Today was spent on all three Maryknoll campuses. Most of the day I was at Bethany, the headquarters of the Maryknoll Lay Missioners, in last-minute meetings and packing my stuff, but then I went to lunch at the Maryknoll Sisters Center and then went over to the seminary building to see some of the Maryknoll priests and staff. And in the evening I headed for a fourth Maryknoll campus, the Society house in Manhattan, where I spent the night before an early morning flight heading back toward Cambodia. |
| The past two days have been sunny and beautiful, and the bright sunlight has highlighted the beginning changing colors in the trees around Maryknoll. Here on the Bethany grounds, it's just a hint of yellow but over by the Sisters Center there were some real autumn reds starting to show through. |
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| Here is picture of the Sisters Center across the street from the center for the priests and brothers and about a half mile from the Maryknoll Lay Missioners campus. |
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| Lunch was at the Sisters Center with three friends from Cambodia and Hong Kong. |
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| On the walk between the Sisters Center and the Walsh Building where the lay missioners are going to move, a scattering of fallen leaves gives an indication of what is to come. |
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| The Walsh Building is one of the original buildings put up by the priests and brothers in the early part of the 20th century. It is still a solid building but modern building codes make it difficult to utilize the facility to its fullest. |
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| Moving past the Walsh Building, the seminary building appears, a really remarkable structure. It isn't actually a seminary anymore--that moved to Chicago--but no one seems to have come up with a new name for the building. |
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| In the seminary buildiing is the Maryknoll Gift Shop for which Ms. Aurette DeCuffa is manager. She is offering for sale there some bracelets made by a women's group in Cambodia. |
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| There wasn't any hurry to get into Manhattan so Maria Montello, one of the participants in the orientation who is going to Cambodia, drove me to the Ossining train station (photo) in time to catch the 7:38 PM train to Grand Central Terminal. It was an express with only four stops so I was at Grand Central at 8:25. Then started the hard part of this trip. I had put 25 pounds of books into my suitcase to be checked and that raised its weight to 50 pounds. Then I had my smaller carry-on bag with 25 pounds and then I had a box with the rest of the books, 30 pounds worth. I was pulling 75 pounds in the two suitcases tied together and carrying the 30 pound box on my hip. Luckily I only had three blocks to walk—uphill--to the Maryknoll house. |
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