I woke up on Tuesday with a lot of hope. "Finally, today, our trip will begin. Now it will be fun. Now it will be spiritual. Now it will be a pilgrimage." That's what I thought. Up until this point, it didn't feel like we had done anything yet. We all had a lot of hope for the day.
We woke up at 6:30 am. My watch has a special "travel" setting, but somehow it got switched to normal time. It was really weird to see that I was waking up at 3:30 am Colorado time. It's too early!
I slept amazingly well. I did wake up at 5:30 am when an alarm went off somewhere in the building. Some of our "house mates" thought that everyone needed to wake up at the same time that they did. It didn't bother me too badly. I was so tired that I fell asleep immediately. I may have woken up for less than a minute! I did manage to hear dogs barking and roosters crowing during that minute. Dogs run wild in Niteroi.
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| Thanks, Christa, for the picture!!! |
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| Thanks, Christa, for the picture!!! |
We went to the place where we'd be having catechesis for the rest of the week to eat breakfast. This was the first day we'd get to experience our (sarcasm alert) delicious and nutritious breakfast packs, that stayed pretty much the same every day. They came in boxes and included packaged toast, a muffin thing, a chocolate milk thing, Nutella, etc. I discovered that I actually like Nutella. I've only tried it once before, and I was a little freaked out by it. This Nutella was different because it was really really chocolatey. Some people said that it was very different than American Nutella, which is mostly Nutmeg. I don't love it as much as others, but I thought it was good. After we ate, we kind of sat around for a little while, deciding what to do.
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| Our breakfasts came in these boxes every day. |
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| They were packed very neatly |
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| Some kind of orange muffin thing. Gross!!! |
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| Packaged toast. Probably the best part of the meal. |
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| It was literally just toast |
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| Cheese spread |
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| Chocolate Milk |
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| Cashew Apple Juice |
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| Richard enjoyed his toast. Christa looks like she didn't |
Finally we got on a bus to head to the Copacabana Beach where the Opening Ceremonies and Mass would be held tonight. We wanted really good seats, and everyone agreed that it was worth it to get to the beach early enough to save them. We were racing 500,000 people for those spots, so we knew we'd be there for the long haul. But luckily the place where we were waiting was the beach, which would be a fun place to hang out.
It took a shockingly long time to get from Niteroi to Rio. I could be wrong, but I think it was somewhere close to two hours that we spent on the buses. I wasn't near my group on the longer, more crowded but, and when the bus is that crowded, being two seats away is a long distance, because there are actually about six people between you and that person. In crowds like that, you can't measure distance by feet or yards, you measure by how many people are between you and another. We learned that lesson in a big way later in the day.
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| Richard faking happy on the crowded bus!! |
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| This was the first, less crowded bus |
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| The picture is blurry :( She was so happy! |
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| The flag I traded for on the bus! |
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| This is how close we were to the stage! Amazing! |
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| You can't look this tacky very often in your life |
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| Posing in the worst outfit ever put together. I look pretty awful here. There's really nothing good! |
Well, the waves were too rough to go swimming, but we still got to play in the edge of the water. I can now say that I have stepped foot in the Atlantic Ocean! Yay! We had a lot of fun playing in the waves and the sand for a little while. We really needed that I think!
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| Andrea, Christa, and me on Copacabana beach |
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| We were surprised by the waves |
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| "Papa" is the word for "Pope" in almost every other language |
Our flags were huge. We had one that was the American flag, which everybody recognized. We had a Colorado flag, that only some Americans recognized, and we had a Spirit of Christ flag that only we recognized. I was really impressed with the dedication that the group had with the flags. They brought them everywhere and the flags were always in the air. They were proud flag bearers! Proud of their country. Proud of their state. Proud of their parish. They made me proud of them.
We also had a couple of cool moments of bumping into people we know. We ran into a teen from our program who went to World Youth Day with another parish. And we ran into a group from Vermont who had befriended us once we got to Brazil. Richard kind of knew the leader from the group from a long time ago, but they didn't know each other very well. This is the first time that the Vermont group really helped us out.
We needed to eat, but we were afraid to lose our spot. I think that our group would have happily skipped lunch in order to stay there, but the Vermont group graciously and generously offered to watch our belongings while we went to get lunch. We took them up on that offer. Father Chris and a couple of our teens who brought some food with them stayed behind, but the rest of us went to get lunch.
