WYD & The Pope

The last 3 days have been filled with World Youth Day events.  Since there are so many people trying to get to WYD events, you have to start out 3 to 4 hours ahead of time.  This has meant Luke and I have spent a lot of time waiting.  The initial mass on Tuesday was cool.  There were 150 000 people there!  They were all wearing or waving flags of some sort.  I wore my Red Deer Royals jacket, so at least we had something to represent Canada with us.

 

We ended up standing on the platform where the toilets were so we could see a screen, because we were so far away!  Speaking of toilets, it was so nice not to have 100's of port-i-potties all around!  They have put in sewer lines to have flush toilets at all venues.  Can you imagine the nasty smell if they didn't?  Eww!

 

Anyways, after that we ate supper at the site (provided) and then made the trek home.  To get to Sydney, we have to take a 20 min bus ride, then a 40 minute train ride. Luke and I have had a lot of power naps on the train rides!  The announcements are so loud there are no way we could sleep through our stop.  (Quite the relief)

 

Wednesday we went to Catechesis, which featured a sermon from a Bishop and then a mass.  While we were there, I met a friend from University!  Megan was Kelsey Gamble's roommate at the U of L in our second year (?), and I haven't really seen her in the last 4 years.  It was really neat to catch up with her.  I then found out The Nuts (From Fort Mac) also know Kelsey from her time at Concordia!  It was weird to find out that 3 different groups of people all had a common friend, while were were all in Australia!

 

After lunch we made the long walk to Hillsong Church.  It was cool to see how big it really is!  I'm glad we could get a chance to go there, because it was the one thing Luke really wanted to do while we were here.  Unfortunately we won't be able to make it to any of their services. 

 

We then made the trek to the city to go see "The Rocks" and get dinner.  "The Rocks" is where Captain Cook first set foot on Australia soil, and the discovery museum had a lot of cool touch screen computers telling us about the first settlers to Australia.  For dinner we went to Barangaroo, the temporary concert site at an old shipping yard.  To get supper at a WYD event, you have to make a group of 6, then sent a representative to go get your dinner.  Since it's just Luke and I, we found 4 Slovakians and had dinner with them.  It was really neat to hear the 2 priests, the doctor and the university student pray in their native language.  After talking to them that evening, I definitely want to head there some day!

 

Last, but certainly not least is the Papal Arrival today.  Of course we headed to the event site early, so we could watch the Holy Father's official arrival to WYD.  Man did the people go nuts when he arrived!  I ended up putting in earplugs because of all of the bullhorns people were using!  It was really neat to hear him speak about evangelization in his homily.  But, I have to admit I got a little bored half way through and started looking around at all of the country flags around us.  That's when I noticed the Albertan flag.  I've been on the lookout for my students from Glenmary all week, so I was really hoping it was them.  Sure enough.  There was Sandra, Elise's mom in the section a head of us.  Since I was not allowed in the section, I leaned on the fence and called her name.  I knew it was bad timing, but I also knew if I didn't call her over now I wouldn't get the chance after the Pope finished. (It was a mass exodus afterwards!)  It was so nice to (briefly) catch up with Sandra, her daughter Elise, as well as Bridget and Joey who I go to know through SHINE.  I also recognized Richard and a couple of other SHINE volunteers there with them too!   We awkwardly took a quick photo over the fence together, before we finished listening to the Pope's homily.

 

The evening ended with a nice harbour side dinner and a stop at the Lindt Cafe for a milkshake.  Yum!  Tomorrow we are headed to Batman: The Dark Night at the Imax in Darling Harbour, and then Misa Solemnis at the Sydney Opera House.  I think it will be cool that we will see the new Batman movie before most people in Canada, since the premier of it will only be finishing in Canada on the 17th, as we go to see at 3pm on the 18th!  Got to love the time change!

 

My fingers are cold now, and it's time for bed. (My host parents have the air conditioning on and it's 10 degrees outside!  No wonder they are complaining it's cold in the house!) Love,

 

Andrea