Urbs Aeterna

The neighborhood in Rome where I'm staying

 After a short layover in Brussels, I arrived yesterday in Rome, where I will spend most of my time during this Christmas holiday  After spending the morning gathering energies, I (and JD) set out for the city.  The main thing we did was visit St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City.  St. Peter's is pretty much the most spectacular thing that human hands have ever created.  There is so much detail, it would be impossible for pictures, words, or even video to give you an idea of what it is like.  For this reason, I tried not to take many pictures, and to simply take in the magnificence.  The Pieta is there, and lived up to it's hype in every way.  The sculpture is so detailed, so life-like.  Despite the tourist presence, there are enough places in St. Peter's that are quieter and more prayerful.  It was nice to spend a good amount of time praying there, including at the tomb of Blessed John Paul II.  We also saw the Pope's massive Christmas tree in the expansive, wonderful St. Peter's square.

The Christmas tree in St. Peter's Square

Following St. Peter's was a walk around Rome, including to the Piazza Navona, with its fountains and Christmas vendors.  The city certainly has a different feel in comparison to the others I've visited this semester.  The architecture is, dare I say, Romanesque and you can't walk two minutes without running into a beautiful church, that would be well worth spending a long time in were it in any other city.  The climate too, is different from what I'm used to.  Whereas the flora on the British Isles looks really similar to the Midwestern United States, Rome looks much more...Mediterranean.  It's kind of how I expected Italy to look, except there it is in person.

For whatever reason, I feel a lot more comfortable not knowing Italian in Rome, then I did not knowing French even in Paris.  I suspect this is due to a combination of factors.  One is that English is the default tourist language here.  In France, I think they still fancy that French is widely enough spoken to suffice for many.  Generally there are more signs in English in Rome than there were in Paris, and, at least at St. Peter's, most staff members spoke in English, rather than Italian, to tourists.  The other reason I think feel more comfortable is that now I much more experience at navigating cities than when I was in France, and have the confidence that things will work out.

St. Peter's

Bridge over the Tiber

My goal is to keep little updates coming this week, so stay tuned.

Holidays and such

Thanksgiving happened, as you know, a few weeks ago.  This year was my first time being away from family and being outside of the United States.  Needless to say, Thanksgiving is not celebrated in the United Kingdom.  The shear ordinariness of the day was strange; classes carried on as usual and people went to work.  However, the people who know us here did go out of the way to make the day special.  There was a great outpouring of support, because they recognized how important the holiday is to us.  The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, one of my teachers gave me (and my compatriots KS and JD) a pumpkin pie that he had baked himself when we went to his class.  I found that incredibly thoughtful.  I hadn't had pumpkin pie in a long time.  That night at the seminary, dinner was extra nice in acknowledgment of Thanksgiving.  During grace, the rector prayed for the American people.  The wine was brought out, and we had one of the best pumpkin pies I've ever had for dessert.  I also learned that pumpkin pie is quite rare here.  Many people did not recognize the dish, and still more had never tried it before.  I must say, it was appraised quite favorably.  On Thanksgiving Day itself, my compatriots and I joined the Notre Dame London program in the evening for their Thanksgiving meal.  Turkey, potatoes, stuffing, cranberries, and pie were all there, accompanying the wine which a priest gave us to bring.  The students cooked the meal themselves and did a great job.  I figure it was almost everyone's first time away from family for the holiday.  I felt it was fitting sign of my generation's coming of age.  We managed to keep the old traditions alive ourselves.  The future is going to be alright.  Although we couldn't be home for this holiday, it was great to spend it with other Americans and other Domers.

Standing in two hemispheres at once

The Friday after, I crossed another item off of my total nerd bucket list.  Taking London's lovely public transport, I spent the day in Greenwich.  Greenwich (pronounced: Grenitch) is most famous for being the location of the Royal Observatory, and home of Greenwich Meantime Time.  As one fascinated with date-time standards, this was a fantastic day trip.  The prime meridian was defined by the location of the telescope there in the observatory, which was used to calculate Greenwich Mean Time based on the stars.  In the 19th century, the meridian was actually moved 6 meters East, because they got a new telescope.  In the courtyard, there is a line showing the meridian and alongside it are the longitudes of various cities worldwide.  I got to stand straddling the line, a foot in each hemisphere.  At noon, I went back and stood on the line, so I could see the sun directly in the Southern sky. (A pedantic point:  On mean solar time, the sun isn't necessarily directly in the South at noon, it was close enought for my puposes.  One should note the heights of my obsession: I waited until after Daylight Savings Time ended to make this trip.)  There was also an interesting museum on the 'longitude problem' there.  For accurate navigation (and especially for a powerful maritime nation like England), an accurate way of determining longitude at sea was needed.  In 1714, the British Government offered a precursor to the x-prize: £20,000 (over a million today) for solving the longitude problem.  The two main strategies were either extremely accurate charts of the stars or an accurate timepiece that would work at sea.  In 1772, John Harrison was awarded the remaining prize money for his fourth attempt at an accurate timekeeper.  In the museum, you can actually see all of Harrison's timekeepers.  Following the observatory visit, we also saw the, the Maritime Museum, and the Queen's House, which is houses a collection of mainly maritime paintings.  I didn't find too much that was noteworthy, although there was a room in the Maritime Museum that smelled exactly like the sea, and I don't know how they did it or if we were just imagining it.

The telescope which defined the meridian

December started with Wicked on Thursday. (Awesome, and a good deal on the best seats in the house day of thanks to being a student.)  Friday saw Oxford.  My compatriots an I met up with a priest we know studying there.  We got to go into the Bodleian Library, and he showed us around the older colleges of Oxford.  That evening he took us for a pint at the King's Arms and then to a really good Indian Restaurant.  Curry and the like are quite popular in England.  While I don't think I'll go out searching for Indian food, at least this experience showed me that if done well, it can actually taste good.  That evening we went to the anthropology museum, and saw some shrunken heads among other things.  The museum was interesting, but the most fascinating thing for me was that we had to wait in line to get in.  That's right: people were waiting in line to get into a museum which was at capacity on a Friday night.  Only in Oxford.  To be fair, it was part of a winter festival taking place all over the city.  It was nice to visit Oxford, and to see some of the haunts of the likes of Tolkien and Lewis.  However, despite having much of the same architecture, I think I liked Cambridge better.  Oxford has more of a city attached to it, so there is more non-awesome stuff mixed in with the awesome.

