Papal Events: the first of many this week!

To explain the "many" in the title of this post, here's my schedule for Holy Week: I went to Palm Sunday mass this morning in St. Peter's Square, I'm going to Holy Thursday mass at St. John Lateran, the Good Friday service in St. Peter's Basilica, Stations of the Cross at the Colisseum on Friday night, and of course the Easter Vigil on Saturday night in St. Peter's. Papa Benedetto will be celebrating all of them!

And as if that weren't enough, I also went to a Papal Event last Thursday in St. Peter's Square. It had something to do with World Youth Day. We never quite figured out EXACTLY what it was for, but it was either a sort of send off for Italian youth going to Spain next summer, or a commemoration of the 10 year anniversary of when WYD was in Rome, or a commemoration of the 25 year anniversary of when Pope John Paul II started World Youth Day, or perhaps a combination of all those things. In any case, it was cool. It felt sort of like a rally before the Pope showed up--there were some dancing and singing performances, and lots of Italian youth cheering and holding signs and things. Once the programming started, they showed a lot of videos of Pope John Paul II, from when he announced the first World Youth Day, and from World Youth Day in Rome, I think. And then I remembered that lots of people I know had gone to that, and had stood in that same piazza I was in! We also got some cool free stuff--a hat, a handkerchief, and a candle. So it was a good time all around:-)

And this morning was Palm Sunday mass, also in the piazza. We got there fairly early and got good seats--pretty close to the aisle! While we were waiting for mass to start, we couldn't help but overhear some girls (Americans) who were talking loudly behind us. It was pretty clear they didn't entirely know what was going on--they were wondering if their friends who came earlier had actually gotten seats inside the church, for instance. So at first I was kind of annoyed...but then when mass started, and we all stood eagerly (on our chairs) to see the procession and get a glimpse of the Pope, I realized that that's probably what the first Palm Sunday was like too. The people who ran to the gates of Jerusalem probably didn't all know who Jesus was, they just saw everyone getting excited and knew that was the place to be. And if you're in Rome and have any Catholic knowledge at all, you know that St. Peter's, with the Pope, is the place to be for Holy Week masses. So it was just an authentic re-creation:-)

And actually, it did feel more authentic than usual. We were standing outside, and we really did get excited when the Pope came by. It was easy to imagine doing the same thing for Jesus, instead of the Pope. Picturing myself as part of that crowd from the Gospel leads to harder things, though, because we know the rest of that story--by the end of the week, the palms in their hands had turned to whips and the praise on their lips was mockery and condemnation. If I'm part of the Palm Sunday crowd, then I'm part of that crowd too. And of course I am; I'm a sinner. But I guess it just made me desire to offer the Lord authentic praise. To be able to worship Him as He deserves without later continuing to sin. I'm not at that point yet...but someday. It's also tempting to stand in the crowd and call out to Jesus to stop, to stay and spend time with us, instead of just passing by. But that's what Jesus rebuked Peter for once--for suggesting He do something other than the suffering He knew He had to. So we watch Jesus ride by. And now the stage is set for Holy Week--Jesus is here; our salvation is coming. Those were more of my thoughts during mass...:-)

And besides all that, it was a sweet mass. The weather was gorgeous, we got to hold olive branches, most of it was sung (including the long Passion Gospel--woohoo!)...it was good start to what looks like will be a very good Holy Week.


At the beginning of mass, there was a procession from the altar in front back to the obelisk, where the blessing of the palms and the first Gospel reading happened. Our seats were on the way, so I tried to get a good picture of the Pope...but as you can see, my timing was a little off. Luckily, they processed back up for the rest of mass, so I had another chance!


...which I screwed up again:-) But this one's a little better! And you can tell how close we were, anyway.

Maratona di Roma

Last Sunday, a group of 6 of us archies, plus Evan's dad, ran in the Rome marathon! It was a crazy experience. We only trained for 8 weeks, and I personally had to take a week off to prevent a slight injury from becoming worse, so I didn't QUITE feel prepared when I got up to the starting line. (I mean, when I got up to way way behind the starting line, which is where I started the race. When there are 18,000+ people running, not everyone gets a good spot). But when we finally started, my nerves went away pretty quickly--by at least the first 5K mark, ha.

Since I've never run a marathon in the U.S, I can't compare the set up of those to this one, but I thought it was organized pretty well. There was a "refreshment station" at every 5K mark, with water, gatorade, and solids later on in the race, and between all the refreshment stations there were "sponge stations". Those are just what they sound like--they hand you a sponge soaked in cold water. It felt amazing. Having something to look forward to every 2 or 3 kilometers really helped make the distance feel shorter, I think. It also helped that we were running in familiar locations, and could check off the landmarks as we passed them: the Colosseum, St. Paul's, St. Peter's, etc.