We couldn't find any place to eat that accepted our meal cards except for this one restaurant. We were impatient and tired of looking, so we stopped there to eat.
The food was really expensive, and not very exciting looking to me, so I just ordered french fries and a Fanta soda. Little did I know they'd bring me a bucket of french fries! They were good, though. I wanted to conserve my money because I knew that we would want to spend a lot of money on the last day, and I didn't want to spend any more of my personal money than was necessary, so I just got a bucket of french fries! I couldn't even finish them!
It took forever to get our check, and then it took forever to pay. Paying for group meals is usually pretty difficult anyway, but it's much worse when you speak a different language. Trying to explain what we ordered and how we were paying was a lot of work.
Earlier, Richard was standing in the waves, and a big wave came and got him really wet. It was raining and pretty miserably cold at this point, and so he decided to go buy a warm sweater to wear during the opening ceremonies. He had to go, but it left me alone with the teens again. This was something that I was not excited about. In fact, the whole reason I didn't want to come on this trip was because I knew that I am not good at this kind of thing. I took the teens back to our camp, but some of them were also unprepared for the cold, so I let a group go to the Official World Youth Day shops, but I needed to get back to camp.
The amount of people who arrived on the beach between the time when we left and the time when we came back was insane. Luckily, we had Tyler with us, who is really smart about navigating through crowds like that. He saw our flag, and took us on what seemed to be an unnecessarily long hike to the front of the crowd. Then, those of us in the group held hands and started to make our way through the crowd. Tyler taught me that people are far more likely to let you pass if you are moving backwards instead of forwards. If you start in the front and work your way back. Which makes a lot of sense. People don't want you to cut in front of them. If they've been waiting all day, they should not have to let you get better seats. But if you're trying to move to the back, they will happily let you pass. We made it back to our group in only minutes.
What we saw when we got back just broke my heart. The group that stayed behind (both from Vermont and from our group) had to move all of our stuff into a big pile because people kept pushing their way around our stuff. I guess that some people tried to steal from us, and they stopped that from happening. They were very loyal to us, but very worn out. They were stressed, and we had ruined what should have been a cool afternoon. We were greatly in debt to that group, who sacrificed in huge ways for us.
Soon after I got back, I realized that we were very lucky for arriving back so smoothly. All thanks to Tyler. But I also realized that there were members of our group who were still not with us, and that worried me. They didn't know the secret to moving through a crowd, and the crowd was pressing in on us. There wasn't going to be enough room for everyone once we were all back. I tried to think about how I could communicate with everyone, but there was no way except to leave the flag up so that they could find us.
A small group of teens showed up and informed me that one of the teens who was with them got separated and lost. At this point, I was extremely worried. And Richard wasn't with me yet. I had no idea what to do. I was upset. I wasn't worried so much that this teen was in trouble. There were so many people around watching that I doubted anybody would try to hurt anybody. I was mostly worried that he wouldn't be able to find us. There were so many people there. And like I said before, you can't measure distances in crowds like that by feet or yards, you have to measure them by numbers of people. The group who was with him when he got separated said that the reason the adults who were with them let them come back alone was because they were "so close," and yet it took them 45 minutes to get there. Because "close" has different meaning when there are 2,000 people between you. People who don't want to let you through because they think you are taking their spot.
I was very upset, but there was really nothing I could do. We just had to sit and wait. Eventually Richard came back, and then the group of adults who let the teens go alone. We were also missing two other adults, but I wasn't super worried about them, because I kind of figured they gave up and would just meet us at the end of the night. When the lost teen finally found us, I was so relieved. He looked pretty relieved, too. Two hours of searching in a crowd like that will do that to you.
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| Our group, reunited at last! |
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| This is what the jumbo-tron showed the crowd looked like! |
There was some entertainment on stage to help us to get ready for the events. Unfortunately we don't speak Portuguese, so we really didn't know what was going on. We didn't even have transistor radios with us, so we couldn't hear the translation. So we just stood in our spots and waited. Occasionally someone would break into English and we'd hear what they were saying, but that was pretty rare.
There was some music. The most entertaining band was from India. They sang about "Bringing out the boom" or something like that. They were good, but I kept thinking, "The '80's called and they want their band back." I was being really sarcastic and judgmental. They also sang a song that repeated the word "Alleluia." It was fascinating, because people from all different countries were able to participate in that song. Every culture knows that word.