Christ's Church Cathedral, Oxford

On the seventh, we had the annual Christmas Party here at the seminary.  We sung carols, drank mulled wine, ate mince pies, and stood around a bonfire.  Everyone contributed a little to the entertainment that evening.  I think my favorites were the native African songs some of the African seminarians sung.  My compatriots and I sang 'Mele Kalikimaka' to bring a little flavor of America (although none of us are from Hawaii).  It was a great evening and another place where the sameness and difference of being in England came through.  It's the same celebration of Christmas, but some differences to the way that celebration is realized.

The Friday following, we crossed off London Bridge and the more famous Tower Bridge from our tourist list.  We also walked by the Tour of London (where Sts. Thomas Moore and John Fisher were executed) and stopped for a pint and the famous Anchor Pub.



Me on London Bridge with Tower Bridge in view

Now I've finally gotten to the point where I can talk in terms of last week.  This past Thursday was the Christmas Dinner here, the last meal all the students and staff here could have together before parting for Christmas break.  It was a traditional English Christmas dinner.  The most important thing to note food-wise was the famous Christmas Pudding.  It was basically a dried fruit lump, with lots of sugar mixed in and custard poured on top of it.  Among constituent fruits are figs, hence the term 'figgy pudding' in the Christmas carol.  It was really good.  As far as I can tell, this defines English Christmas about as much as pumpkin pie American Thanksgiving.  An essential part of the table setting was 'Chrismas crackers.'  They vaguely resemble a large sweet in a wrapper.  Inside is a small trinket.  One person pulls on each end to open them, and there is a thing inside which makes a 'pop' when you open the cracker.  In between the courses, there were musical selections by various parties.  My favorite were classic Christmas songs sung in the 'extra-ordinary form,' that is Latin (and one, Rudolph the Red-nosed Raindeer in Greek), by the priests on staff.  We also had a visit from Santa Clause, from whom I got English Teas.  At the social afterwards, people opened gifts from their Secret Santa.  All told it was a wonderful evening, a great atmosphere of community and celebration.

Next up is Christmas in the Eternal City.

Mid-term Break

Derelict Cathedral at St. Andrew's

I would normally call this Fall Break, but I want to make this blog intelligible to our UK readers.  And since we're on the subject of language, let explain one phrase that has been the subject of personal confusion.  In America, if want a throw away phrase to pretend you are interested in someone's well being, you say 'How's it going?' or 'What's up?' or even 'How are you?' 
Not so the British, not so.  Here (meaning England) the appropriate phrase is 'Are you alright?'  For me, 'Are you alright?' is a serious inquiry into someone's health and well being.  It has the implication that the person addressed by the question does not look alright, and that something is probably wrong.  Perhaps their dog died, or they found out their best friend liked New Jersey or whatever.  But over here, people throw the phrase 'Are you alright?' around like it doesn't mean anything. And it doesn't.  I've kind of gotten used to it, but the first few times I was asked, I answered earnestly, apologized for looking haggard, and emphasized that I was just fine.  Even now, when asked the question I can't completely avoid the 'oh no, I must look aweful' instinct.  Old habits
die hard.  Except that for essays over here, it is proper to use single quotation marks, rather than double, when quoting another author.  At least that is the case at the school I am attending.  My brain was rewired in an instant, because single quote marks are easier to type.  So much for language conventions.

Edinburgh Castle

November 4, a Friday, saw the beginning of break and me on a nine hour bus ride to Edinburgh.  From there, I caught a shorter bus to St. Andrew's, where I would stay with friends at a friend's friend's residence.  The next day was spent seeing the golf course there (golf was invented at St. Andrew's), going dune running near the beach, walking around the ruins of a cathedral, and walking out onto the pier.  The sun set really early, and so a potluck dinner followed.  Then came a rousing game of golf (the card game, but very appropriate for St. Andrew's) in which I tied for first, winning by only one point, followed by a bonfire on the beach.  It wasn't much, but there was guitar playing, singing, good people, and fireworks.  It was to celebrate Guy Fawkes day/bonfire night/the fifth of November.

Sunday, was a trip back to Edinburgh.  We went on a walking tour of the city, seeing all sorts of things, like the statue of David Hume, the 'royal crier's tower' thing, where they announce the coronation of the new monarch, a cemetery where a dog called Greyfriars Bobby lived, the cafe where J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book, various views of the castle.  In Edinburgh, there is a really popular drink which I tasted called Irn-Bru (pronounced 'Iron Brew') that outsells every other soft drink.  It tastes like liquid bubble gum, is illegal in the United States, and apparently is an excellent cure for hangovers.  As a whole, Edinburgh is a really cool city, and the old part has a great historical feel to it.  After the tour, we climbed up this large hill just outside the city, to the peak, which is called Arthur's seat.  It offered a great view of the city and of the sea.  We watched the Sun set there (at 4:15!  On a mountain!).  We eventually found a Mass to go to in the evening, after one unsuccessful attempt which resulted in sung evening prayer and free biscuits (cookies).  Then we hung out in a cafe playing hearts, until it was late.  Then I departed for my hostel, and the other left for the airport to catch a morning flight.

Sunset on Arthur's Seat making the Irn-Bru glow even more

Monday, I walked towards the sea, first stopping at the hill which is sort of opposite Arthur's seat, on which the building with Edinburgh's time ball (dropping at 1:00pm) sits.  Then I walked down and along the coast, following the John Muir Way for the most part, but only getting as far as Prestonpans.  It was nice just to get close to nature, probably the most I had experienced since arriving in Europe.  My journey was necessarily cut short by the early sunset.  So I basically just took a city bus back to Edinburgh, read for a little bit, and called it an early night.

