everything about it:

1) there's the taste (obviously)
2) then there's the smell, that wonderful mouth-watering smell that tells you that this meal is the most beautiful you have ever prepared, and eating it is going to be the most amazing experience you have had to date
3) the social thing - how much do I love sharing a meal with friends, or taking my Mum and Dad out for a really wonderful meal??!
4) shopping for food, especially yummy fresh fruits and vegetables, interesting spices and seeds, and of course chocolate it's a pleasure that I spend enormous amounts of my time indulging in.

So here I am with 3 more days to fill, and I really don't know how to do it. I don't feel as though I can't go without food for 5 days - and I want to complete the fast more than I want to eat. It's jus the prospect of 5 days doing so little. This week being semana santa, everything is closed, and there's no voluntary work to be done, and very little paid work to be done either. I don't want to go home! Perhaps I'll just sleep!