I do have a ring I wear around my neck, but as of yet I haven’t been able to elicit any magical powers from it.\u00a0 And it certainly isn’t the focus and burden of our journey, as is the ring in the epic tale by Tolkein about a misfit band of travelers crossing vast terrain full of dangers.<\/p>\n
\u00a0But, we are five travelers and we are journeying across distant lands far from home in a place called “ZhongGuo” (which is the Madarin form of China which could actually be translated, “middle earth”).\u00a0 And, like the band in the Lord of the Rings <\/em>we grow weary from time to time…<\/p>\n And so for the last week we have found ourselves in Rivendell.\u00a0 In this Rivendell instead of elves we have retired priests, and we’re not deep in ancient woods, but rather high on a hill.\u00a0 We have spent the last week at a place called Maryknoll on Hong Kong island.\u00a0 Here we have had all the luxuries of rest and relaxation and plenty of food that the hospitality of friends has to offer.\u00a0 In the morning our balcony is flooded with light as we gaze out over the lush treetops to the vast expanse of the ocean stretching out around the cove…\u00a0 During our feasts of pork chops, or potatoes, or hamburgers, or stir fry, or cold cereal!, our kind cooks will come in asking, “Do you have enough?”\u00a0 Here it is peaceful and we have plenty.\u00a0 We are blessed!<\/p>\n The generosity we have received from good-hearted people has been humbling, and our time here in Hong Kong has been full of undeserved kindnesses.\u00a0 The cooks let Jim have his way with the kitchen and we ended up with homemade bread, fresh chocolate chip cookies, and peanutbutter and chocolate fudge.\u00a0 The Hong Kong chapter of the SJU alumni had us out to dinner at the Royal Yacht Club and treated us to a memorable evening of banter and discussion, as well as a great view of the city at night.\u00a0 Brother Sebastian gave us a personal tour of his drawing studio (where he writes and illustrates comic books that highlight social issues and offer positive responses).\u00a0 Later he took us out to Ruby Tuesdays where we took advantage of his half-off membership card to remember Western burgers and enjoy the last crumbs of delicious dessert.\u00a0 In between all of this we managed to get visas for Laos and Vietnam, help decorate for Christmas, interview with a television station, swim in the ocean, attend mass, watch movies, play music, eat food, sleep in, eat more, and generally enjoy ourselves and the view.\u00a0<\/p>\n Our time at Maryknoll was a much-appreciated period of refreshment during our trek across\u00a0“MiddleEarth” towards Europe; it was our Rivendell of rest.\u00a0<\/p>\n Thank you Maryknoll staff and priests for your generosity and kindness to FueledByRice this past week!\u00a0 You are a blessing — may God bless you in kind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I do have a ring I wear around my neck, but as of yet I haven’t been able to elicit any magical powers from it.\u00a0 And it certainly isn’t the focus and burden of our journey, as is the ring in the epic tale by Tolkein about a misfit band of travelers crossing vast terrain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drews-posts","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}