November 21, 2014 - On Campus for the Weekend Again and This Time There Are Things To Do

I am so so ready to come home for Christmas!

Today has been kind of off, and I'm not sure why.  It was Friday but we had classes to make up for Monday in which we didn't (because of resting after Rome and Assisi), so that was kind of weird.  I'm going to feel a little bit off for the rest of the semester, I think.

This weekend has been crammed with social activities already and it just hit the official weekend.  On Wednesday night I ended up going to the Keller with some friends and getting a beer and talking, which was super fun.

The only way to get invited to things around here is to be with the people you want to be hanging out with later, because I'm not really in the crowd enough for people to come seek me out, so that's kind of aggravating, but it's just the way it is.  The reason I got invited to the Keller was because I was eating dinner with Leslie, who then attracted a mass of other people to sit with us.

Last night I went to a bonfire for a little while which I got invited to by Maria Hughes, who's another super popular girl who I climbed up to the top of St. Peter's Dome with.  I guess she took a liking to me because she invited me to come to the bonfire, but by the time I got down there she wasn't actually there (?), and neither were any of the other people who flocked to sit around me once she sat with me.

Instead I spent most of my time talking to Nathan, but also got introduced to Tim, a new Chinese foreign exchange student.  I asked for an official opinion on whether or not I look Chinese, because I get lots of people telling me I look like I could be Korean, or Mongolian, or Japanese, or whatever.  He said I did look Chinese, so I had my ethnicity confirmed, think of that!

Today I got up later than usual and missed breakfast before class (Clare brought me a roll from the mensa though, so my grumbling stomach was somewhat appeased), and went to classes, then after that I ended up at lunch for a really long time with Leslie and some other people.

After that Leslie and I went to go study for our quiz on Monday, but of course people came into the tea kitchen and she knew them by chance (they're visitors to the Kartause, but by some miracle it so happened that they knew her older brother when he went to Franciscan), and she talked to them a lot, and then after that some LCI students came in, and then after that in came Matt, who is Leslie's friend who is visiting the Kartause.

Matt, ironically, is the RC for Christendom College's campus in Rome.  I asked him if he knew Matt Camp, and it turns out that he does!  Small, small world...

After that, I went back to my room for a bit to get some quiet time with my head alone before going to get a burger with Sudie, because she had really wanted to get a hamburger in Scheibbs (which is a bus ride away).

Eventually I went downstairs to meet up with Sudie and it turns out it was just the two of us, but Sudie was trying to convince Nathan and Christian to come with us and neither of them wanted to (Nathan had papers to write, Christian wanted to take a nap).  Sudie spent a ton of time trying to drag or guilt Christian along with us (Nathan was wise and ran off before she could get a hold of him) and then she was super disappointed when they wouldn't come.

So on our way to the bus stop, she decided she didn't want to go anymore, and then we went to grab kebabs instead, and then she got really upset and decided she didn't want to do that either, so I came back to the Kartause feeling like poor company indeed but also kind of disappointed that the boys didn't want to come with us, and I made soup for myself.

This last couple of weeks has been odd for me.  I really, really want to be included in things and hang out with people, but at the same time I can tell I'm an introvert because there comes a certain point that if I'm not engrossed in my conversation with someone or the interaction doesn't seem meaningful or intelligent or I'm not having a lot of fun, I just need to come back to my room and be quiet for a while.

Either I need to be quiet or I need to think about the events that just happened, or talk to someone about what just happened and the little things I noticed during the social interaction.  But at the same time that I really want quiet and I need to get my work done and I also haven't had much time to write or just relax and read unless it's late, I really really want to spend time with people and I'm excited that I have had invitations to go do things with people.

For example, I might be going to Ebensee in Austria to hike for just a day trip this weekend with Christian and Maria and some other people, but I might not (because they might forget that I said I was interested).  I don't particularly feel like I'm in any of the "in" groups, but I also have been invited to do more things and that's been super exciting for me.  Like I feel like my social life has been on the rise and as the semester ends I'm less and less inspired to get things done.

Last week I went swing dancing one evening and I think that I'm invited to go to the Keller again tomorrow night and maybe potentially more swing-dancing.

Philosophy has been killing my brain and I genuinely do not enjoy my medieval history class, mainly because Dr. Hass goes through things way too fast and is super abrupt if you ask him to clarify something or if you can't follow his stories quickly enough.  He's a nice enough person but he's just not super good at handling a class.

Anyway, I'm super conflicted because I'm afraid that as soon as I leave the Kartause and go back to main campus, I'll lose the friendships and the camaraderie that has begun to develop here, and I won't ever get to talk to the people that I want to be better friends with ever again, because I only got invited because I was, well, "there".

I'm pretty sure I'll remain friends with Leslie and I'm super happy about that.  About anyone else, I really have no clue.

But I still really want to come home....