The other thing that helped keep us going was all the other people! You were never running alone; there were always lots of other runners around, suffering just as much as you were:-) And there were always people there cheering, too. In fact, a bunch of the other archies made signs for us and came and cheered at different points along the course!

So, while the marathon was definitely hard, and definitely long, I felt better during it than I did during my 18 mile run in Sicily a few weeks ago. During that run, I was by myself, I didn't really have enough food and water, and the sun was beating down on me for most of the time (I forgot to mention that the weather for the marathon was almost perfect--overcast and 60s), and by the end I felt like I didn't really have the ability to move my legs anymore...

So I was thinking about this contrast while I was running, and it occured to me that St. Escriva and St. Louis de Montfort would apply this to faith by saying that running alone in the heat without water is like going at the spiritual life completely alone--it's possible to make progress, but HARD. On the other hand, running an organized marathon with lots of other people and people on hand to make it as comfortable for you as possible, and cheer you on--that's like life with Mary and the communion of saints. When you get tired or start to falter, Mary's right there with whatever you need (probably a sponge), and the communion of saints is standing around holding signs and cheering for you. You're still doing the actual running yourself; you take every step of those 26 miles (or 42 kilometers)...but you have a little help along the way.

And not only did I have time to come up with things like that, I also prayed all 4 sets of mysteries of the rosary! It's amazing what you can do with that much time on your hands. 4 hours, 38 minutes, and 32 seconds, to be exact, because that's how long it took me to finish. My goal was to finish, and my secret time goal was under 5 hours, so I was pretty happy about it.

What I didn't realize til afterwards was just how sore I'd be--I couldn't walk down stairs without fairly excruciating pain for about 2 1/2 days. But it's all gone now, and I'll be ready to start training for next one any day now. Just kidding! I'll probably take it easy for a little while. Maybe.

Finally, thank you to all of you who were thinking of and praying for me during the race! I was definitely relying on those prayers. And I probably prayed for you at some point, too--like I said, I had a lot of time:-)


Here are some of us post-race: Gina, me, Evan, Evan's dad, and Courtney. I'm wearing my complimentary backpack and we're holding our finisher medals!

Greece

Picking up where I left off last time, (now that you've had plenty of time to read, re-read, and reflect on all my adventures in Sicily), the day after we got back from Sicily I left for Greece! We (myself, Evan, Rebecca, and Chris) got into Athens in the evening. We met up with 3 other archie girls who had gotten there earlier in the day and all went to dinner. I tried a typical Greek dish called "moussaka", which has layers of potatoes, eggplant, meat, and melted cheese on top. It was really good! The restaurant we went to had a great view of the acropolis, too, so that was pretty cool. After dinner, we played cards back at our hostel and went to bed.

The next day was Sunday, so we found a mass to go to--well, the girl at the hostel desk found it, actually. But anyway, it was a Roman Catholic service, but in Greek! I recognized some words, like the kyrie, and "amen", and I think I caught a "Petros" in the Gospel...anyway, it was a really cool liturgy. Very solemn, and they used a lot of incense (a little Greek influence, no doubt), and it was well attended. After that, we walked around for a little while and saw the Athen's flee market, went near the acropolis but didn't go all the way up into it, and saw the ancient Olympic stadium. Oh, and for lunch we had gyros, our first of many. They're cheap, sold all over the place, and really good!


Me, Courtney, and Evan--future marathon runners!--in front of the Olympic Stadium

On Sunday afternoon, we caught a bus to a town up north called Kalambaka. We had a little difficulty finding the bus station, but after that everything went smoothly. We were traveling both north and up into the mountains, both possible reasons for what we unexpectedly encountered on the drive there: snow! Lots of it. We got into Kalambaka pretty late, around 11 pm, and were surprised to find that the owner of our hostel was waiting there to show us the way to the hostel! This hostel was amazing, too--definitely my favorite out of all the ones I've stayed in this year. It felt more like a ski lodge than a hostel. We had two rooms to ourselves, one for the girls and one for the guys, and each had its own bathroom. We also had a lounge with a fireplace!


The Alsos House, our hostel

Now, why did we want to visit a tiny town called Kalambaka? Well, because it's right next to an area called Meteora. Meteora is made up of giant rocks coming out of the ground with monasteries built on top of them.


