Here's you group picture that was requested...
Top row... left to right. Jordan Bales, John Kay, David Orr, Alex (Fudge) Lustig, Andrew Grunloh
Taylor Worman, Cody Sandschafer, and Greg Schmidt
Bottom row... left to right. Allie Kabbes, Taylor Oltman, Allie English, Kaitlyn Parsons, Melissa
Tingley, Devon Powell, Karmon Kuhn, Ashley Sudkamp, Alex Worthington, Andy Guinnip
This is at the Honolulu airport...
And I also want to clarify from my last blog that we were not stealing the food. We have already prepaid for our food. We have tickets that David gave to them. He just does it more effeciently than the rest of us do. My bad on that one!
Saturday, July 19th
I'm actually writing this on Sunday, because we were gone all day yesterday. But yesterday began very early. We left the hotel at 7:30 a.m. We all attended the very first U.S.A. mass. I liked all of the music they played; so you may be hearing some new music in Church soon! Fr. Daren got the priveldge of con-celebrating (again) with the other priests and bishops from around the United States.
Afterwards we began our hike to the racecourse. I say hike because there are several GIANORMOUS hills in Sydney. Also, everyone had big backpacks and sleeping bags with them. It was amazing to see everyone come together to make the 6 mile trek to Randwick's Racecourse. I even saw some people that I met from St. Louis. It was nice to see a familiar face in the huge crowd!
Once we made it to the racecourse, we set up camp. Our seats were not near as good as they were on Thursday. I couldn't even tell who was who on the stage. But you should've seen how big this place was. If you can imagine having to fit 500,000 people with sleeping bags into one small area. Yeah, that big! It just went on forever and ever. I couldn't see the beginning or the end of the people. The only thing I don't like is it is not very handicapped acessible. It is very difficult to carry Judy up and down stairs, but the strong boys are such a great help.
We settled into our spot, H2. We were given a sack of food for the weekend. It was very similar to all the leftovers from the previous days. :) But food is food. Most people ate once we got settled. I, along with several others, took a nap. I was very tired from the early morning and the long hike to the racecourse. Around 7:00, the Pope arrived and we had a prayer service. The security wasn't near as bad last night as it was on Thursday. In a way the prayer service reminded me of the Easter Vigil. We all had candles and the whole place slowly became lit up with small lights. It was very neat because before it was very dark. By the way, in Sydney it gets dark around 5:30 or 6:00. We must remember it is winter here.
Around 10:00 many people began to head to bed. The only problem with this was it was extremely cold. We all piled on layers and layers of clothes. I thought my feet were frozen. I had trouble walking because they were so numb. But the cold wasn't the only reason people had trouble sleeping. Large groups of people decided it would be "funny" to cheer and yell until 3 in the morning!! And this morning, random people would go around and say "good morning" to you (even in you were sleeping) and would keep saying it until you replied!! How annoying??
Sunday, July 20th
Fr. Chris and Fr. Daren both concelebrated this morning with the Pope. The rest of us packed up and moved to a place further away from the stage, but in a better view of the TV screen. Some of the people decided to leave and beat the crowd at Communion. But I, along with most of the people from St. Anthony stayed until the final blessing. We all had a lot of "stuff" to get blessed. I know David and Brett got a ton of rosaries and was eager to get them blessed.
It didn't take us too long to get out of the crowd. We made our 6 mile trek back to the hotel. There was a crowd, but it was moving along nicely. It only took us about an hour to get back. Well, we did stop at Patty's Market for the boys to get some more soccer jersey's. They are obsessed with these things. But I must say, they look very nice.
A lot of people have been emailing back home. 2 days without a computer and they all go insane! Haha. I'm just kidding, but there were a lot of them here. At 6:30 we are all meeting to go out to eat for a nice dinner. I am really looking forward to this. We haven't have a nice meal in quite some time. I hope it's good!
Thanks for all of your comments... Lynn Lustig found out that some of us were on TV. "If you want to catch the replay of Taylor and Brett on EWTN, you can view the Papal Arrival Ceremony at the following website: http://www.ewtn.com/wyd2008/watch.htm. Click on video under ‘Arrival and Welcome of the Holy Father’ (at the bottom). You’ll see Taylor and Brett 2 hours and 4 minutes into it. It actually shows another close-up of Taylor immediately after that.
and....looks like Taylor O at 1 hour 52 minutes into it. " Thanks so much Lynn!!
Looks like we've been quite popular here in Australia, and in Honolulu as well. (Read Fr. Daren's post to learn about that.)
That's all for now! Thanks for reading!
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