November 18, 2014 - Rome & Assisi

Ladies and gentlemen!  I haven't written on this blog in ages, and that is because life has just gotten pretty hectic of late.  Looking to the future I have one quiz to prepare for, one paper to write, and a whole bunch of finals.  Not to mention reading for class which I need to get back into the swing of.  After midterms and then leaving for Rome and Assisi for 10 days, it feels just like everyone is disoriented and not sure where to pick back up again with classwork. I am considering not going anywhere this weekend since it is only a 2 day weekend, so I can get my paper written.  Plus a couple of my friends are staying back this weekend and plan on doing some stuff, so I think I might get myself involved in that.  We will see.

So Rome and Assisi.  Clare and I decided to go to Florence first, so we made our own arrangements to get down there by train.  Our train left on Friday morning early, and went all the way until late in the evening.  Due to a train from Innsbruck being late, we missed our original train from Padua to Florence and had to catch another one about an hour and a half later, so by the time we got off the train and made it to the hostel, Clare and I were bushed and we decided to just go to sleep and hit Florence in the morning.

The train ride there was absolutely gorgeous, though.  The scenery as we were driving south through the mountains separating Austria and Italy was gorgeous.  The train tracks ran up through the mountains and we saw some snow, then went down into the bottoms of valleys surrounded by tall green mountains.  Everything looked a little like it was straight out of Lord of the Rings.  At one point I saw a huge castle just sitting on top of a hill, surrounded by a bunch of other smaller buildings.  It struck me in particular just because that hill was so steep and the castle looked a little like a bump on a log.

Florence was actually really beautiful!  I pulled a map out to get us to the gallery where the statue of David is located, but unfortunately there was a huge line waiting to get in, and we had a limited amount of time in Florence before we needed to get to the train station to catch a ride to Rome, so we decided to skip it.

After that we basically took off in the general direction of a "less touristy area" which the lady at the hotel had suggested to us.  I mean, it was less touristy as in I guess prices were cheaper?  There were some cafes around there, but also there were rows and rows and rows of marketplace.  This marketplace was basically just selling souvenirs of Florence, especially handcrafted Italian leather.  I guess Florence is pretty well known for its leather, because not only were there zillions of stands dedicated to leather, but there were also large upscale shops selling leather handbags, gloves, jackets, etc.  I already have a leather bag from Poland, so I decided not to indulge myself, but I did get a couple of souvenirs there.

The people who sell things both in Florence and Rome are super aggravating.  I was talking to someone who said that they are mostly refugees from other countries, particularly Indian or African countries, who don't have any way to get into the country of Italy unless they purchase visas which last from 1, 2, 5, or 10 years, and you have to work your way up to making citizenship.  Sometimes the process can take as long as 30 years.

So until they can become full citizens, they get whatever work they can, which basically involves them racing up to tourists and following them around like aggravating pigeons, chanting stuff like, "Selfy?? Selfy??" (selling sticks that have a bluetooth remote to make taking pictures of oneself easier), or "Very good price, you want?"  "Ma'am, you want?"  They remind me of those seagulls from Finding Nemo that just chant "Mine.  Mine.  Mine." I get really sick of them, even if the scarves they are selling are generally really pretty, so I refused to buy anything from them.

In Florence we also stopped at Santa Maria di Fiore, which is also just known as the Duomo.  It has a campanile next to it (which is just a very large tower with a bell, but it is one of the most beautiful churches I think I have enjoyed.  I really like how they decorated the outside more than the inside.  The outside is super symmetrical and I like the colors they chose.  Inside it's way less decorated and basically looks a little like a Romanesque hall church.

Here's part of the outside of the Duomo:

I haven't been able to get good enough wifi to upload most of my pictures because since we got back everyone has been on the servers doing the exact same thing, so another time I will have to come back and upload a bunch of pictures from my phone and camera and make a separate blog post.

We made it to Rome and Clare and I ended up finding our hotel without a problem.  The first hotel we stayed at was super nice, but the Europeans seem to have this weird thing about having frosted glass doors for the bathrooms.  I'm not sure what's up with that but it's kind of weird.

Our schedule for Rome was pretty intense.  We had a lot of walking tours and visited all manner of churches, including the four patriarchal basilicas of Rome (St. Peter's, St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major, and St. Paul's Outside the Wall).  We opened our time in Rome at St. Paul's Outside the Wall and just didn't ever seem to stop going from there.

During our free time, which wasn't much, Clare and I for the most time just went to sleep (since it was generally right after dinner).  We were exhausted from being run up and down the metro lines to and from various places and walking all over.  Rome has a lot of shopping opportunities as expected, so sometimes we took advantage of those.