One of the giant rocks

There are trails connecting all the monasteries that you can hike on. We spent the next day doing that (in the snow! It was crazy).


Evan and I


Me, Chris, and Rebecca. We weren't prepared for snow at all, so we're all wearing our tennis shoes (not waterproof) and basically all the layers we packed.

Some of the monasteries are open to visitors, so we got to go in them and even met an English speaking monk in one of them who explained some of the beautiful frescoes in the chapel to us.


No pantaloons for the ladies...


The sign says "Great are wonderful are Thy deeds O Lord God the Almighty! Who shall not fear and glorify Thy name, O Lord?"


There was almost a disaster on the way down, but luckily I managed to avert it.

After a full day of hiking, it felt really good to come back into town, sit down to a hot meal, and then relax and play cards again in the hostel that night.

The next day (Tuesday by now) we spent the morning in Meteora and then took the bus back to Athens that afternoon.

On Wednesday morning we left Athens again, this time on a ferry to one of the islands, San Torini! The ferry was much bigger than I expected, and kind of like what I imagine cruise ships are like. Though maybe those are just bigger than I think they are, too. Anyway, we had "super economy" seats, which entitled us to sit at the tables at the cafe on the ship! That's what we thought on the way there, anyway. On the way back we learned that we were in fact also allowed to sit in more regular airplane-style seats. But the cafe tables were good because we got to socialize during the 8 hour ride (and play more cards). When we got there we were immediately overwhelmed by the geographical beauty. San Torini is a mountainous island, so there are little towns built up high on the hills, and you're never far from a view of the water below. Our hostel there was really nice, too, and we once again met up with some other archies who were there at the same time.

Thursday was our day of exploring San Torini. We rented ATVs and rode them up to the highest point on the island, and then to a few different beaches. The beaches are interesting because there are three different types: one with black sand, one with red sand, and one with white sand. We went to the black and red, but never found the white. The red beach was probably my favorite. We couldn't drive all the way there, and instead had to hike up and over some rocks, and when you get to the top the view is incredibly striking: red rocks and sand, turquoise water, and bright blue sky. It was awesome. We also swam at that beach for a bit--the water was pretty cold, but I'm glad we got in. We finished off the day by going to a place called Oia to watch the sunset--all the guidebooks and even the guy at the hostel said that's the best place to see it. It was kind of cloudy, but the sun broke through just in time for us to watch it sink below the horizon.


Doing some hiking


The red beach!


The dark island on the left is a volcano!

We spent Friday morning in San Torini also. We walked down a bunch of stairs to the old port, sat there for a while, and then took a donkey ride back up to the top. The donkeys must do that walk dozens of times a day, especially in high tourist season, and so they've made a little game of it, apparently. They kept jostling for who got to be in the lead, and cutting each other off around corners, and mine in particular would walk really close to the wall and right under low hanging branches. It was fun:-)

On Friday afternoon we took the ferry back to Athens, and then on Saturday we FINALLY got around to doing Athens sightseeing things, namely, going in the acropolis! The Parthenon was awesome, of course, even though it was partly under scaffolding, and all the other temples there than we learned about last year were cool too. Oh, and we saw the theater were Sophocle's and all those other playwright's plays were originally performed!


This is that theater.

We also walked around the agora, and I loved thinking about how that where Socrates and Plato would hang out and talk philosophy with everyone. Those ancient Greeks were pretty amazing people.

Sunday was a special day--Pi Day! In the American way of counting dates, anyway. But we thought it was awesome that we got to celebrate a Greek letter day in Greece! And it turns out that a lot of Greek pastries are called "pies", like cheese pie, sausage pie, cheese and spinach pie, etc...so that was pretty perfect. Naturally we all stopped at a bakery to get them on our way to the airport. And then we flew home! It was a fantastic trip. And it was also my last big trip of the year. I might go on a few other daytrips (definitely to Turin to see the Shroud in April), but nothing big. So I get to enjoy being in Rome for a while! And with Holy Week and Easter coming up, that should be plenty exciting.

Sicily

Hello! I'm back in Rome after being gone for a few weeks...I got back on Sunday from a week in Greece, and before that I spent a week with my class in Sicily! Both were fantastic. I'll start with Sicily, if I can remember everything properly...

We left on Friday morning, bright and early to catch an early flight. Our first stop in Sicily was an archaeological site called Segesta. It has an ancient Doric temple and a theater way up on a hill that we hiked up. The location was beautiful--lots of green grass, flowers, trees, and a view of the sea once we got a little ways up. The weather was really nice while we there too--much different than South Bend February weather! The afternoon kind of set the tone for the whole trip: beautiful weather, beautiful geography, and lots of walking and hiking!