Tuesday, I spend the day touring Edinburgh Castle.  Among other things I saw there was the Scottish crown jewels, and chapel of St. Margret of Scotland, the oldest building of the castle.  It was also a great chance to catch up on my Scottish royal history.  I found my way to the museum (free admission!) which had a fun hands-on science area for kids and stayed there till close.  Then I fell asleep in the nearby library, reading a huge book of English grammar.

I finally found Mooreeffoc in the Edinburgh Museum!

Wednesday, I had time to see two paintings in the National Gallery, before catching a plane to Dublin, where KS, just in from Spain, met me in the airport.  We spend the afternoon seeing things in the city, like Trinity College, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Christ's Church, and a temporary exhibit on W.B. Yeats at the national library.  On our tourist map we saw some kind of building named after Newman just south of one of the parks.  We thought that sounded like a Catholic place, and we were not disappointed.  We showed up during the one hour during the week that Eucharistic Adoration happens there, and joined the old Irish ladies in adoring Our Lord.  One interesting thing about Ireland, is that all the official (government) signs are written first in Irish, with English below or to the side.  No one speaks Irish, so this seems rather odd.  Every private enterprise has all their signs in English.  Using the Irish language is a good way of holding onto Irish culture, I suppose.  At any rate, it is neat that they do that.

The cliff walk from Greystones to Bray

Thursday began early with a bus ride to Greystones and walk along the cliffs over looking the sea to Bray.  It was a beautiful, scenic walk, after the sun had just risen.  There was, unfortunately, just enough rain to soak my feet for the rest of the day.  After a series of buses, we arrived at Kilmainham Gaol.  If you are at all interested in Irish history, this is a must see place if you visit Dublin.  The jail was used as a regular prison and was quite over crowded for much of its history.  However, following the Easter Rising in 1916, several individual fighting for a free Ireland was imprisoned and executed there.  Stories coming from the prison bolstered the movement for Irish independence.  On particularly moving story was that of Joseph Plunkett, who wed his wife Grace Gifford the night before he was executed for his part in the Easter Rising.  We saw the chapel where they were wed, Joseph Plunkett's cell, and the cell where Grace Gifford was imprisoned several years later.  The main part of the jail is a model of a Victorian era prison, and several films have been shot there.  Kilmainham also was the place where the hunger strikers were held during the Irish Civil war.  There is an interesting museum attached to the jail, which has artifacts from important figures of this era of Irish history.  Following Kilmainham, we went to the Guinness Storehouse.  There was a self guided tour, explaining the process of making Guinness, and other aspects related to the marketing and distribution of Guinness.  The tour ends with a 'free' pint on the top of the building, with a great view of Dublin.  Guinness really does taste better in Dublin.  Following this, was a pot luck at University College of Dublin (UCD) with Notre Dame students and a rematch game of hearts (see Sunday above).

Kilmainham Gaol

Friday started with a trek to Glasnevin Cemetery.  We didn't go into the museum or pay for a tour, but it is a massive cemetery and some key figures in Irish history (for example Michael Collins) are buried there.  We walked around for a while, only finding a few graves of important figures, and appropriately enough it was pouring rain.  We had planned to go on a walking tour of Dublin, but because of the rain decided not to.  Instead, we happened upon the inauguration ceremony of the new Irish president, Michael D. Higgins.  We couldn't see much, being kept out by the gates around Dublin Castle, but where actually right at the spot were the motorcade would come out.  We got our pictures with St. Patrick's and Christ's Church and even got closer to the Castle, before dragging soaking wet bodies back to UCD, where we changed clothes.  SM took us to see the O'Connel house for Notre Dame in Dublin and introduced us to some of the staff members, before heading over to St. Mary's pro-cathedral for Mass with its excellent choir.  After getting pizza for dinner (noteworthy because I had had pizza one other time since arriving in Europe), we went to an Irish pub to watch Ireland's soccer match against Estonia.  A qualifying game for the European championships, it was a rousing 4-0 win for the Irish.  It was altogether a fun environment to watch soccer in.

Blarney Castle

Saturday was spend almost entirely in traveling to and from Cork and nearby Blarney, home of a castle that you may have heard of.  The four hour bus ride to Cork was immediately followed by a trip to an extremely busy shopping area, where some fresh food was purchased for lunch.  Then the bus was caught to Blarney.  Blarney castle isn't particularly big, but it felt really accessible.  You explore many parts of the castle and feel a part of it.  Of course I kissed the Blarney stone, which you actually had a lean back quite a ways to reach.  I imagine it was quite dangerous in the days before they installed metal bars beneath the gap, installed hand grips, and stationed a professional there to help hold you.  After that, we went to the nice nature areas which surround the castle grounds.  There were kind of creepy things there, like a stone that looked like a witch, and a druid circle.  There is also a poison garden, meant to teach about poisonous plants.  There were actually poisonous plants there (for example Hemlock), and a few that were kind of weak cases, like tea because it has caffeine.  No longer present in the garden is Cannabis, which was confiscated by the Irish police until Blarney can get properly licensed.  The three hours there were sufficient, but they had to be.  We needed to begin our series of bus rides back to UCD, lest we miss the last one.  The next morning we caught the plane back to London.

Me kissing the Blarney Stone

Let me conclude with a few more general remarks.  Ireland was great.  The grass is literally greener there.  The people there were so nice.  Everyone we asked for directions or help was so friendly.  I also loved the fact that you could call 'soccer' soccer, yield signs said 'yield,' and people pronounced 'amen,' 'ey-men.'  It was just more like American than GB.  And they love American over in Ireland.  For example, our tourist maps commemorated the visit of Obama to Dublin, and had marked on the map the place where he gave a speech.  And I don't know if this counts as an example, but whenever Ireland scored a goal, one of the guys in the pub sang something about going to America.  That probably proves nothing.  But Ireland was still pretty awesome.