One of the days (and when I get my schedule later I'll clarify which), we got to say the Angelus with the Pope.  I was hanging out with Sudie and we couldn't find the rest of our group, so we just stuck together and got in the very front of the crowd.  The Pope was standing on the balcony of one of his rooms so it was very hard to see anything but a tiny little dot that was his head.  He gave us a short speech about the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall after the Angelus.  There was an incredible amount of people there.

It was really awesome to get to go back to the Vatican and Rome in general.  I know I had gone through the Roman Forum and through the Vatican already, but to see it again when I was older was really neat, and I took pictures, and I'll remember it better.

Clare + The Pantheon

From the Roof of St. Peter's

Inside St. Paul's Outside the Walls

St. Paul's Outside the Wall

Dome of St. Peter's

Looking down from the dome onto St. Peter's where we had mass, right in front of the Holy Spirit window and St. Peter's chair. 

On a couple of occasions I ended up walking around on my own which I actually really enjoyed.  Always during the daytime of course, so I felt really safe.  With the huge amount of people there, I just wore my purse and dressed up a little better and then if I walked around looking like I knew what I was doing, a lot of people surprisingly just assumed I was Italian.  I got really good at handling the metro system and at looking at a map to find out where I was.

I went back up to the Cupola on top of the Vatican and was so excited to see Rome.  It's smaller than Vienna, but it's also
much more packed full of history and art and old buildings.

On Wednesday we had our papal audience.  We got up at four thirty in the morning to get to the Vatican and get in line early, which was a bit excessive.  We made it to the line about six o'clock and were near the beginning.  When everyone started pushing in, it was pretty crazy because they were trying to filter individual people through two or three separate metal detector lines.  Fortunately everyone managed to find their way to spots where the majority of the university was. I ended up right in the front of the barrier past where the Pope drove by in his Popemobile, so I got one really good picture.

Everyone got really hyped up when the Pope appeared, and I just thought it was funny watching Catholic people basically fangirl over the Vicar of Christ. Honestly I just think it was cool to see him, but also he's just a man who was promoted to priest and then bishop and then archbishop, then cardinal, and now he's just one step up.  So I'm not sure why everyone got so excited about seeing him.

After seeing him, we all sat down in our chairs and then the Pope gave a speech.  This speech got repeated in at least six different languages, and so it took quite a long time.  I will admit that most people fell asleep, after the general excitement of seeing the Pope and then having to sit through a bunch of talk we didn't understand.

Near the end of our time in Rome, I got really tired of walking around with tour groups.  I guess after all the tours of churches and whatnot, it was just a bit much.  I even told Father Matt at one point that I had ditched one of the tours and gone off on my own and he agreed that it might have been a better option.

At one point Clare and I found some quiet time to sit down at the Circus Maximus on the grass and just sit and watch the sun going down.  It was really really peaceful and we talked and watched this boy with what I assume was his younger brother, playing down in the center of the grounds.  They were super cute - I was startled to see a guy around our age playing so enthusiastically and with such involvement with a little kid.

While we were in Rome, we also ended up meeting with one of Clare's friends from a volleyball team she used to play with.  His name was Ben.  He met up with us and took us on a little private tour of our own through Rome at night, which kind of was funny because we got going on the wrong track a couple of times.  Then another night he invited Clare over for dinner and I tagged along.  It was kind of awkward because none of the other students who were at the dinner really seemed to care that we were there or acknowledge us with the exception of the people who were sitting directly across from us and therefore had to talk to us.  However, I got to have Mexican food - they made fajitas, so that made it totally worth it.

Other things I noticed - when I was in Rome the first time, there were a ton of stray cats everywhere. Coming back, I didn't really see any stray cats at all.  In fact, in one part of the city there was an actual cat sanctuary which turned out to be a bit of an old Roman ruin similar to the Roman Forum which had been walled off with plexiglass and turned into a little living spot for cats.  While we were there Clare and I counted about a dozen of them just wandering around in there.

I got to climb to the top of St. Peter's Dome again, which was super fun.  I hadn't meant to do it because I had already gone, but I figured I might as well go up again since some other people were going, and it was a twice-in-a-lifetime experience.  I got a bunch of pictures up there but sort of was regretting my shoe choice there.  The boots I had then have fur lining in them and are knee length, so they were making me super toasty on the way up.  I managed to get a fairly cheap other pair of boots later in the week that are a little bit too large and are brand made for wider feet, so they are easier on me for walking around extensively.

The dinners at the Roman hotel were super good.  Not quite as good as the dinners at the Agriturissimo we stayed at in Umbria last time, but they did have excellent service and they actually gave us seconds on the pasta course if they had extra.

Let me say though that I am getting super sick of bread.  While we were on the Assisi part of the journey, I realized that the servers were giving gluten free options to people who had requested them.  So I'm doing an experiment right now and trying to eat as little gluten as possible to see if it makes me feel less sluggish or has any noticeable effects on me.  But they serve baskets and baskets of white bread and olive oil at every meal; they give it to you in between courses so that you don't get 'hungry' waiting in between.