We went to Palermo after that and spent the weekend there. As a city, it reminded me of Cairo a bit, and for good reason, because in fact it does have Arabic influence. Before this trip I knew nothing about Sicilian history, and I still don't have a completely clear picture, but I gathered that Sicilian history is above all quite complicated--they've been under the rule of several different peoples at different times. Greeks, Arabs, Romans, Spaniards...not to mention being affected fairly often by serious natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Anyway, while in Palermo we also got out first taste (literally) of typical Sicilian foods. They like eggplants alot, and are pretty well known for almond flavored things (like gelato). And speaking of gelato, they also came up with the brilliant idea of "gelato con briocche", which is a gelato sandwich. Not like we usually think of ice cream sandwiches in the States, but an actual bun, sort of like a croissant I suppose, with gelato on it. I was skeptical at first, but it's delicious.

One of my favorite parts of Palermo was Sunday afternoon. We had free time, and most of us went to the beach! It was a little bit outside the city, so most people took a bus. However, I and some other crazy archies training for the marathon (which is this Sunday!) chose a different form of transportation--we ran about 18 miles first, and then ended up on the beach. Not bad!

We left Palermo on Monday morning, and the next few days were a tour of small Sicilian towns. We went to at least 2, sometimes up to 4 per day and mostly just walked around for a little while. We were making our way inland, and so got to see the biggest volcano in Europe (I think), Mt. Etna!

We ended the week in another big city, Syracusa, and spent a few days there. By then we were back on the coast. In one of our lectures there, one of our professors mentioned a few famous people who spent time in Syracusa, and it's a pretty impressive list: Plato, Archimedes, and Caravaggio! Also, it was the site of St. Lucy's maryrdom, which I didn't know til I got there, but I got to go into the church there that's dedicated to her! Another one of those unexpected experiences I love having and I know He loves giving to me:-)

We flew back to Rome on Friday afternoon. Then, less than 24 hours later I left for Greece with 3 of my classmates, Evan, Rebecca, and Chris. I managed to accomplish a lot in those few hours, though: I moved back into my hotel room (we had to move out for the week so other guests could use the rooms...weird) and I unpacked/repacked my backpack, then on Saturday morning I went to mass, went running, AND watched Hercules to prepare culturally for Greece:-) To avoid "bombing" you with too much information, though, as one of my professors would say, I'll post about Greece later...so stay tuned!

p.s.--for some reason my pictures aren't loading tonight, but I'm going to post this anyway. But I'll try to come back and add them in soon!

Transition

I just got back from our week long class field trip to Sicily--it was awesome! Beautiful weather, lots of hanging out on the beach and hiking around mountains, and now and then some class time and learning, too:-) Oh, and one of the cities we visited was Syracuse, where lots of famous people have spent time--a few notable ones being Archimedes, Plato, and even St. Paul for a few days! That was one of my favorite fun facts from the trip.

Anyway, our flight arrived back in Rome tonight at 8 pm, and I'm leaving tomorrow for Greece from that same airport at 3 pm. So tonight has been filled with unpacking and repacking, reorganizing things in my hotel room and in studio, etc, etc...finishing one thing and getting ready for another; what's generally known as a transition. I was thinking about that earlier, and thinking how transitions are usually difficult times for me. Moving back and forth between home and school always took a few days to get used to. This year, though, I spend quite a bit of time in transitions--basically all the time we're traveling could be considered that, since we're living out of backpacks and never stay in the same place for more than a few nights. But somehow, none of those transitions seem very hard. And even the craziness of getting back from Sicily one night and leaving for Greece less than 24 hours later doesn't seem that bad. So it raised the question in my mind, am I getting better about transitioning? Or is there just something about these particular sorts of transitions that make them easier? It's probably a little bit of both. I'm pretty sure that my traveling this year is made easier by the fact that I'm almost always with the same set of people when I do it. It takes away half the transition, I guess. Places change, but the people stay the same, whereas when I move back and forth from St. Louis to South Bend, the place AND the people change. And as for whether or not I'm better at transitioning in general...well maybe I'll find out at the end of April, when I come back to the U.S. It's starting to seem like that's approaching rather quickly, especially since our last field trip is now over. And I'm pretty sure that will NOT be an easy transition. I don't want to think about it quite yet, though. For now, I'll focus on having a blast in Greece! And getting some sleep before then, which should help make the transition a LITTLE easier:-)