Strange Waters: A Day in the Life!

On Monday, we started teaching English to our group of seminarians. The summer program will last about 6 weeks, in which time we will complete an entire semester of elementary English. Currently we have 10 students, 6 who have been training as Spiritan brothers for 1 year already, and 4 that are just starting their brotherhood discernment. Each of the seminarians have the basic English structure down: forming complete sentences, using verbs, and they are surprisingly good at spelling. Their main focus in this class is to gain vocabulary, verbal language skills, and sight reading.

The group of Spiritan brothers after celebrating Fr. Patricks
40th anniversary mass of ordination.

The seminarians are working through the Oxford English Speak Now program. Additionally we are working with them to get comfortable sight-reading bible verses, spontaneous prayer, and hold ing conversations using clear English.

The Spiritans have two locations here in Ho Chi Minh City. The first is a series of adjacent rented rooms in an apartment building - this is where we are staying. One room is a dining room area and the other three are bedrooms. Kimberly and I have 1 room with a full bathroom and air-conditioning (an uncommon luxury here), Fr. Patrick another, and the 3rd is occupied by Fr. Quoc, another Spiritan brother here. Although our section of the building has a kitchen we do not use it. Breakfast consists of uncooked items (toast, fruit, cheese, etc.), lunches are taken at the seminarian's house where they cook, and our landlady makes us dinner in her kitchen and then brings it up to our dining room.

The second Spiritan house is Fr. Trinh's house where the seminarians live and where we teach. Houses here quite tall and narrow. Fr. Trinh's house is approximately 10 feet wide inside, but it has 4 floors and is close to 60 feet deep.

Our home for the next few months (left), Fr. Trinh's house where the
seminarians live and where we teach (right).

Our day-to-day schedule is rather simple. The sun rises around 5 AM, and our day begins shortly after, around 6 AM. We typically eat breakfast between 6:30 and 7:30 then walk to Fr. Trinh's house to begin our 9:30 morning class. We teach class until 11:30 after which we eat lunch with the seminarians until about 12:30. The seminarians are very adamant about their lunch break and afternoon siesta so we generally don't hold them longer than 11:30. After lunch we rest and resume teaching from 3:30 to 5pm. Lastly we finish out the day with a meal in the apartment house cooked by the apartment owner.