I was actually really relieved to leave Rome and get on the bus to Assisi.  After having some excellent gelato, seeing the Vatican again, and staring in wonder at St. Peter's yet again, I was ready to leave the grimy metros behind.

Assisi was absolutely beautiful.  As we were driving up there the scenery was once again gorgeous. The weather was really nice at that time, and I was glad that it was getting a little chillier, because frankly Rome was way too warm and I had packed lots of warm clothes because they had told us that it would be raining most of our time in Rome and super cold.

Assisi itself is up on a hill, so the buses took us up there and we got split into a total of four hotels.  Clare and I were rooming with two other girls, Ashley and Rosy, whom we got along with quite well.  On our way to Assisi I discovered that I was getting sick (probably from the Roman metros).  So I got my stuff set down and after that I did join the university for some of the stuff, but there was part of a day/evening where I missed a hike I really wanted to go on, because I think I might have been running a fever at the time and my head was absolutely clogged up and draining ridiculously.

I was pretty bummed about that, to be honest.  There was this nice old Italian man named Francesco who has been working with Franciscan University for over twenty years, who also helps organize our pilgrimage to Rome/Assisi.  He was the one who convinced the people who run St. Francis' tomb to allow our university to crowd 200 people into the tomb to say mass.  He was super nice and sweet and full of interesting facts, and although he walks very slowly, he walked very slowly with me to a pharmacy and we bought some cold medicine.  So that helped me the next day and I started getting better pretty rapidly after that.

A lot of the time however, I didn't join in with the university tours - I just didn't feel like going on walking tours, since I could go walking on my own and see the same things. Assisi is pretty small and it's very picturesque.  I made a dog friend and a cat friend on my random wanderings and I managed to talk to several of the native Italians in their own language either asking for directions or just very very small talk in the little shops I visited.

After an exhausting trip I was honestly ready to go back to Gaming and end the semester.  I'm still really ready to finish up with papers and finals and come home.  Travel is great and I've seen a lot of wonderful places, but it's still not quite home.

In the evenings for the most part I went straight to bed, since our breakfasts the entire trip ranged from 5 to 7 AM.  It rained for part of the time we were in Assisi.

We got to see the San Damiano cross, where St. Francis had his vision of Jesus.  There were various other places that were relic sites - frankly, so many that I have lost track.  There were locks of St. Clare's hair, old clothes of St. Francis, etc., etc.

I was sick so I didn't attend the mass in St. Francis' tomb, but I came down to the basilica later on my own.  I was frankly glad I didn't have to try to stuff myself into the tiny space down there.  It smelled seriously like body odor and was really warm.  I think St. Francis would have understood, both between my running nose and my general tired-ness, and also the massive crush of people that was there.

Thanks to the cold medicine, I was feeling lots better on our final night in Assisi and I ended up going out with Leslie and Christina, a couple of friends, and meeting up with the May twins, their friend Steven (whose family I indirectly know through the Michels who I know through the Powers family), and a couple of the girls who tend to hang out with the boys a lot or just each other.  Leslie and a couple of other girls have complained that the two girls are really exclusive and I kind of got that feeling, they kind of ignored me.

Anyway we headed up to a gelateria and spent some time there talking, and then after that we went back to one of the boys' rooms and I got to participate in their household's first Lord's Day in Assisi, which was cool because they're a Franciscan household.  In a lot of households I can get kind of annoyed if the prayer intentions and thanksgiving parts take too long because there are a lot of people, but we only had six or seven so it wasn't that bad and it was actually really nice to participate in a little prayer thing like that where we reflected on the Gospel, etc.

Afterwards Leslie and Christina went to bed so it ended up being me and the boys who wanted to go up to the castle on top of Assisi hill.  On our way down, a couple of the guys grabbed the two other girls and we all trekked up and saw the castle at night.  It reminded me of when summertime when we drive up to the top of Badger or some of the mountains around it and look down at the city at night or stargaze.  It was super peaceful and I really enjoyed it.

Overall I think I enjoyed Rome and Assisi but in different ways.  My experience in Assisi was definitely dulled by the fact that I was sick for part of it, but I also liked the peaceful atmosphere, the small towns, and getting to talk to some of the friendly shopkeepers there.  Though our hotel in Assisi wasn't nearly as high quality as the one in Rome, the ladies who were working there were really nice and accommodating and they told us that we were an excellent group to have because we were quiet and peaceful and very well-mannered.  I also really liked the streets of Assisi better than those of Rome, just because they were quaint, clean, and there weren't people selling things to you.  Not only that but in Assisi, you got the feel that there were people actually living there, and it wasn't all tourism.  The view from the hill was also spectacular.

