Trondheim Catholic Student Group

Food. Not any kind of food. Vietnamese food. It’s a kind of food which could be difficult to eat. You may find yourself staring at the food more than eating it. Hopefully, the students/young adults didn’t experience too much of the food-staring when the Catholic Student Group had vietnamese dinner a couple of weeks ago.

It was a Wednesday evening (not surprisingly). The members had just attended the Evening Mass. 22 people consisting of 20 students/young adults and 2 priests were counted at this meeting, including 2 new faces. One of them, Klemens, even helped out with the cooking. It was really nice of him, I must say.

P. Dominic was the main chef of this dinner. With him he had some assistants, Maria Cao, Karoline, Huy and, of course, Klemens. The first course was a soup which name is hard to translate. I’m even unsure of how to write it correctly in vietnamese. This is as much as I can tell, the soup consisted of crabs, eggs and mushrooms among other ingredients.

The main course really tested the dexterity of the people who are unfamiliar with the art of chopsticks. Shortly explained, they had to transfer the food from a common plate to their ricepaper, using the chopsticks. The food consisted of shrimps, swine and many vegetables, all of them cut into small pieces. Needless to say, it could even prove to be a challenge for advanced chopstickusers. Of course, they could have used their fingers, which are easier. Some actually did. But the cooking team insisted on using the chopsticks. Partly, because it made the dinner more… fun.

The dessert consisted of some oriental fruit coupled with not so oriental ice cream. And no, I don’t know its name. But the italians gave it its own name, though. “Fiskeboller”, they called it. Meaning fish buns…

Adoramus te Christe
Benedicimus tibi
Quia per crucem tuam
Redemisti mundum

Well, it worked out fine, I guess. The Adoration. It was my first time to plan and carry through with the Adoration, since Clarisse, the one who usually is responsible for it, couldn’t be with us that Wednesday in February. Frankly, I was glad that she gave me this opportunity. It was a learning experience.

The chosen songs were Adoramus Te, Ubi Caritas and Laudate Omnes Gentes. As you can see, all of them are in Latin. The growing internationallity of the student group was an important thing to have in mind during the preparation and song-choosing.

We were 12 students/young adults in total. Additionally and naturally, P. Al and P. Etienne were there also. We had the Adoration in the church, which eliminates the crowdness of having it in a small room. Of course, what opinions people has about it, is yet for me to find out.

Co-operation of making a dinner for the student group, that is. At first we were supposed to make norwegian food only, but the polish students positively surprised us with their contribution. As a result, the dinner of the catholic student group on wednesday the 20th of february consisted of 4 courses, 2 norwegians and 2 polish.

Even though we were 21 persons in total, we didn’t manage to devour all of the food. Father Dominic, who was absent that day, got some of the left-over. I vaguely remember that he said he liked it.

The students were in such a good mood that after dinner they played some music from the radio and even danced a little. Some pictures were taken during the evening. They wil be posted on this website shortly. Finally, the students sat around the piano and sang songs, creating a good and relaxing atmosphere, to end the night on a high note.

Special thanks to Karoline, Clarisse, Pia, Maria Cao, Piotr #1, Piotr #2 and Slavek, who made the dinner for the student group.

Lecture, music and social gathering are the words to describe the happening on Wednesday, February the 13th. We were 13 students. The topic was Lent and Hope. Father Al talked about how lent and hope goes together. Additionally, we were given time for ourselves to reflect upon what was being said. Some peaceful music and tranquillizing candlelight was also featured in this reflective time of the meeting.

The lecture lasted for about an hour. Some students had to leave after that. The rest spent the evening together and enjoyed some warm tea and snacks.