Tet – Dominican Life on Lotus Lane

Tet 2025: The Year of the Snake

The novitiate made our annual Tet celebration fun and exciting, with games, food and prizes. As usual, we began the evening with delicious treats, a variety of Vietnamese candy and other goodies.

Then the novitiate did a special dance, using flowered branches and flowing ribbons to simulate snakes.

Sr. Mary Pauline, Sr. Mary Christine, Sr. Mary Giuse and Sr. Marie Augustine pose at the end of their impressive snake dance.

Then there were games, all snake themed in honor of this year’s animal. First, there was a snake soccer-like game, where teams tried to push a rubber snake across a table with chop sticks.

Next, there was the snake toss. Each sister had a chance to use a special grabber tool to toss a snake into a bucket. (The rubber snake writhed around like a real one, making the tossing extra dramatic.)

Sr. Mary Therese tries to grab the snake to toss it into the waiting bucket.

It’s a lot harder than it sounds, but we each got three turns and most of us were at least able to hit the bucket, if not actually get the snake in it. We all had fun trying!

Sr. Mary Margaret aims her snake.

Then we had our usual dice game, where we bet on which picture the big dice would land on. At the end of the evening, we all got to pick a prize.

As usual, the evening was a fun celebration and we’re grateful to our Vietnamese sisters for keeping this celebration alive in our monastery.

Tet 2024

Happy Lunar New Year! We celebrated this festive holiday on February 11 with dancing, games, lucky money, and of course delicious Vietnamese treats!

To begin, the novitiate sisters (and some friends) did a beautiful dance for us.

Sr. Carmen Gloria, Sr. Mary Christine, Sr. Mary Pauline, Sr. Mary Giuse, Sr. Marie Augustine, and Michelle

Since this is the Year of the Dragon, we honored our three “dragon” sisters in the community. You can see our “Tet tree” with its lucky money envelopes in the background. Naturally, we turned the money in to the Bursar and got tickets for playing the games in its place.

Sr. Bernadette Marie, Sr. Mary Dominic, and Sr. Maria Cabrini

One of the sisters read the personality characteristics of people born during the Dragon year, but we have to say most of them didn’t seem to correspond with what we know of our sisters! That’s why we rely on real life experiences, not horoscopes. But it was fun, anyway!

We played some games, too. One game involved trying to hit a tennis ball into a hole. Sr. Mary Pauline, Sr. Marie Augustine, and Michelle did very well with this! Some of the rest of us also managed to get the ball in the hole, but for many it could only be called “a good try”.

The final game was our Vietnamese lottery game. It used to be a little complicated, but one year Sr. Mary Christine just put all the different animals (and the squash) used in the game on a large homemade die, and so we just throw the die and see what comes out on top.

Sr. Mary Margaret prepares to throw the die as all look on expectantly. You can see the tennis ball game in the background.

Each sister received a Mass intention slip, to be filled in with the name of the person she would like Mass to be offered for, and each sister also received a prize. It was a delightful evening, and now we are all ready to begin the discipline of Lent on Ash Wednesday. May God grant you all the blessings He has in store for you, and know we keep you in our prayers!

Tet: Year of the Tiger

Grrrr! We had a great time welcoming the Year of the Tiger in our community recently! As our readers may know, we have many different cultures in our community and we try to honor them in some way. This was our 20th year to celebrate Tet.

Gathered together to begin the evening. It’s been cold in Texas, by the way!

Did you know that the Lunar New Year originated in Vietnam? At least, this is what our Vietnamese sisters tell us, and we think they should know! Sr. Mary Christine did her usual fantastic job of explaining all about the Year of the Tiger. We don’t have any “tigers” in our community right now, but if we did, it sounds like they’d fit in just fine! Tigers are supposed to be very strong minded!

Picking our “lucky envelopes” from the tree and enjoying the delicious Asian snacks. Everything was generously provided by Sr. Mary Christine’s family!

Sr. Mary Christine devised a number of original and unusual games for us to play, as she always does. We enjoyed ourselves by playing in teams for points.

A fun game similar to Telephone, only we wrote on each other’s hands–tricky!

Sr. Marie Augustine shows off her fine sense of balance with game counters balanced on a chopstick

We were still having fun when the bell rang to summon us to Compline and Benediction, and that’s the way an evening should end. Sr. Mary Christine organized things so that although only one team won the evening, each sister received a prize.

We are grateful for our opportunities to share in the heritage of our sisters and to make this heritage part of our own community life. Thank you so much to Sr. Mary Christine and Sr. Mary Giuse, our two Vietnamese sisters, who bring so much talent and joy to our community, and thank you for your great example of prayer!