Rome I liked a lot because of the city atmosphere.  There were so many people to watch there, and I think if I had had a home base to go from, I would have really enjoyed it a lot more, especially because I wouldn't have to go touring everywhere.  People walk around in Rome like it's no big deal to just see the Roman Forum next to them or a huge basilica or a freaking cat sanctuary.  There is such a huge variety of people there and languages and styles and interaction.  You're basically surrounded by history and beautiful buildings, and I think if I became a Roman native I'd have a ton of fun interacting with the tourists there and giving directions.

So now that I'm back, I have a slew of work to catch up on and I really just want to come home because the idea of Christmas is fantastic.  I'll miss the beautiful views of Europe, though.  Almost nothing I've seen in the US is quite on the scale of the beauty of the civilizations that have developed around here.  Plus, no one has the motivation or resources to build some of the architecture here, so these churches are the last we'll see of their kind unless we experience some kind of revival of religious enthusiasm and also architectural talent.

I'm kind of looking forward to coming back but I'm also worried that when I come back to main campus I won't be friends anymore with some of the same people I really want to be friends with here.  I've been branching out a little more and getting to know some more people and now it really isn't unlikely to think of a lot of people saying hi to me as I walk along or randomly stopping to talk to me or whatever.  It's really nice and I don't think it'll last, unless we all come back to Steubenville and collectively bemoan our unfortunate state.

I'm kind of sad that I will be coming back to main campus but at the same time I am holding onto a shred of hope that I can remain friends with some of these people.  Leslie and I are thinking about working together to find a place to live together off campus for senior year, which would be awesome because Leslie is awesome.

October 28, 2014

So guess what! My parents are here!  You all knew that.  That wasn't a surprise really.  Especially because 25 percent of my blog audience is my parents so they already know they're here anyway.

It's been interesting having them here.  When they showed up on Sunday, Mr. Pipp didn't give us much warning before the bus rolled up and they popped into campus.  I helped them take their stuff up to their room and then helped Mom find a spot to do her laundry, and gave them the general tour of campus. Mom and Dad actually went on another tour later that day, and the administrators actually showed them all the locked-up places I couldn't show them, so I guess my tour was just sort of complimentary.

Mom and Dad brought some very special gifts for me this semester - pens and highlighters.  If you go down to Gertrude's, getting a single highlighter costs about 6 euros, and a ballpoint pen is roughly 3.  That's about 5 dollars for a pen and 10 for a highlighter.  So I wasn't about to pay that.  Now I'm all stocked up and ready to go.

Mostly on Sunday it was just settling them in, we went to mass, there was a social that I dropped my parents off at, and then I picked them up again at 5 and they took me to dinner at Chinese restaurant where the entire menu was in German. We just sort of had to guess at what most of the menu options were, and we managed to pull it off beautifully.  I got pork fried noodles, mom and dad got chicken and shrimp fried rice respectively.

I took extra back to Clare and she said she'd never had real Chinese food.  Do you know how crazy that is?  How can someone survive without ever eating real Chinese food!?  Or Mexican food for that matter?  Washingtonians, count your blessings that you've had a burrito or a chimichanga or whatever your personal preference is.

On Monday I went to class in the morning as usual, and then after that I put my nose to the grindstone and started getting all my reading for Monday and Tuesday also done, so I wouldn't have to do it after my metaphysics class and would have time to spend with Mom and Dad.

After metaphysics there was a social with peanuts, pretzels and wine for the parents and students together, so I went to that, and then they served us dinner.

On the menu: prosciutto and some weird green melon, risotto and medium rare roast beef and vegetables, and also cake with eggnog drizzled in chocolate sauce.  We had the president of the University sit at our table and I got to talk to him a little bit.  He asked me what I thought should be done to improve the university, and I told him he had already fulfilled my biggest dreams - the gym got upgraded, and they put Wifi in all the main campus dorms.

After that Mom and Dad and I went back to their room and we talked for a while, and then when ten o'clock rolled around I went and grabbed a shower and then went out to a bonfire some students were putting on.  They have bonfires every once in a while but I haven't ever gone out there, because I can never tell who's going to be at them, because you just look out and see silhouettes.

But Monika told me that Clare would be out there, so I headed out and talked to Clare for a bit, then talked to some other kids, and eventually Sudie grabbed me and whisked me away to the swingset where we had a really nice deep talk, which was something I definitely wasn't really expecting out of her.  So that was really nice.

Overall the last couple of days have been good and I'm glad my parents are here.  It's making me miss home a little more though - I'm ready to go back and have Christmas and see my family again!!

October 23, 2014 - In Gaming Again

Ta-da! I forgot I had this blog so I'll update you on the minute and pointless details of my week since I got done with ten day break.

Since the week I got back all I have done is A) catch up on schoolwork that I specifically did not do or have time to do over ten day break, and B) watch TV because my brain is fried.

