Month: April 2016

11/04/2016

An enjoyable lunch with Sr Alice at her home. We joined by two other sisters from Incarnate Word Sr Rita and Sr Adriana and by Sr Finbar from the Presentation sisters. Alice, Rita and Finbar are lively 80+ year olds with  Rita and Finbar coming from Ireland over fifty years ago. We had a great discussion about peace, justice, politics, religion and right relationships.

12/04/2016

Went to the Botanic Gardens to retake photographs that had disappeared after our last visit.  Should be able to show these at the Ballycastle Gardening Club.

In the evening met up with Mary Lynn and AJ at the Casa Maria in St Mary’s University.  Very much like the Tuesday teas we used to go to in the Presbyterian Centre (QUB) in the 70s.

13/04/2016

Went to dinner at the home of Teri Molden who will be accompanying St Mary’s students to Corrymeela in about four weeks time.

14/04/2016

Day packing both in the apartment and at St Philip’s College. Yvonne met up with Marie Thurston (85 years old) who wrote the story of St Philip’s and who wanted to sign the copy that we had been given.  In the afternoon Yvonne went to a meeting of the international students at the College. This was a reminder of the Friendship Club in Belfast which the organisers of the group were very interested in hearing about.

15/06/2016 Friday – our last day

We went to our final staff meeting which was really a party. Lots of food. People kept on giving us presents. It was a very warm send off. Thank you St Philip’s College and, particularly, a big thanks to Andy Hill who set our visit and Scholarship in train way back in the autumn of 2014!

However we did not feel the anticlimax too much as we went off to the Community Garden close by the College which volunteers were getting ready for spring and summer planting. They installed four new raised beds and provided barbecue food with produced from the garden. This was followed by a late afternoon appointment with the SOS group in Robert E Lee High School.  We helped them cover shoe boxes which the students (mainly 14-15 years) then filled with toiletries for the homeless. This was all part of a student run service project. Great job.

We finished off the day with dinner at the Cove Restaurant listening to music from a family band the Lavens. The father in the band is the Principal of AJ’s school. Great food and great music.

09/04/2016 Saturday

For the second time this week we were guests of the President in St Philip’s College’s Artemesia Restaurant. The dinner was an opportunity for the President and the College to thank some of the funders and to highlight the main achievements of the past year.

It was also an opportunity for the senior students to show off their culinary skills. The menu was impressive but the taste result was even more so! Seven courses with appropriate wines were served interspersed with a variety of palate cleansers. The result was a very enjoyable experience that did not leave us over faced. The students were able to say what there part in the production was at the end of the meal.

Yvonne and I were seated with Bishop Gary Lillibridge and his wife Catherine. Bishop Gary is bishop of the West Texas Diocese which covers some 69,000 square miles and includes some 90 congregations. Yvonne and the Bishop were able to swap stories about the 2008 Lambeth Conference in Canterbury which they had both attended.

At the end of the evening we were introduced by the President and given more presents! The College and community have been most hospitable and welcoming during our stay here.

The Culinary Gala Dinner SPC

08/04/2016 Friday

We took on our last major excursion with Andy, Mary Lynn, AJ and Matt to Corpus Christi.  This is a sea port on the Gulf of Mexico about two hours drive from San Antonio. Corpus Christi is heavily industrialised with oil refineries all round it. However it does have an attractive sea front with hotels, restaurants, a marina and a beach. The main tourist attractions are the US Navy aircraft carrier Lexington and Sea World.

On arrival we had lunch at a sea front fish restaurant Pier 99. The food was excellent particularly the fish.

We spent the afternoon exploring the Lexington and walking the beach. We got to paddle in the Gulf of Mexico – water lovely and warm.

Before leaving for home we had tea in the Omni hotel.

07/04/2016 Thursday evening.

The Dialogue Institute is an active Turkish organisation working for interfaith relationships in San Antonio. It took place in the Sky Room at the University of the Incarnate Word. As the name of the room suggests there were spectacular views over San Antonio. The dinner was partly a fund raiser and also an opportunity to make some awards.  The keynote address was by the Lord Mayor Ivy Taylor who talked about diversity and inclusion. She talked of the work of the city council and also mentioned St Philip’s College specifically as an example in this area.  For us it was a great opportunity to meet up with quite a number of people that we had met over the past three months before leaving in a just over a week’s time. Thank you to Mehmet Oguz for including us in this event.