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| The procession of the Bishops! |
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| Trying to have a good attitude with Tyler. |
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| Trying to have a good attitude with Christa |
The opening ceremonies began. I would normally love this moment. I love big, elaborate ceremonial things. It's part of what I love about being Catholic. Processions, flag ceremonies, music, dance, art: these things make my heart swell. But, again, it was very hard to get into. We were so crowded. We were wet from the rain. We were cold. The wind kept blowing. It was quite stressful for me.
They carried in the pilgrimage cross and the icon of Mary and placed them on stage where we would be celebrating mass. Again, this is something that I would normally have loved, but it was lost on me here.
I think that we were all relieved when mass started, because that meant that mass would soon be over. It was amazing how, even though we didn't have the transistor radios to listen to the English translations, we always knew when to say our responses. "Amen," "And with your spirit," "Thanks be to God," etc. Other denominations can't really do that. If you don't speak the language, you can't participate. But in the Catholic (universal) church, you don't have to speak the same language to be able to pray together. I felt like it was a reversal of the Tower of Babel. We all understood. It was beautiful
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| All of the bishops on stage together. This is only part of the stage! |
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| The Eucharistic prayers |
After mass ended, we had the amazingly difficult task of getting home. Again, I don't know what suggestions I have for the next World Youth Day, but they need to find a better way to get us home. There was no organization at all. We had to stop every few feet to ask for directions, and nobody gave us the same advice. At one point Richard was talking about splitting up the group to make it easier to move us. I started to cry. I did not feel safe with that option. I needed either him or Father Chris with me, because I had no idea what to do.
We ended up walking to the Subway, which took us to the ferry, which took us into Niteroi where we were able to catch a bus that took us home. Four hours after the event ended, we were finally home. Four. Long. Hours.
The thing is that we weren't the only group who had trouble getting back. The England group got back only ten minutes or so before we did. But we kind of acted like our struggle was far worse than other groups. Yes, we had a much more difficult time than those staying in Rio. But lot's of other people weren't staying in Rio, either, and they had to deal with the same stuff that we did. It really frustrated me that we seemed to behave that way.
But I get it now. We had been seriously lost for a while. Once we figured out how to get on the Subway, and how to get on the ferry (which took about three hours), we learned that the buses we needed weren't running anymore. We were lost. We were in a scary part of town. We were cold. We were tired. And the event had been a bit of a let-down. Of course we are going to be deflated. And I think that what was the most disappointing thing was that we really felt like the World Youth Day Council were the ones who let us down by putting us in this town that was so clearly unsafe, with little-to-no help for getting home. There was a really scary moment when I actually believed we were going to spend the night at the bus station. That shouldn't have happened, and it wasn't our fault, it was the fault of the World Youth Day Council. We did not have the support that we needed.
I realize that we were in the same position as many others, but that doesn't make their position correct either. There are a lot of poor people in Brazil, but that doesn't mean that poverty is correct. Just because this is a pilgrimage and not a vacation does not mean that our safety should be at stake.
It was a miserable evening. Just awful. But we did come here on pilgrimage and not vacation. We came to push ourselves to be uncomfortable as a purification. The goal is sanctification. The world we live in is all about comfort and ease. But holiness is not. We got a taste of that on this night. I think that is the night when many people in our group started to want to give up on the rest of the pilgrimage. I think that this is the night when most of us wanted to just throw in the towel, rent a hotel room and have some fun. But, as the saying goes, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." We are tough. We proved it during this trial. We can prove it again. This pilgrimage was only ten days long, but it was supposed to represent our entire lives. Our lives are simply a pilgrimage, with the goal being heaven. The consequences of giving up on the bigger pilgrimage is much worse. If we can't even make it ten days, there is no hope for the rest of our lives. It's not easy. It's not supposed to be easy. But it is worth it.
I was asleep probably one minute after I walked in the doors of the school that night. There was sand everywhere from being on the beach that day. I wiped my feet with some wet wipes (thank God for wet wipes) and got a small fraction of the sand off of them, and fell asleep. And I slept well. Today was like a pilgrimage within the pilgrimage, and sleep was Heaven.
I pray that my memories of this day aren't just the bad parts. I was really amazed at the bishops, the rosary (even though I struggled to pray it, I still heard it and took in the importance of that moment), the global Church being able to participate in mass together without speaking the same language. I even really enjoyed playing on the beach and trading my flag. It's amazing how the bad things reign over my memories. They dominate and crush the good. I don't want it to be all about the bad. I pray that happens soon!
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