Of late the weather has been really really bad, rainy and grey, and so I haven't been energetic at all. I've started remembering to take my vitamins, hoping that they will make me feel better, because maybe I'm anemic.  But the dreariness has made me really grouchy, sleepy and I never am motivated.
So over the last week because my papers aren't due for two to three weeks yet, and I've mostly caught up on my reading (even though that doesn't necessarily mean I really comprehend everything I read), I've just been sitting around doing basically nothing.

I think I'm allergic to something here in addition to rain - I'm not sure what that thing is though.  Whenever I eat, my stomach ends up feeling really weird.  So I'm trying to eat more healthily and avoid larger quantities of gluten and dairy to see if that'll settle my stomach down.  Bad thing is, it's hard to find anything around here to eat that isn't gluten or dairy.

Yep, nothing really has happened.  Just sitting around trying not to fall asleep.  Today I got a couple more paragraphs done on an essay.  Yesterday I read a book by John Steinbeck... this weekend I'm not going anywhere because I'm bad at networking again and honestly, it's raining so much and I've spent so much money.  I also really want to go hiking up Book Mountain which I will do rain or shine (and I might get sick again if it's raining....), so I'll get that done sometime this weekend.

That's all for now, folks... I feel like my life is wasting away.  I'm really excited to come home for Christmas.

October 18, 2014 - Ten Day Break Part 2

Thank God there were no partiers on the bus from Fatima to Lourdes!  On our way back from Fatima we ended up traveling back through Spain and up into the south of France into the Pyrenees, where Lourdes is located.  When St. Bernadette Soubiroux was alive, that area spoke a sort-of dialect of Portuguese/Spanish, but now they're French speaking.

You know how I talk about becoming rich and buying a villa in the south of France? Well, there are villas in the south of France and they're beautiful.  Along the Spain-France border there are a bunch of white buildings that all have similar red roofs, but they're all decorated and constructed differently.  I can see where lots of architects would take inspiration from European buildings.

Once in Lourdes, we set off and grabbed another decent dinner to make up for spending the entire night on a train.  We were on the sweaty train again, but this time had better seats facing forwards where we could stretch out our feet, and I went to sleep promptly.  No fiestas this time.  We arrived at our hostel, which was entirely pink ... not sure why. We had two separate rooms, each one bright girly pink with roses on the bedspread.

This place had a shower.  I remember it especially because it had great Wifi, and a shower.

Because it got dark by the time we got there, we crashed for the night and then the next day we set off for the Basilica of the Rosary, which is also the location of the Grotto which was revealed to St. Bernadette, the spring, and the baths of holy water.

I liked Lourdes better than Fatima.  Maybe I just like French culture better, but I greatly appreciated the little coffee shops and the arrangement of the buildings, the beautiful architecture, and the fact that the weather was much better than Fatima, which tended to be finicky and rainy and windy a lot of the time.

We went down and saw the Grotto, and got to touch the cave walls and see the spot where the spring comes up from the ground.  St. Bernadette dug it out with her own hands.

What I didn't expect was that the whole place was located under a humongous church that looked like a Disney palace. The Basilica was enormous!  Not only was there a massive church on the lower level (where we went to Mass that evening), but there was another church located on the level above it with an adoration chapel, and another, larger church on the very topmost level.  There was also a church and a crypt underground beneath the main square, but it was closed for entry when we got there. 

The place was so dang beautiful. The dome with the cross which is visible in some of the pictures is actually the top of the ground level church.

If you look under the right end of the castle you can see the grotto - it's the small hole underneath the strip of mossy green stuff.

I couldn't take enough pictures of this place.

Inside the topmost church

Leslie, looking like a princess

At Lourdes we waited in line for a really long time for a chance to go into the baths.  This was after we had filled up some containers with the healing holy water, which just comes in a bunch of taps out of the wall.  The Baths are somewhere you go if you want to be submerged in the water for a chance at healing, both physical and spiritual.  

We waited in line for about an hour and a half, all the while led in prayer by a bunch of boys who sang and said the Rosary in French.  They looked like they came from a private school or something, and they were very serious, enthusiastic, and good at what they did.  I think they were maybe fifteen or so.  I'm getting really good at saying the Hail Mary in French and Spanish, but I haven't gotten it down in German yet.

When you go in the baths, basically they have this complicated system where they wrap a big sheet around you and you have to take off all your clothes in one curtained area, and then when you go into the curtained area where the bath is, they wrap you in a white sheet and then they have you walk into the water, say your intentions, and then they have you sit down up to your shoulders in freezing cold springwater.  My teeth were chattering the whole time and they kept asking me if I was all right.

They don't give you anything to dry off with once you get out, and they wrap you back up in the first sheet and have you walk back to the first curtained area, where they then hold the sheet so you can redress in privacy (but also you are soaking wet). 