Finally, one of the take home lessons from this trip was that you can be anywhere in the world, but as long as you are with good people, things are going to be alright.  I haven't talked much about other people in the post, but some of the best moments of the week were simply talking and being with good friends.  Another lesson is that people are the best source of information.  Even in the age of Google, asking another person is often the best way to get an answer.  That's why human teachers haven't gone out of style yet.  Other people were quite helpful as I tried to navigate around all these unfamiliar places or to figure out what was going on.

October in England

The astute reader (if there are any left) will notice that it has been ages since I've written anything. So there is my attempt to fill in the gap between my last writing and midterm break.

The night of Thursday October 6, I saw the River Thames for the first time at night, visited the ND London flats, listened to a street performer (he played some James Taylor, among other things), stood on a bridge and felt a strong cool wind rush over my face. Friday, autumn was out in full force, as I have written elsewhere.

West Gate in Canterbury

Saturday, the seminary had a day of recollection at the Camelite convent at Ware, in Hertfordshire.  It was absolutely wonderful.  The cloister and the surrounding area was a place of peace, the sort of peace that I found extremely hard to find living in a big city.  I guess this was the first time I had really left London (save to go to an amusement park) since my arrival.  I’ve since gotten more used to city life, and don’t feel so claustrophobic. But the point is that I had found a place of peace, which I had been looking for.  The sisters there were absolutely fantastic.  We heard a few wonderful talks on the spirituality of St. Terese, one given by a priest from the seminary and two given by the sisters.  The speakers really understood what her little way is all about and their words were exactly what I needed at the time.  The sisters there have such a beautiful vocation, praying for priests and seminarians, particularly those studying at Allen Hall.  I think this spiritual connection helped explain why I felt so at home there.

Friday, October 14 found me (and my Americans friends) on a trip to Canterbury.  For the sheer joy of it I downloaded the prologue of the Canterbury Tales onto my iPod and listened to most of it, following along with a written Modern English translation on the train ride there.  Canterbury is a small, peaceful town and the weather this day cooperated beautifully.  We played around on a derelict castle, saw the Eastbridge Hospital, where poor pilgrims could stay, saw the arch on the West end of town where pilgrims would have come through, and took a nap in the graveyard which surrounds St. Martin’s parish church, the oldest Christian church in England.  St. Martin’s was a gift of King Ethelbert to his Christian bride.  Ethelbert was later converted by St. Augustine of Canterbury, becoming the first Christian king in what is today England.  Afterwards, we went to evensong and Canterbury Cathedral (the only way we didn't have to pay), and caught a glimpse of the spot where St. Thomas Beckett was martyred.  A brief walk around the grounds followed and then came the train ride back to London.

On Sunday, I went to St. Patrick's parish in Soho for the first time, where I've since been volunteering in various capacities.  They have a beautiful baroque-looking interior with a marble floor, all of which was recently refurbished.  St. Patrick's is quite a dynamic parish, and for some reason there are a bunch of American (and a least one Canadian) students who attend Mass there.  It has been fun to meet up with fellow North Americans.  Tuesday I would return to help with Open House, which is a soup kitchen like hospitality in the evenings for the homeless.

The Les Mis theatre in London's West End

On Thursday evening, I went to see my first musical ever.  I had been in the orchestra pit for a few musicals, but this was my first time seeing the real deal in a real theatre.  And what a first one it was.  Alfie Boe starred as Jean Valjean in Les Miserables.  It was a magnificent performance, beautiful, wonderful, you had to be there.

The following day, saw us on the train up to Cambridge, where we met up with a priest-friend from back home who is starting PhD work at Cambridge.  This was perhaps my favorite trip yet.  Cambridge was founded in 1209 (back when students learned in Latin and before the letter J was invented), and it still has the air of a medieval educational institution.  There are so many Gothic buildings, and one could palpably imagine what it would have been like to be a student there so many years ago.  I think this was helped by the fact that tradition runs rampant there.   It blows Notre Dame completely out of the water.  Trinity College, where our Fr. friend is studying, has the motto of semper eadem, Latin for 'always the same' and a faculty member of the college has said 'some change is good, but no change is better.'  Only fellows can walk on the grass of the quads.  At the college dinner we went to, everyone was wearing their academic gowns, dinner began with the striking of a gong and the praying of grace in Latin.  There were three rows of tables for students, put together end to end (or perhaps just really, really long) and a raised area with tables where professors and similarly important people sat.  After arriving and having Mass and lunch at the Catholic chaplaincy, we when punting on the river Cam, which runs behind all of the colleges.  My Boy Scouting skills came in handy, when I took my turn 'driving' the punt.  Most of the colleges have their own bridge over this river, and it was great just to float past the back yard of all the colleges.  We saw the great court of Trinity and the clock there.  On matriculation day, all the new students try to run around the court before the clock strikes 12 (if you've ever seen the movie Chariots of Fire you will recall this).  I think only three people have ever done it successfully.  We visited the College library, which was designed by Christopher Wren (the same guy who designed St. Paul's).  Among articles preserved there are autographs from Wittgenstein and the original Winnie the Pooh book. (A. A. Milne and Christopher Robin both went to Trinity).  We went to even song and the beautiful college chapel, which has statues of some famous Trinity graduates in the antechamber, including Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon.  Before dinner, we stopped at the Eagle, the pub where Watson and Crick discussed their theories which led to the discovery of DNA, and had a pint of the pub's DNA brew.  This was followed by a multi-course dinner.  Cambrige was really cool, but perhaps the nicest thing was spending it with someone who we already knew and who really understood what our live was like back home.

Punting on the river in Cambridge

Halloween isn't celebrated passionately in London, as is recognized as something of an American thing.  I didn't do anything for Halloween, but Halloween weekend some friends came in from Dublin, so I met up with them and had a pint after Mass and evening prayer as Westminster Cathedral.  Somehow or another we ended up walking by St. Paul's Cathedral later that night where the occupy London folks are camped out.  Some of them were dressed up in costumes and dancing to loud music.  Many of the were wearing those Guy Fawkes masks from V for Vendetta. Then on Saturday night, the seminary here had a big feast to celebrate the feast of the Douai Martyrs, who died for the faith in England when the Church of Enland was in control and it was illegal to be a Catholic Priest.  The seminary itself, after many relocations, can be traced back the one which the martyrs studied at.  So it was a big deal, and there was a very nice dinner.


