Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Loyola College

Today we awoke bright and early to fit in our group reflection which we postponed from last night due to extreme exhaustion from the entire team. At 8am we had a wonderful and meaningful hour long reflection with the team. It was much more productive than it would have been last night. Afterward those of us who did not eat breakfast ate a delicious meal (I tried the mango juice it was great!), and those of us who did eat breakfast enjoyed a second delicious meal :)

We arrived at Loyola College in Chennai at 10am and took a tour of the tropical campus! It's very big and very beautiful with many building for different academic subjects. It's an 11,000 student school: undergraduates are male only, and graduate students are both male and female. There is a gorgeous new engineering building that was recently constructed - it reminded us of Old Main back and Canisius, except it was more fitting for a tropical climate. (There's no heat needed here).

We ate a delicious lunch ate the college and took a short break afterward. Then at 2pm we began our lecture sessions. Fr. Joe Arun who is the John Hurley to Loyola spoke with us about the IDCR which is the Institute for Dialogue of Culture and Religion - this program teaches students like ourselves about the various religions and cultures of India. Fr. Arun is amazing - he is so humorous and so joyful, and he did all he could to make us feel super welcome to India. He is a Dalit man who was born a Hindu but chose to convert to Roman Catholicism because he believed that the Caste System is wrong due to the discriminatory aspects.

Time for dinner!! more to come :)

Alicia

1 comment:

  1. Bring some good mango juice back! I want some. Glad you are eating well there. Just dont drink the water!!! Ill look for you next blog. P.s-I just got an automatic starter in my truck aka Big Sammie. No more cold car when we go places!!!

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