I'm not sure if I feel physically healed, although I know I certainly felt rejuvenated.  My metabolism has been doing weird things since the trip since all we've had to eat really is pastries or carbs (it's the cheapest thing to buy), so I haven't felt super good today.  I've stayed off the carbs and am going to try to rebalance my diet and eat at regular times instead of once in a blue moon or a bunch at once.  

I don't know about spiritual healing either.  Either way, it was an amazing opportunity to get to go into the baths at Lourdes.

I went to confession afterwards - they have a bajillion priests there, and I got a peppy British priest who reminded me of a cartoon character and was super sweet.  After that we ran into a bunch of other Franciscan students including the May twins who were there with their older sister, Stephen the other dude from the gym, one of the RAs, another guy who randomly walks up and talks to people, and a few girls from the cliquey group who were there looking for the May twins.  

It's different running into people off campus rather than when you're on campus. On campus it's a little more awkward, but when we were all meeting up, all tired and sweaty and gross and with adventures to tell, it got really exciting.  Part of it was because we were with Leslie, who is really popular and is friends with everyone, and everyone was excited to see her, but they were also excited by extension to see us.  Christian May even got so far as to run up to Leslie and hug her, then awkwardly decided to hug everyone else too which meant I got one.  Christina Praetzel, an RA, came up and told us a story about how she and Stephen snuck into Notre Dame into a mass they weren't allowed to go to, begged the people in charge to receive the Eucharist there, and then got in trouble later from some other authorities (I guess they don't like tourists going to Mass in Notre Dame). 

Anyway we went to Mass, and then after a nice dinner of pasta and wine at a little French shop on one of the avenues (we also indulged and got gelato that day, second day in a row), we went to the candlelight procession at Lourdes for Our Lady of Lourdes.  Let me tell you this one was exactly the same as the one in Fatima except it was colder and it was also bigger.  

Note about sharing rooms with people: it takes a special kind of roommate to realize that you don't have to keep chattering with someone to be friends with them while you are sharing a room in close quarters.  There are a few people I know with this skill.  Thank God both Leslie and Elizabeth share that skill, because I roomed with both of them on individual times and we were all just content to catch up with Wifi or just read or sleep without talking, and it was great.  We did plenty of talking and joking other times anyway.

However, Elizabeth and I both entertained each other in our sleep.  She talks in her sleep about cereal, and I make sad moaning noises.  The second night, she tapped me on the head to wake me up and said something I couldn't understand, only it turns out she was sleeping, and once again I was making the sad moaning noises.  

When Leslie and I shared a room we were both too wiped out to notice any noises from the other person. 

The next day was a brief adventure to find breakfast, go down to the Sanctuary to put our candles from the candlelight procession from the night before, and then we hit the train for our final day-long journey back to Gaming. 

This one was a little more hectic than the others but I think we're getting more experienced.  Our journey from Lourdes all the way back to Paris went without a hitch, and our train was much nicer. French trains tend to be on the high-class scale as far as trains go. 

At the Paris Montparnasse stop, thank goodness we had enough time to grab water - which was incredibly expensive, because French everything is incredibly expensive - and then we ran up and down the terminal amidst tons and tons of people looking for our train.  We ran around like chickens with our heads cut off before finding the metro and getting on it and losing Kristie in the process, and then we had to go running back looking for Kristie, got on the metro, almost got smashed in the sliding doors because the car was so full, and thank goodness the French are much nicer than everyone says they are.  They dragged us onto the metro forcefully before anything bad could happen, and we made it to Gare du Lyon, the second Parisian train station from which we needed to depart.

We went back and forth in the bus section of the station trying to find the train main lines, which are extremely well hidden and there are actually three doors to different train line sections, and our tickets didn't have marked which one we needed (the Diderot) section.  I ended up taking off running from my group, grabbing a policeman by the arm (he looked over me before he looked down and saw me), and begging him for help.  He directed us out to the train station, where we spent another 30 minutes racing around looking for the specific hall and the specific track our train would be at.  (A very kind French lady stopped without being asked and pointed it out to us.) 

We made it onto the train only to hear that something was going on - there was an accident somewhere down the line - and our train was going to be delayed about twenty minutes.  We sat in terror for the next how long.  We had by then been traveling for about twelve hours, with an overnight train to go.  We really didn't want to have to reschedule that, especially because we had reserved a sleeper car for the next and almost-final leg of the journey.  If we rescheduled, we'd be out both a sleeper car (maybe) and also getting back before the rush of returning Franciscan students.

We ended up talking to a few of the other people on the train who spoke German, and the next time an announcement came on the radio, they all looked up with gleeful expressions and waited until they repeated it in English.  Turns out they said something about connecting trains being held for us... at the same platform? (Which made no sense, since there can only be one train per platform.) 