That is basically the highlights through half-term break, which I will talk about next.

The Linguistic Turn

As someone who is perpetually interested in language and how it works, living in London has been a delight.  I would like to share a couple of word or usages that I find particularly delightful.  I'm not going to bother describing to you distinctions that everyone basically knows about, like trousers v. pants, lift v. elevator, or biscuits v. cookies (although I did have a difficult time describing what biscuits and gravy is). 

First, on a general, pronunciation point, I find most people easy to understand unless they are from somewhere on the British Isles other than England.  It was pretty easy to get used to and I quickly moved into a stage of recognizing individual voices.  However, there does seem to be much greater variety in the accents here, even within England, and I suppose one could, with experience, much more accurately pinpoint the geographical origin of a speaker than one could in America..  It was a weird and almost self-conscious experience to hear an American speak from a position of authority here, as when Cardinal Levada visited the seminary.  Apparently, there is a resistance to using educational (particularly cathechetical) materials from America, whether written (because the spelling is incorrect) or audio-visual ("it sounds like he's chewing bubble gum while he speaks").  People would be much more receptive to material from anywhere on the British Isles, or even from Australia.  I am told, however, that the younger generations are much more receptive to American things because of all the American pop-culture they consume.  The main time I become aware of my accent is during common prayer, when we are all saying things in unison, but my pronunciation is different.  Words I always notice are 'God,' 'Lord,' and 'hearts.'  Previously, I would typically pronounce the word 'amen' 'ey-men,' but now I am a full-fledged 'ah-men' speaker, which is how everyone says it here.  So enough with pronunciations, and on to words.  These words or phrases are all used rather commonly here.  I think I heard them all within the first couple of days:

British word: dodgy  American equivalent: sketchy or shady  Usage in a sentence: Soho used to be a quite dodgy area of town; it still is in some ways.

British word: nick  American equivalent: steal, typically used of small or intangible things  Usage in a sentence: I'll nick my mum's year-long pass, so we can get into Buckingham palace without paying.

British word: quid  American equivalent: buck or bucks, but said in reference to British Pound Sterling rather than the US Dollar  Usage in a sentence: It's only ten quid for a student Oyster card.

Phrase in question: You're very welcome.  British conversation:  'This is my home.  Come in.  You're very welcome'  'Thank you'  American conversation: 'This is my home.  Come in.'  'Thank you'  'You're very welcome.'  (In America, 'you're welcome' is used mainly in response to a 'thank you' and occasionally as an invitation.  In Britain, it is used where Americans might simply say 'welcome' and much more frequently as an invitation.)

Question: How did you find it?  British answer: It was great.  I really enjoyed it.  American answer: I looked it up on Google maps beforehand.

British word: rubbish  American equivalent: literally, garbage, but is often used to mean nonsense or awful  Usage in a sentence: I'm rubbish at playing football.

British phrase: first floor  American equivalent: second floor  Usage in a sentence: Don't give him a room on the first floor.  He can't walk up and down stairs.

British word: right  American equivalent: left  Usage in a sentence: Traffic drives on the right-hand side of the road.

Wandering about the City

After the longest period of my life (since Kindergarten) without having class, lectures finally began on Monday.  It's about time I actually had academic work to do.  So far the main difference here, as opposed to back home, is that I have one lecture a week for each class and lectures are two hours each.  The net result is that I spend 8 hours a week in class as opposed to 12.5 at ND.



A nice neighborhood on my walking tour



Jumping back in time, last week was a very relaxed week of simply registering for classes and finding the best way to walk to Heythrop College, where my lectures are.  On Friday, a group of us journeyed west of London to Thrope Park.  Thrope Park is an amusement park, with the typical roller coasters, thrill rides, water rides, and food places.  To be sure, it's wasn't as awesome as the amusement parks in America.  But then, the only other park I've ever been to is Cedar Point, home of some of the largest roller coasters in the world.  Perhaps the comparison is a bit unfair.  It proved to be a fun day nonetheless.

On Saturday was a Eucharistic procession through London.  We processed from Westminster Cathedral to Southwark Cathedral, across the River Thames.  There was a cathedral full of people, nearly one thousand, who make the hour long walk.  It didn't seem like there was too much of a reaction either positive or negative, but I wasn't near the rear where the Blessed Sacrament was.  I did overhear one little kid, who was walking in the opposite direction with his mom, say, "There are too much saints."  It was great to be a part of the procession.  This was the first time they had a Eucharistic procession of that distance in London, and hopefully it can grow and become something really special in the future.

St. Mary Abbots

It worth mentioning that the weather was ridiculously good last weekend.  We had clear blue skys and weather in the 80s.  Completely unexpected for London.  It's especially delightful considering it got down to freezing in South Bend.  After the procession on Saturday, I walked around downtown by myself.  I located St. Paul's Cathedral, the theatre that plays the Lion King musical, the Royal Opera house,the South Bank theaters where the Philharmonic Orchestra plays, and the Notre Dame London campus.  There were a number of street performers out and about, including a very cool group of acrobats who were extremely flexible.  There was also a woman who was re-creating Renaissance artwork on a canvas taped to the the sidewalk under a bridge.  It was really good.

On Sunday, finding myself with more free time, I decided to find out where G.K. Chesterton, one of my favorite authors, lived.  Google provided me with a website that had outlined walking tours of London, and one of the places on the walking tour was the birthplace home of Chesterton.  The walk was devised by a Dickens scholar, and the walk was tailored to someone with a interest in Dickension London.  Chesterton was of interest in this context primarily as a critic of Dickens.  I walked to South Kensington Station where it began and followed the directions as it took me past several of the free museums and up the street towards Hyde Park, taking extra time there to walk around.  The tour eventually took me to houses inhabited by all sorts of famous people.  Here in London, most houses that were inhabited by someone famous are indicated with a round blue plaque containing the person's name.  After going past founder of scouting Baden-Powell's house, Heythrop College, which happened to be on the tour, and nice local Anglican church (St. Mary Abbots), I finally found the birthplace of Chesterton.  But there was no blue plaque!  Having walked too much to want to finish the tour, I headed back home.  There I researched to find out where else Chesterton may have lived and where his plaque was.  I found out that the house he moved to when he was five had his plaque, and that the house he lived in briefly once he was married was close by.  Both were close to Heythrop.  The last house he inhabited in London, was part of a row of houses close to Battersea Park, the closest park to the seminary.

