by Tom Weston, SJ photos by Kevin Tomlin, SJ and Tim Meier, SJ	Michael Christiana, SJ, and Tim Meier, SJ, were among those who spent up to six weeks this summer teaching English to Jesuits and others in Vietnam and Thailand. A big part of the experience was cultural, including this visit to Doi Suthep, a Buddhist monastery in Thailand.

"What's going on?"
asked Fr. Joseph Doan, SJ, one of Fr. General Kolvenbach's assistants, while visiting Seven Fountains, the Jesuit retreat house in Chiang Mai, Thailand, one day in July 2003.

In this beautiful setting framed by bamboo and palms, he'd spied our group of two dozen sisters, teachers, and seminarians from Thailand and four Jesuits and one woman all obviously from the United States. Fr. Doan had met us as we were emerging from morning prayer.

We told him about our one-month English program. Teachers and students lived and prayed together, making English an active part of life. Many of the students had studied English, but a long time ago or on a very theoretical basis. They knew some grammar and could read a bit but had never done much speaking or listening. This time together studying English was meant to be practical and enjoyable.

"There are Jesuits in Vietnam who also need these skills," said Fr. Doan. "Can you bring this to Vietnam?" We told him that we'd love to; he told us he'd be in touch. You could hear windows and doors opening, possibilities abounding.

But did we have the resources and imagination to staff programs in two exotic locations? How about the skill and generosity it would require of everybody? Could we handle the unknowns, connect the dots?

I knew it was possible. My years as a Jesuit have taught me to ask God for help and guidance, pay attention to possibilities and realities, and be willing to let God catch you by surprise.

The Vietnamese Jesuits were already proficient at reading English, as their U.S. teachers quickly realized, and really relished the chance to hear and speak the language.

We started with firm places, Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and Chiang Mai in Thailand, and we had dates: the Vietnamese wanted us June 14 in 2004, while the Thais were expecting us June 28. All else was unknown. How many teachers? How many students? We'd have to see.

For over ten years a small group of Jesuits have spent summers teaching English in China as part of their training. I did this myself in '95 and '97; the experience was exhausting and exhilarating. But these trips were very much an in-house Jesuit thing. This would be different. We would invite everyone interested in teaching: women and men, religious and lay, all ages.

So I passed out fliers at a province assembly in Los Angeles, got mentioned in the National Jesuit News, and talked about it during retreats I gave. I told people the dates, that they would pay their airfare but that room and board would be covered, that June and July are hot and rainy, so think New Orleans in the summer.

Most of the 25 people who responded had never been to Asia before. Some were interested in Vietnam, others in Thailand, many in both. And they had questions, of course. Food? Abundant and simple. Mosquitoes? Yes, but no malaria where we're going. Snakes? Well, yyyesssss, but most cobras are pretty shy. Air conditioning? Affirmative, but fans, more common, are usually enough. ATMs? 'Round many corners.

So a remarkable group of women and men decided to travel halfway around the world to teach and to learn in a blending of the possible, the practical, and the surprising.

Elizabeth Taylor goes over an English composition with Vietnamese Jesuit Toan Vu. The teachers, through group and one-on-one study, gave a shot in the arm to their students' ability to speak and understand English.

Gathering in Ho Chi Minh City on a June weekend were Elizabeth Taylor, working on an MA in English as a Second Language; Mark Ryan, SJ, in theology studies; Robert Grimaldi, SJ, on sabbatical after 30 years working in Honduras; Peter Carey, SJ, who teaches at Brebeuf Prep in Indianapolis; biologist Tim Meier, SJ; philosophy student Kevin Tomlin, SJ; Elie McLaren, a teacher from Utah; and Doug and Adrienne McFerrin. Doug is one of the Companions, a group of former Jesuits, while Adrienne, who is Jewish, came with great curiosity, courage, and a bit of anxiety. Tom Coughlin, a Holy Cross alumnus, wanted to be part of our group as he was choosing to leave the world of business and technology.

In Ho Chi Minh City some of us stayed in a charming guest house, others in a business hotel right across a park. We'd enjoy a breakfast of fresh baguettes, coffee as good as in Paris, tea if you wanted, and sometimes noodles. Then we'd head out at 7:30 in a minivan for the Jesuit residence in Thu Duc.

