Blizzard of 2011

Hello again,
This has been a very fast week and a half. I am surprised that it has been that long since I’ve written this time.

This past weekend was a very cool event. There was an inter-seminary basketball tournament held here at Mundelein Seminary. I think that it was eleven or twelve other seminaries from across the Midwest that participated. It was a great deal of fun to watch my brother seminarians both from Mundelein and other seminaries enjoy this friendly competition. Mundelein seminary has won the tournament each of the last three years, however, this year they lost in the semi-final round. Mundelein was able to win the losers bracket game very handily to finish third in the tournament.

The Mass on Sunday was a great experience. With so many seminarians from so many places it was very energetic and just a wonderful Mass.

There had been predictions about a big snow storm coming in over the weekend that made people a little nervous with the teams having to return to their home seminary after the basketball games, however this storm didn’t come in until Monday afternoon and really didn’t get to full force until Tuesday mid-day. This turned out to be the third largest snow storm on record for Chicago. Lake County, where Mundelein sits actually closed all of its roads on Wednesday so that the crews wouldn’t have to deal with traffic when trying to clear the snow.

On the seminary we had a great time with the snow. Everyone chipped in on shoveling the walks as we were able. Field education was canceled on Wednesday since we couldn’t drive anywhere so I was able to get a bit of my homework done and to help with shoveling some times. The parking lots were very snowed in. The maintenance crew’s first priority was of course to work to make the campus accessible for emergency vehicles, followed by clearing the parking lot of the conference center so that the visitors could get out and return to their lives away from the seminary. With my truck being a four-wheel drive I was able to drive around in the parking lot, but didn’t have a major need to go anywhere so I didn’t do that too much. It was fun to see the guys all working together to dig out everyone’s cars once the plows made a path through the seminarian’s lots so that we could move our vehicles to another lot while they finished in our seminarian lots.

Tonight I was going to go to a “casino night” fundraiser here on campus. Every year one of the cams hosts this fundraiser for some charity that is picked. In it people buy in for a certain amount and get a set amount of “casino night cash” which can then be wagered on table games as well as a faculty boxing tournament (using a Wii now, but historically using a rock ‘em sock ‘em boxing game). At the end of the night any gains can be used to bid on donated items. I ended up not going to this because one of the other guys who was scheduled to work at the library was asked to do something at his home parish this weekend and wanted to travel there tonight. He could not find anyone else to cover his shift so I said that I would. So I am sitting here with almost nobody in the library but it is open for the couple of guys that are here.

The charity that is benefiting from the casino night this year is a charity to help the “gunpowder children”. I believe that this one is based in Guatemala. I don’t know a ton about this, but from what I know it is a charity that helps to provide tuition and nutrition for kids in Guatemala. These kids live in such poverty that often their families can’t afford tuition or food. Many times these kids will have to quit school to work assembling fireworks. This is obviously a dangerous task, which pays very little. This charity helps to provide for the needs of these children so that this isn’t their only option.

Well, that is all I’m going to write for now. I hope you have a great weekend.
Peace,
Adam