 

Determined to make my tribute to Chesterton complete, I found the row of houses close to the park on my Monday morning run.  I didn't (and still don't) know which one was his, but I ran around the block, just to be sure that I had seen it.  Then after my lecture on Monday, I made the fifteen minute walk from Heythrop to find the remaining Chesterton houses.  They were both right off the main road.  I finally had my picture of the blue Chesterton plaque.

20 Hours in Norway

The Hotel Dining Room

One of the most absurd parts of this semester in Europe will have to be the not quite full day we had to spend in Norway last weekend (or perhaps more precisely outside of the British Isles) to satisfy the immigration requirements of the UK Home Office.  Basically, we couldn't enter the country until a week before starting classes under our student visa, and so we had to leave and come back again to switch to our student visa.  Unfortunately, under the circumstances, we didn't get a chance to see anything of the city of Oslo.  All we really saw of Norway was through the window on the one and a half hour bus ride to our hotel.  It struck me as sort of a European Canada.  The landscape in some places quite rocky, and there were a good deal of pine trees and trees which had already lost their foliage.  The houses had steeply angled roofs and a rather north woods look to them.  However, the commercial buildings all looked quite new and modern.  Everything was quite expensive as well.  You can get about 10 Kroner for a pound, and 6 Kroner for a US dollar, but the 6 minute shuttle ride from the second airport to the hotel cost 60 Kroner, and candy bars sold in the airport for 18+ Kroner.  The redeeming quality of the trip was the posh hotel we were put up in for the night, which had a really nice gym, bar, and dinning room, as well as very up to date rooms.  The breakfast was very nice, although the choices included various questionable looking fish concoctions.  I was struck with how everyone spoke decent English, how hotels and airports had everything written in English underneath, and how familiarity with English that seemed be part of the culture, as evidenced by commerical signs in English (they had such signs in France, but not plastered in huge letters on office buildings).  Perhaps most noteworthy in terms of personal accomplishments is that Norway is both the farthest North and the farthest East I've been to date.  Gardermoen, north of Oslo where our hotel was, is over 60 degrees North and over 11 degrees East.  That's farther north than Juneau, Alaska.  Also, there were plenty of blond haired people there.  It made me feel quite at home.  And I now know two Norewegian words.  I know the word for 'and,' which is 'og,' and the word for 'airport,' which is 'lufthavn.'

Norwegian Countryside (as seen through a bus window)



Now just a couple of public sanity pleas.  The first goes to all the border control agencies of the world: Please don't make people go to Norway just to change their status.  There has got be some easier way.  The second goes out to all the travel agents of the world: When you book your client a hotel near the airport, make sure it's the right airport and not the one over 100km to the north.

A Taste of London

Big Ben and little Ben

After landing in Heathrow, spending two hours in the immigration line, buying Oyster cards, taking the Tube, walking around aimlessly, and then taking a taxi, we finally arrived at the seminary.  A few noteworthy things happened in our first couple of weeks in London.  One was the ordination of a new auxillary bishop for the diocese of Westminster.  This was my first trip to Westminster Cathedral, and my first episcopal ordination.  I had never seen so many bishops in one place in my life, and the Cathedral boys choir was quite good.  And don't ask how it happened, but I somehow ended up ministering the cup to a bunch of deacons at that Mass (I don't think anyone intended liturgical inpropriety).  That was on Wednesday.  On Sunday the 18th we would return to the cathedral to have a talk for the seminarians follow by a Mass of thanksgiving to mark the one year anniversary of Pope Benedict's visit to the UK.  It seems like the Pope's visit was quite a big deal to this country, at least to the Catholics here.

Jumping back a day, Saturday was my first real free day in London.  I took the opportunity to get a better feel for the city by going downtown.  Taking advice to get off the bus when we saw Big Ben, KS and I first got a look at Westminster Abbey and the Parliment building.  I must say that I was rather more impressed by Parliment, though both appear to be in a Gothic style of architecture.  I imagine I prefer Parliment in part just because it's a much larger building.  We crossed the river (Thames, pronounced 'temz') to get a better look at the London Eye, and then crossed back and walked through St. James Park toward Buckingham Palace.  We saw the Palace, Hyde Park, and then went back towards the river, ending in Trafalgar square.  I was vaguely hoping to find the Notre Dame London building, but since we didn't know where that was, we got on the bus to get back.  It was a good thing too, because, although it had been sunny shortly before, it started to downpour just as we got on the bus.  That evening, I had a long conversation with a couple of the guys at dinner about the rules of cricket, and I'm excited to get the chance to see a match.  After dinner, we (the Americans) watched part of the Notre Dame v. MSU football game, although the English seminarians did not seem particularly interested in the game.



This past Friday (the 23rd), KS, JD, and I went out to Ealing where we had lunch with one of the guys who lives out there and visited his house.  That was my first time out of central London since first arriving, and it just felt more spacious and breathed a little bit easier.  It's hard to describe what exactly caused the feeling, but it came instantly after getting out of the Tube stop.  It was here that I saw my first English common, Ealing Common, though I didn't walk through it.

The rest of my time during these two weeks was spend mainly in pastoral ministry workshops, or, occasionally, sampling English ales.