07/04/2016

We were invited to join the President, Dr Loston, and her leadership team for lunch at the College’s dining room which is run as a training facility for the catering and hospitality students. The meal was excellent and we enjoyed talking about our experiences in St Philip’s College and San Antonio. There was a definite interest in maintaining the connections with Northern Ireland and Corrymeela by bringing people to San Antonio to teach and sending students to Corrymeela as part of the Study Abroad scheme.

06/04/2016

As part of an interfaith event Jason Fabianke organised a “Sweep away intolerance” event where staff and students were encouraged to sweep the corridors as a contribution to the 12 hour sweep.

05/04/2016 Tuesday

We were invited to attend the President’s Council (senior leadership) meeting. It turned out that this was to be our first goodbye where we were given presents as reminders of our time in San Antonio. We leave in twelve days time.

05/04/2016 Tuesday

Palo Alto is another of the Alamo Colleges.  It is a pleasant modern campus that lies to the south of the city which would be regarded as a poor district.  Rena Denham had invited us to meet two philosophy classes. Again our time was short but we were able to talk about Corrymeela, tell some stories and get into how Corrymeela works at reconciliation. The students were shy and very polite.  We were told that many of the students would not have been out of San Antonio let alone Texas. Rena gave us reminders of home, Tetley tea and Heinz baked beans, as provided by her boyfriend who hales from Buxton, Derbyshire.

04/04/2016 Monday

Returning from Austin we went straight to the University of the Incarnate Word to lead a reflection of the place of mercy in reconciliation. This was at the invitation of Sr Walter who hand entertained us to lunch several weeks ago. We used the chapter “A place called reconciliation” from David Steven’s book of the same name. In the end there were nearly 50 people, staff and students, present. Yvonne told several stories then we broke into four groups to consider questions like “Do we have any stories to tell?” “What is the tension between mercy and justice?” Dealing with the past.

It was a short session but feedback suggests it was appreciated.

01/04/2016 Friday

Set off to Austin in the afternoon to spend the weekend with Noel, Larry and little Daniel Armendariz. (Noel’s parents, Chris and Mary Anne Busch from N. Carolina, are house sitting for us in Ballycastle while we are away). That evening our hosts had organised dinner for us and some of her friends. We met Allen and Tracy, Marilyn and Norton. Allen is Social Work colleague of Noel at University of Texas, Tracy is a home mum and runs a cake baking business. Marilyn is Social Work teacher at University of Texas who is running a project to change the teaching culture in schools which have many students with behavioural issues.  This included the use of restorative justice practices in the schools. Norton is well retired but still teaches about loss and bereavement in his 80s!  We had a lovely meal and they got very engaged with the use of Yvonne’s puppets as a teaching and learning methodology.

02/04/2016 Saturday

After a good breakfast of bacon, eggs, bagels etc. Noel and Daniel took us on a tour of Austin. It is a lively and beautiful city on the Colarado river. It is clearly a very wealthy city with house prices escalating at the moment. We viewed the city from Mount Bonnell, one of the high spots near the city. Noel then dropped us of at the Lyndon B Johnson Library where we spent a couple of hours looking at LBJs life as President – the good and the bad. We also saw Ladybird Johnson’s office.

In the evening we went out to Black’s Barbecue in Lockhart just outside Austin. The cooking is done in wood fired pits which gives the meat a lot of flavour. Larry, Daniel and I opted for beef ribs which turned out to be massive and very tasty. Yvonne went for pork ribs and Noel had sausages. So meat was the thing. The sides were items like black beans, refried beans, green beans and macaroni cheese – no salads in sight!

02/04/2016 Sunday

We were up early in order to get the to the West Cave Nature Preserve in time to take the first tour at 10:00. This is a beautiful area of river, creek and canyon in limestone scenery. At one time it was a popular spot for swimming etc which resulted in a lot of destruction and pollution but has now been brought back to original natural state. So access is by guided tour only.

On the way home we visited an olive grove, a winery and a fabric shop.

In the evening we went to Congress Avenue bridge in the centre of Austin to join several hundred people watch the world’s largest bat colony emerge from under the bridge. An estimated 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats leave as the sun sets and the flies come out to bite.

We had a very interesting and relaxing weekend. Thank you Noel, Larry and Daniel and not forgetting Tavo and Zeus – two cute French bulldogs.