It is hard to describe our daily 30-minute commute to and from the Jesuit community through Ho Chi Minh City's traffic. It is a city of motorcycles. Huge trucks muscle through the streets, and there are bicycles and a few old cyclos (imagine a bicycle pushing a wheelchair), but mostly it's motorcycles. The traffic's pulses and patterns defy analysis: flow and counterflow, gridlock and rapid deployment, explosion and whimsy. Traffic is a constant source of fascination, fear, and interest all by itself. Add the monsoon rains and it becomes the stuff of grand opera.

At the community we met our 31 Jesuit students, ages 23 to 47. Some were scholastics and brothers who had just taken vows, others were awaiting ordination. Some were just out of the military, others right out of school. We spent several days finding out what they knew and how we could best serve them.

Alexandre de Rhodes, SJ A Gift for Language To the casual observer, the languages of China, India, Nepal, Tibet, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar (Burma) all share one characteristic–they are written in scripts that seem exotic to Western readers accustomed to the Latin alphabet. However, there is one interesting exception–the Vietnamese language–and a Jesuit was involved. Alexandre de Rhodes (1591–1660), was a French missionary to what is now Vietnam and was instrumental in Romanizing the country's language. Building upon the work of some earlier Portuguese missionaries, he wrote the first Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary, which essentially presented the language in a Latin alphabet version (with diacritical and tonal marks). Previous dictionaries had used forms derived from Chinese characters. His Dictionarium annamiticum, lusitanum et latinum and a Catechism somewhat based on the Spiritual Exercises are among the first published works of Romanized Vietnamese and will be always connected with the invention of the quoc ngu, the nationalized script. In 1955 there was a street named after him in Ho Chi Minh City.

Our first challenge was to learn names in a language that uses six tones to communicate. Meet Mr. Toan, Mr. Tuan, Mr. Tan, and Mr. Doan. To Westerners, these very different names sounded the same. Tones rise and fall, and there are other problematic sounds. Around Hanoi, the sounds l and n are the same. I asked one student if he had ever visited the States. Shaking his head he said, "Lo, lo, oh lo, Father."

The Vietnamese rise early in the morning, and Vietnamese Jesuits are no exception. They celebrate mass at 5:30 a.m. We changed that to 5:30 p.m. real quick, starting each morning with prayer in English at 8:15, and quickly discovered that our common experience of liturgy, prayer, and scripture was a real linguistic connection. Our first lesson of the day was that day's Gospel: the sounds, the vocabulary, the pattern of the words. Our students' challenge was to learn how to speak and how to listen.

At lunchtime and dinner, Vietnamese and Americans mingled at tables laden with bread, rice, soup, chicken, prawns, and lots of vegetables and Asian fruits. By verbal give-and-take we taught the English names and learned the Vietnamese names for these foods.

After a bit of post-lunch siesta it was back to classes at 2 until recreation at 4. We introduced these energetic young men, otherwise playing volleyball, badminton, and soccer, to the frisbee.

One weekend we went to the beaches of Vung Tau, several hours south. We mixed informally, enjoying seafood, fellowship, and music -- a great change of pace.

The students relished the chance to live and study with native speakers of English: "I have studied English for four years in college, but when we started this course I could not understand anything you were saying, and I did not know how to speak so that you could understand me," said one. "I have never been with a native English speaker before; now, when you speak, I can understand a lot of it, and I can talk to you," said another.

Our method was really very simple: get into small groups, two teachers per group, and start students reading out loud. Work with them with good cheer, learn through trial and error, and encourage them to hurry up and make their first 5,000 mistakes!

We incorporated music into our teaching, particularly songs, and showed movies. In some movies they heard English spoken clearly. Unfortunately, American actors do not always enunciate. Subtitled movies helped, as many students had fine reading skills. Actor Sean Penn speaks slowly and clearly in I am Sam, and our students loved it. Finding Nemo was a hit, but Close Encounters of the Third Kind was loathed. Trial and error!

Vietnamese is written in Latin script, so that made things a tad easier for teachers and students in that country. But the group that taught in Thailand faced a challenge with that country's language, which is written in a script derived from Chinese characters.

Near the end of the month we asked students to prepare a discussion on war and peace. It was the first time several had spoken in English in public. We debated the American Revolution and the Civil War and the war in Iraq. What we in the United States call the Vietnam War our students called the American War; before that was the French War. There was laughter, cheers, passion, and disagreement, all in English on this most amazing morning.

That night, our last together, our students spoke many words of appreciation and friendship. At one moment they all started singing, kicking up heels, clapping, and moving and joining hands. Then it was our turn. We sang "We'll Meet Again" and "Auld Lange Syne" and then we taught them the Hokey Pokey!

