We're spending the weekend at a Benedictine abbey guesthouse in Atchison, Kansas. http://www.kansasmonks.org/ They have been in Atchison for 157 years and they currently have about 40 monks living at the abbey with another 10 at a mission in Brazil.  They run a college (Benedictine College) here and they have lots of young monastics here, the abbot is only 43! They let us do laundry and they gave us a tour of the town - Amelia Mary Earhart was born here, and Lewis and Clark stopped here.  They have numerous streets paved with bricks, which is nifty, and many old, cool houses.