I’m used to seeing more and more and bigger and better in-seat screens in airplanes these days but Asiana Airlines had a twist on that that was new for me. This was a smaller A319 aircraft and the seats didn’t have built-in screens for movies and entertainment. The plane had an entertainment system, though. It just used the passengers’ phone and tablets for the display. The seatbacks had a built-in phone holder that popped open so passengers could watch movies, etc., from the plane’s system on their own devices. The holder was a first for me.
These two days are together because that’s how they happen when yoh are on a long (12.5 hour) flight from Los Angeles to Seoul, Korea. I left LA at noon Wednesday and arrived in Seoul at 5:30 PM Thursday. Now I’m at Gate 18 at Inchon airport waiting for my final flight to Phnom Penh.
The Asian airlines and airports seem to have an edge over US counterparts. For example, the Asian planes seem to have more electrical outlets at the seats and they are marked better and easier to use. And here at Inchon I just saw bank of food delivery robots. A passenger scans a QR code for a menu, makes an order, gives his gate number, and goes to the gate, and then the robot picks up the food and delivers it.
The Maryknoll Sisters seems to be on four or five acres of land, and with an environmental focus, the sisters are shifting away from grass and lawns that need to be watered, changing to cactus and other succulents that need much less water.
Today Sr. Arlene Trant, MM, took me to downtown LA where we visited Homeboy Industries, the famous project started by Jesuit Fr. Greg Boyles to give gang members a new chance at life. It is quite an inspiring place.
Homeboy Industries is located in Chinatown in LA.
A former gang member (center) took a group of five of us on a tour of Homeboys and told us of his personal experience of making the transition to a non-gang way of life.
We met with several former gang members and their descriptions of the spirit and the philosophy of Homeboys was really inspiring. It depends a lot on kinship, finding new relationships that support a different way of life.
On my way back to Cambodia, I have stopped at the Maryknoll Sisters retirement home in Monrovia, California. Sr. Arlene Trant and I worked together with the deaf people of Macau and now she is administrator of this home. She has been inviting me to visit so I made this my first stop on the return journey.
The center is set in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains on the eastern edge of Los Angeles, 45 miles from the sea.
Originally this was a TB hospital but the Maryknoll Sisters purchased it in 1920.
This is a view of the front of the facility from the side of the property. All the sidewalks are accessible for sisters using walkers.
This is a view of the other side of the main building. I stayed in an apartment on the basement level. My windows are by the second chair in the photo.
Most of the buildings are connected by sheltered sidewalks, more to protect walkers from the sun than from the rain. The eastern side of LA, here at the base of the mountains, is considerably warmer than LA along the coast.
I went to a local supermarket this afternoon, partly to buy some Coke and partly just to explore the neighborhood. It was interesting just being in a big supermarket after three years away.
My Asian friends would cringe at this sight–instant rice. That’s NOT the way to make rice!
Of interest to me were the Twinkies. I haven’t seen those in many, many years. I actually thought they had stopped making them.
In the morning John and Moya and I went to St. James Church for mass. One of the priests on the altar recognized me and welcomed me at the announcement time at the end. The two people who heard my name came up after mass and introduced themselves. One of them I took to Mammoth Cave with our St. Lawrence youth group back in the 70s and the other had two sisters I taught at Angela Merici High School.
After lunch my sister Mary tooks us to Parklands, a 4,000 acre park complex where she worked before retirement. It is a 100-year concept: in 100 years Louisville will have grown out to the park now beyond the suburbs and it will be a park within the city. It is beautiful with a silo lookout tower, miles and miles of heavily wooded trails, a stream for kayaking, and many places for people to be immersed in nature.
In the evening cousins who had met the night before at a center were invited to gather at the house of Julie and Eric for another family event. Their house just that day had been part of a ten-house tour of significant houses. Eric is an architect and designed their home. It is a wonderful place to live.
Today was a busy day but now it’s late so I can’t post much. I’ll be back tomorrow with a full account of the morning, afternoon, and evening activities. The evening saw another gathering of Dittmeier cousins (above).
This morning I went over to my sister’s house where my brother Dennis and my sister Martha are staying. Some roofers were at work, correcting an error they had made.
My sister Mary, brother Dennis, and me.
At lunch time I met with a group of guys who went to St. Thomas Seminary together. It was great to see them again, some of them after ten or fifteen years.
In the afternoon I met with John and Joan, a delightful couple who are donating money to the Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme after recent budget cuts. They have had mission experience themselves so they could really understand when we talked about the problems of DDP.
Then in the evening the Dittmeier cousins met for an informal dinner. There are a lot of us and we really enjoy each other and it was a most pleasant evening.