Our Thailand group gathered two weeks after the Vietnam program had started. Chiang Mai, cooler and smaller thanBangkok, is a place of charm and calm. We stayed at the Seven Fountains Spirituality Center, for 40 years under the care of Jesuits from around the world.

The crew consisted of John Mossi, SJ, teacher at Gonzaga University; Tom Splain, SJ, from the Gregorian University in Rome; Ruth Hoenick, teacher and grandmother from Milwaukee; Michael Christiana, SJ, who teaches at Brebeuf Prep in Indianapolis; Cormac Brisset, from St. Paul; and Terry Richey, a priest from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Tim Meier, Kevin Tomlin, and Liz Taylor, who had fallen in love with Chiang Mai last year, joined us after teaching in Vietnam, as did Robert Grimaldi.

Our fourteen students in Thailand were not all Jesuits. There were six women, all sisters, and eight men, some of whom were lay teachers and others members of the OMI order.

As in Vietnam, we used scripture, music, and movies to teach English. There were major cultural differences, including the shyness, extreme politeness, and courtesy of the people. In Vietnam we sat on chairs in chapel, but in Thailand we left our shoes outside the chapel and sat on the floor, careful not to offend by pointing the bottoms of our feet toward anyone.

It wasn't all work for teachers and students at the Vietnam and Thailand "schools." Shared meals, outings, and sports were some of the ways fellowship developed. Srs. Somsuda, Narawat, Somphan, and Bangon take a breather on the 300 steps leading to a Buddhist monastery the Thailand group visited.

Thai culture is full of delicacy, subtlety, shades of meaning. Public behavior is very important, and being polite is a national treasure. To declare something bad one would say that "It is not very polite." To encourage people in temples and at royal gatherings not to dress scandalously, signs read: "Please dress politely."

The Thai language has 44 consonants, 32 vowels, and 5 tones but no verb tenses, no plurals, and no th sound. The sounds l and r are interchangeable. Speaking English required an entirely new set of mouth muscles and tongue positions for our students, but the fact that we were laughing while struggling to learn Thai boosted their morale. Up to then, they learned English by reading and looking up every word; they had never heard the language before.

It was crucial for them to learn the English computer keyboard, as the Thai script is not based on Latin letters, as is Vietnamese (see "A Gift of Language" above). We brought CDs that taught typewriting, English script, and language skills, and they worked away on these late into the night.

Not quite rush hour — teachers Michael Christiana, SJ (second from right), and Terry Richey, a diocesan priest from Los Angeles (right), are on top of the world, or at least an elephant, during one outing.

We ate with our students, as we had in Vietnam, and learned that Thai sauces and peppers (and there's a wide variety of them) can change your life. Just like with language, it was trial and error. Some spices were addictive; others burned just to look at them. The scent of some red curry could stop all breathing.

We prayed together, sang together, met in small groups, and gave lots of individual attention. We made a pilgrimage to the spectacular Doi Suthep Monastery, at the top of our closest mountain, arriving the same day that Thai students from all over the area were visiting the monastery to ask for help in their studies. The students wore their school colors; the monks' saffron robes were splashes of pink, blue, green, and red, all in a setting awash with the aroma of incense and the fragrance of flowers.

This Buddhist country and culture encourages meditation and reflection, deep devotion and tradition. Outside the retreat house every morning scores of Buddhist monks waited for people to bring them food. The Catholic population is minute, on the edge of this society of deep spirituality, and the Church is enriched by it.

It is a deep act of faith and hope and charity to enable different peoples to come together for work and prayer. When we take the time and trouble to encourage them to come together, it is the Holy Spirit's work.

These experiences in Vietnam and Thailand are good beginnings to building a world better and deeper and richer than when we started. It is encouraging the traffic to flow. It is connecting the dots.

Tom Weston, SJ, has been doing retreat work with recovering alcoholics and addicts and their families since 1984. He has taught English in China, Thailand, Vietnam, and Myanmar.

Interested in the program? Contact Fr. Tom Weston, SJ, at tweston@calprov.org or call him at (510) 653-5843. You can also visit the Seven Fountains Spirituality Center online at www.carefor.org/7fountains and then go to www.nsjvietnam.org for pages in which program participant Doug McFerrin shares his summer experience. Lastly, at www.thelanguageproject.org you will find information about computers and learning centered in Luang Prabang, Laos.