It took me all of 5 weeks to figure out where the Catholic church was. The first couple of weeks I was asking the receptionists at the hotel if they knew where I could find one, and they didn't know. So I asked my relocation person if she could get this information for me and she found me an address. I looked it up in mapquest but I couldn't find it. So I asked the hotel receptionists again if they could direct me to where this address was, and they still couldn't. Semi-desperate, I tried it out again in mapquest last week but this time I entered Katolska Kyrkan (Catholic church) and I found it!
I made my way there last Saturday morning to check out the mass schedule - apparently, masses are on Sunday at 10am and anticipated masses on Saturday at 6pm. I figure I rarely get up before 10am on Sunday so I attended the anticipated mass at 6pm. And towards the end of the mas, I realized that I had found the church "just in time" - the priest announced (in Swedish first, then in English, then in Spanish - talk about multi-lingual) that today would be Ash Wednesday, and he shared the mass schedule. If it weren't for that announcement, I would have most likely missed the only mass today which was at 6pm.
Aside from going to mass, I also fasted (i.e. had only one full meal but had some fruit and snacks the rest of the day). But I didn't abstain. There were two choices for lunch - one was potatoes with ground meat and the other was like a meat stew. Had to take the "lesser of two evils" (the potatoes). Normally they serve potatoes (either mashed or boiled) and I was thinking, since I was planning to fast, I needed to eat something heavy for lunch (and not the small side salads that are also available in the canteen). But there were no plain potatoes today, so I just had the one with ground meat. I'm guessing I won't be able to successfully abstain while I am here either. We'll just have to see what happens.
No comments:
Post a Comment