Paris

Notre Dame de Paris

On September 9, we switched locations to Paris where we were hosted by the Holy Cross community there.  After settling in and having a quick look at the Holy Cross school, St. Michel de Picpus, we went downtown Paris.  I had never toured a city quite like Paris before, with so much to see (and so many other people wanting to see it as well).  The first thing we visited was the famous Notre Dame cathedral, which now stands as the most impressive Gothic building I've been in to date.  Afterwards, we visited Saint Sulpice, a church in a more Renaissance style, but equally impressive.  Together those churches are the two biggest in Paris.  After walking around a beautiful, expansive, and very old garden in central Paris, we took the Metro out the the Eiffel tower.  For being a structure created with no practical purpose, it was really quite cool.  We paid the 3.70 Euro to climb to the second level, which afforded us with a great view of Paris.  Notably, I was able to spot Notre Dame Cathedral and what we later found out was the Basilique du Sacre-Coeur.

French Garden

The next day, Saturday, we made good progress on Paris sightseeing.  First we went to the Basilica of Saint Denis, which was the first Gothic church ever build.  Then we went to Sacre-Coeur, a beautiful Renaissance style church, complete with a dome and situated on a mountain of sorts.  There was caught the morning Mass and midday prayer, before walking around the interior.  After seeing our churches for the day, we took the metro to see the Arc de Triomphe, as massive arch situated in the middle of a huge traffic circle.  The arch was commissioned by Napolean and Wikipedia tells me that it is 50 meters (164 feet) tall.  However, most of our sightseeing for the day was taking up the famous Louvre museum.  In the museum is really an embarrassment of riches.  I had never seen so many painting, sculptures, and artifacts in the whole rest of my life.  Just imagine walking down a long hall, the walls absolutely covered beautiful paintings, and you have some idea of one wing on one floor of the museum.  It was impossible to spend any time at all with most of the art, except in walking by it.  Yet each piece deserved contemplation and could have been the jewel of any small collection.  The most famous piece in the Louvre is the Mona Lisa, but after seeing it I kind of wonder what all the fuss is about...

Basilique du Sacre-Coeur



Sunday, September 11, we left France and flew over the English Channel and into London.  After waiting two hours in the immigration line, buying an Oyster card, taking the Tube, walking about aimlessly, and taking a cab, we arrived at our home for the next four months.

I suppose at this point, it would make sense to say a few general things about France:

1.  Awesome food.  Lunch and dinner were almost always three courses.  Notable food items included a prevalence of raw tomatoes, seafood, cheese, and grapes.  However, the absolute staple of the French diet was bread and wine.  No meal was without bread, and, excluding breakfast, only one or two were without wine.  This was even true at the monastery.  I think having so much bread and wine really helped me to better understand the Eucharist and the power of that particular symbol.  The only downside foodwise was that the breakfasts were not particularly big. (The French phrase for breakfast is 'petit dejeuner.'  It's a bad sign when the name of the meal itself includes the word small.)  But having toast and jam for breakfast was great, and the small size of the meal was more than made up for by the other two.  I don't think I would even have wanted a large breakfast.

2. I really enjoyed simply driving between French towns, taking in the verdant and rolling hills of the French countryside.  Also the streets of the towns often looked like something I had experienced once in a storybook, but had now come to life.  It had a historical and cozy feel that is difficult to describe.



A painting in the Louvre of a hall of paintings in the Louvre



3. Being in Europe in the days leading up to the tenth anniversary of September 11, it was interesting to see what a big deal that event was for them.  9/11 was brought up many times in conversation with us, I suppose in good part because we were American.  Perhaps part of the reason for the event's continued significance lies in the prevalence of multiculturalism as an issue in European culture today.

4. In Notre Dame Cathedral, I had this reflection about these great churches.  While they are engineering marvels to be sure, far ahead of their time, I still found myself disappointed in them. I guess I am speaking here of Notre Dame in particular.  Notre Dame didn't flood my soul with aesthetic pleasure, it didn't make me perfectly happy, it didn't give me a mystical experience.  The tallest church in the world was still too small.  When we humans built Notre Dame de Paris, we gave God the biggest, the most beautiful thing we could.  We put years of effort, tons of stone, millions of dollars, and whole lifetimes of men into the effort.  We did as much as we possibly could to pay off an infinite debt of gratitude.  Yet, our offering is still incomprehensibly small, and God so incomprehensibly large.

Cheese and grapes just prior to being eaten



5.  You really do need to speak a language other than English if you want to get by in non-English speaking parts of the world.  That may be changing as generations of school children grow up learning English as a second language, but without hosts who knew English I don't think we could have made it on our own.  (Paris might be an exception to this.) However, by the end of my stay in France I had learned to say (functionally speaking) "please," "thank you very much," "you're welcome," "I don't speak French," how to order something in a restaurant (kind of), and how to buy a stamp to mail a post card to the US (which I did do by myself, thank you very much).  By the end, I was even able to get the basic idea when reading a sign and even occasionally figure out the topic of a conversation between two French speakers.

After experiencing a language barrier myself, I have much more empathy for, say, native Spanish speakers living in the States, and sympathize much less with people and politicians who have an "English language only" mentality.

Bottom line: France was a pretty cool place, and I kind of want to learn French

Into France

My blog about this semester should rightly begin where all things begin: at the beginning.  In the context of a blog about a semester spend in a foreign country, the beginning means the plane ride from Chicago to Paris whereby I said goodbye to America for the longest length of time in my life.  The plane was alright as far as overnight travelling is concerned, and after a night shortened by a seven hour time change (but made more tiresome and onerous by an equally long flight) we landed down in Paris.  After waiting several hours in the Paris airport and meeting a nice student from Austria studying in France, we boarded the train to Le Mans.  There we rendezvoused with the superior of the French CSC community, who took us to the provincial house.  He was a very gracious host to us over the next weeks and took us to see many sights of relevance to the history of the Congregation of Holy Cross.

