Hanging Out
6-7 June 2003 (Friday-Saturday)When I got back to Pewee Valley from St. Meinrad, I found my sister had prepared a list of tasks for me to do. First was to caulk the upstairs bathroom, around the tub, where water was apparently leaking and coming through the ceiling in the breakfast room. I got that done and then tackled the non-working telephone in the TV room. It turned out that had a bad connection box and Wal-Mart provided a replacement part for that. Then last night Mom was commenting on a dripping sound she has been hearing in her bedroom. It turned out that it was a gutter full of leaves that was pooling enough water to drip continuously for a day or two at a time. I got the ladder and cleaned out the gutter so the water will drain. While on the ladder, though, I noticed that it was standing in lots of poison ivy in the garden area around Mom's room. I took a shower and got rid of the work clothes and hope that will keep me from catching the itch.
Church Talk
7-8 June 2003 (Saturday and Sunday)This weekend I talked at all the masses at St. Aloysius Parish in Pewee Valley, Kentucky. That is my home parish and I was well received. The purpose of the talk was mainly educational, not fund-raising, both because the fund-raising talks are limited by the diocese and because this weekend was the day of the Crusade for Children, a major community-wide televised campaign in Kentuckiana that was celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
While not asking primarily for financial support from the people, I did make requests of them:
- to raise their awareness of their brothers and sisters in developing countries around the world
- to change their lifestyle as Americans to use less, cut down on consumption, generate less garbage, etc.
- to pray for the people living and working in mission countries
- to consider joining the Maryknoll Lay Missioners and working overseas
- to offer financial support to Maryknoll and other groups working with the world's poor
Today was given to a lot of visiting. In the morning I visited my cousin who is a Carmelite sister in the monastery here in Louisville. Then in the afternoon we visited a friend of Mom's, and in the evening I had dinner with the family of a former student from Angela Merici High School. The day finished with a visit with my brother Ray and his wife Tammy. Great day!
The morning was spent at Baptist East Hospital for tests for my mother. The afternoon was spent in telephone calls and in meeting with donors who wish to be part of Maryknoll's work through their financial support. They were very generous and it was delightful to spend time with them. This evening my mother and I had dinner with my brother and his wife before the packing for the return to Cambodia began.
I leave the US on Thursday morning and will arrive in Cambodia on Friday evening, Kentucky time, so there will be no update of the page until I reach Phnom Penh.
I left Louisville at 10:45 AM Thursday morning. At least the plane moved 100 feet away from the terminal before stopping and the pilot's turning off the engines. The traffic was so bad at Chicago that they wouldn't even let us take off from Louisville. We sat there for 35 minutes, and by the time we got to Chicago, i had to run to catch my flight to Tokyo. But then once we got into that aircraft and the doors were closed and we were pushed away from the gate, we sat and waited again, this time for 50 minutes, before actually taking off.
The flight to Tokyo was 12 hours and 15 minutes and rather uneventful. Even though we left in the morning, I tried to sleep so that my body clock would start to get on the destination time of Bangkok and Phnom Penh.
I was wondering again about the policies for serving alcohol on flights. The guy in the seat ahead of me had at least four beers and two small bottles of wine during the flight! I wonder if the flight attendants keep any record of how much they're giving to any one person.
I had the same bad connection coming back as I did when going to the US. I arrived in Bangkok at 11:00 PM Friday night and wasn't flying out until 8:00 AM Saturday. The Transfer Desk area has carpeting instead of the terrazo in the rest of the airport so I slept on the floor there like this man under the departure monitors.