Going insane(ly) calm!

Well the silent treatment is now over. Ten days of Vippassana meditation. A real cool expirience. Here is how the day goes. Wake at 4am to the clanking of the bells at the monastary, meditate for 2 hours before 6:30 am breakfast. At breakfast there are about 150 people, including about 30 monks. Breakfast is normally some sort of noodles with vegetables, really nothing sweet. You all sit together but do not talk to each other, just enjoy your food, Alms food as they call it. Then it is off to your room and more meditation until 10:30 am lunch. After lunch, which is your last meal of the day, it is now time for more meditation which is continued on until 10 pm. That is interrupted one time each day for a meeting with the teacher, the head monk. He consults you and wants to know how things are going and then he tells you what he wants you to do in the next 24 hours in regards to meditating. Now there is no reading, writing, talking, cell phones or computers. Now you may think this torture, and I will say at times it can really be challenging, but it is only 10 days and a great way to calm the mind, or to at least attempt to. The meditations are composed of sitting and walking, anywhere from 15min. per to 1hr per, up to 3 hr sessions. It really is a cool experience when your mind goes quiet! Not easy to achieve, I think I must have played my whole life thru my head time and time again! After a while, it actually gets addicting, because you start to crave the calmness of meditation. And when you are not able to calm the mind, it can be very frusterating. I am by no means a master at this, but I will say it was a great exerience and if any of you desire to do such a thing, then Wat Ram Poeng in northern Thailand is a great place to do it. And don't forget, you must always wear your all whites and when you get out the world seems like a very fast moving place! Just thought of something else, one of the Buddhist precepts to follow is to refrain from killing other animals, yet you see Monks eating meat!? I asked the teacher about this one day, it is ok to eat meat as long as you have compassion for it. Teachers always have the answers huh!