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While the Asia Area Director, Steve Veryser, is in Cambodia, the Maryknoll Lay Missioners here are having a short retreat experience in Siem Reap where Angkor Wat is located. Today was a travel day.
Beth Goldring is a Buddhist nun who is leading our reflection, working from her Buddhist studies and experience to help us develop a theme of nonviolence.
I’m a pilot (although I haven’t flown for a while) and have always loved planes. Now I am especially enamored of the A380 double-decker aircraft. I was booked on one of those on the return trip between Los Angeles and Seoul, Korea, and I chose a seat on the upper deck.
It was really surprising to me how roomy the upper deck was, with more space than many of the single-aisle aircraft I fly. One noticeable difference is the width of the rows. On the wider lower deck, there are ten seats across. On the upper deck there are only eight.
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.
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.
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.
The past two days have been really hectic. I’m sorry I didn’t get to post anything here.
Today I traveled from Louisville to Monrovia, California via Denver to stay at the Maryknoll Sisters retirement home for a few days.
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.