The Cathedral of St. Julian



I should mention that when we arrived in France, the date was Thursday, September 1.  That afternoon, Fr. took us to see the church of Notre Dame de Sainte-Croix.  We celebrated Mass (in English here) in the transcept where Blessed Basil Moreau's tomb is.  We also visited the crypt of the church where Fr. Moreau was formerly buried.  I believe Notre Dame de Sainte-Croix was the chapel for the original Holy Cross community.  In any case it is right next door to the original community house, although it is no longer owned by Holy Cross.  Like most of the church owned properties, including the famous Benedictine abbey of Solemes, it was confiscated by the French government in 1905.  Unlike Solemes and Notre Dame de Sainte-Croix, it was never bought back.



On Friday, we had lunch with the Marianites and their Solitude House.  This house was the first novitiate of the Holy Cross Priests.  This was quite an interesting experience because we did not speak French, and they did not speak English.  Fortunately, KS managed to communicate in French that we were seminarians of Holy Cross, and said "Oui" a lot so that they would keep showing us around.  We saw the chapels where Fr. Moreau would have celebrated Mass, the bedroom of Fr. Moreau and a room full of his relics.  In the afternoon we saw the Cathedral of St. Julian, which was the first really old building I had ever been in.  It had a Romanesque nave and a Gothic transept and choir.  The choir was consecrated in the 13th century.  Of historical significance, Henry II of England was baptized in the Church.  Following the visit to the Cathedral, we walked around the historical part of the city, the Cite Plantagenet.

choukette (pronounced "shoe ket")

 On Saturday, we visited Chateau-Gontier, where Fr. Moreau first started off in seminary.  It was here that I ate my first two (and last two) choukettes, a delicious French pastry.  From here we went to the Holy Cross boarding school, Notre Dame d'Orveau, where we had lunch with the community.  After lunch we went into the surrounding town(s), and saw of couple of churches.  One was dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, and the other had an altar dedicated to someone who had been killed defending the Church during the French revolution.  It was here that we met an American (a Texan, in fact), who knew the priest we were with.  She was the first native English speaker we had met on our journeys, and had a southern drawl to boot!  She taught at Notre Dame d'Orveau and her husband was involved with a French abroad program for St. Edward's University in Austin.  Among topics of conversation, was the difficult state of the Church in France and the fight to save the neo-Gothic church we had met in from destruction.



Solemes Abby

Saturday evening began what was one of the most memorable experiences I had in France, when we went to the famous Benedictine Abby at Solemes.  We arrived for dinner, and stayed in the guest house both Saturday and Sunday nights.  Before the first meal any visitor eats at Solemes, the Abbot personally washes his hands.  Then the guests are led in silence to the dining hall, where during the duration of the meal there is no talking and one monk is reading selections aloud in French.  Lectio during meals suited me just fine, because I wouldn't have been able to converse in French anyway.  During our time there, we celebrated all the Hours of the day with the monks in the chapel.  The Liturgy of the Hours was sung in Latin, which suited me just fine, because my Latin is much better than my French, which was placed in the prayer booklets opposite the Latin.  Having the Mass and Hours in Latin actually made me feel quite at home.  For those moments, I could have been anywhere in the world, including back in America, and my experience would have been the same.  It turns out there is something in the idea of having an Ecclesial language.  The monastery's day began with 5:20am Matins, and concluded with Compline at 8:30pm (if I remember correctly).  I must admit when I said I attended all the Hours while at the monastery, I neglected to mention that I didn't get up for Matins the second time around (on Monday).

One of the most powerful things about the monastery was the absolute silence I experienced there.  There was literally nothing to do all day but eat, sleep, pray, and read.  Granted, the monks there would have more to do then that, but the overall effect was stunning.  I experienced something of the power of silence, and realized that true silence was something I had never had before in my life.  Even in the quietest moments of my life prior to that, the world and all its distractions were just around the corner, waiting to reenter.  I will probably take up this topic at greater length elsewhere, but for now let it suffice to say that silence has the power to captivate hearts in a deadly way.

 

Angers Citadel



After leaving Solemes on Monday, we went to Angers, where we visited the Citadel of Angers and the famous tapestries there which depict the book of Revelation.  The Citadel was the first real castle I had seen, and even today it would be near impossible to capture with infantry.  When the kingdom of Anjou was assimilated into the French kingdom, the French king ordered the towers of the castle shortened, because the castle was bigger than any in France.  In Angers, we also visited the Cathedral of St. Maurice and the seminary where Fr. Jacques Dujarie began his seminary formation before the French Revolution.

Tuesday we visited Laigne en Belin, the birthplace of Basil Moreau.  We saw the actually house where he was born and lived and celebrated Mass in the village church.  The church where Moreau was baptized and would have altar served was destroyed, but we saw the old foundation, altar, and crucifix from that church.  The church was rebuilt close by in Moreau's lifetime and Moreau did celebrate Mass at the new church.  This was where we had our Mass.  In the afternoon, back in Le Mans, we choose to visit a couple of museums and to walk around the Cite Plantagenet, getting a good look at the Roman walls.

Petit Providence

Wednesday we visited the Sisters of Providence in Ruille.  The Sisters of Providence were the original religious order founded by Fr. Jacques Dujarie, and we saw the original building and chapel the community inhabited, called the "petit providence."  The building lived up to its name, and it is almost impossible to imagine that 50 religious sisters once lived there at once.  We also had a nice lunch with the sisters and toured "grand providence."  We also saw the church where Dujarie was pastor and the original community building for the Brothers of St. Joseph, which he founded (and which later turned into the Brothers of Holy Cross).

Thursday we visited Alencon, the birth place of Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower.  Therese lived here until she was four.  We saw here tools used by both of her parents and some relics of Therese.  The rooms of the house were recreated, animated, and some even had original artifacts from the Martin family.  Most notable was the bedroom where Therese was born, which could be seen through a glass panel from the adjacent chapel.  The chapel was absolutely beautiful, and we were blessed to celebrate Mass there.  It seems providential that this day was September 8, the Nativity of Our Lady.  That evening, our last in Le Mans, Fr. provincial took us to a creperie where we each had a savory "crepe" (I guess they are called something else when they are savory) and a desert crepe.  Both were absolutely delicious and I don't think I've had anything quite as good since.

While I haven't nearly finished writing about everything that has happened, I will end the post here before I begin to talk about Paris.