So we leaped off the train and hit the ground running.  Some people tried to help us, but someone caught a lucky glimpse of a sign that said that a train destination Budapest was taking off soon - it was directly down the platform from us, and we started running right as the conductor blew the whistle for the doors to shut.  We started yelling "WAIT" at her, and when we got there we jumped onto the platform, asked if the train stopped at our stop, and when it turns out it did, we realized that we had made our final connection by the absolute skin of our teeth. 

I have little more to add to the story - we made it back safely, we're super glad and tired, I got all my laundry done and showered and scrubbed myself completely clean.  Now I've got to finish this up and probably ought to go get started on catching up on reading so that I can be ready for Monday, but I really don't want to.  I've been back in Gaming since ten this morning and have done very little productive today and it's already seven-thirty.  Why not laze around some more?  There aren't a lot of people back and it's kind of great.

Final thoughts - everyone said the French would be really unhelpful but they were actually really sweet.  As long as I approached them and said a French phrase first like 'excusez-moi' or 'avez-vous un moment?' they were perfectly willing to give me as much help as possible, even if it meant talking in French slowly so that I could interpret from there.  In fact, everyone was willing to help us, and went above and beyond.  

We ran into a Portuguese man on a train who wanted to tell us about how he was a veteran of the Vietnam war - I think he thought I was Vietnamese? And he couldn't communicate with us well, even though he was speaking Spanish.... if I asked him what he was saying or to say it slower he just mouthed it, which was even less helpful, or drew it with a finger on the chair, which was even less helpful.  We ran into several groups of cheery French men who tipped their hats and said "bon-soir, mademoiselles!" or called us 'madame' and tried to help us when we were going the wrong way.  

We also got several helpful recommendations from French shop owner ladies who were very gracious about us asking randomly for hostel locations or recommendations for places to eat.  

In Portugal we had Nuno, of course, and many helpful Spanish-speaking people.  I even managed to interpret a decent amount of Portuguese and I helped a group of Hispanic tourists who couldn't communicate with the Portuguese by speaking to them in Spanish.  I had a lot of fun talking to people in Spanish - I could formulate what I wanted to say and got it understood, and it was a wonderful feeling.  (They wanted to know where there was a place to light their votive candles and the shopowner had no idea what they were saying.)

We also ran into a sweet lady in a shop who was selling Leslie a St. Joseph statue, at which she tried to communicate to us by gesture how much she loves St. Joseph, and I watched them painfully communicate through waving their hands around, and then a little Italian lady came over to translate for us.  The shop owner (Maria Jesus her name was), gave Leslie a St. Joseph medal for free and blessed us repeatedly, and the little Italian lady told us not to slip because we were beautiful and didn't deserve to fall. 

We went back the next day and Leslie gave Maria Jesus her miraculous medal in exchange, and the little Italian lady wasn't there so I had to serve as interpreter.  Maria Jesus pulled out a pamphlet about an American singer named Christopher Duffley and assumed that we knew who he was, and I managed to read the pamphlet in Portuguese because it's easier to read than to listen and translate that way, and Maria Jesus was really impressed and thankful that I knew what she was getting at.  Anyway Leslie and Maria Jesus hugged and cried all over each other.  

That's the kind of people we ran into - there were a lot of old people smiling at us and definitely glad to see young Catholics out and about.  We felt really safe for the most part except for a few creepy guys in the metro, who I just ignored, and nobody pickpocketed us or even tried, I'm fairly certain.  We ran into a couple of people on pilgrimage from California from Fatima to Lourdes and kept running into them at Lourdes and we traded spots to go and things we'd seen, which was really neat.  

I don't think I contributed much to the group in the way of making reservations but I was definitely one of the mellowest, least-panicky people in the group, I made some decisions when the other girls were waffling, and I led the way and followed signs when they were busy panicking about where to go.  I also served as the main interpreter and managed to humble myself enough to sound pretty stupid when asking for help.

I also managed to make a few friends.  It was really cool to talk to them and get to know them a little better.  I think it was a well balanced group and I felt truly included by the end, even if I hadn't been good friends with them for all the years they've been good friends.  We went and got kebabs for dinner together at the stand in Gaming. 

I also went to the Spar and got some food.  Blessed, blessed food that isn't just bread.  I was so freaking excited. 

So overall I'm glad to be back.  But it was pretty good.  I regret a little bit that I didn't go with the other groups who went off to Croatia and Greece to hang out on the beaches, or to Florence or Venice, or hiking in Switzerland, but that's okay.  I had my own experience and it was unique, and it's the best I could have asked for in the group-less situation I found myself in.

These should not be allowed

Portugal morning

Lourdes candlelight procession at its end

October 18, 2014 - Ten Day Break Part 1

Over the last couple of days I have been having a crazy adventure the likes of which I will probably never have again.  We started out our journey with an overnight from Scheibbs in Austria to Frankfurt, Germany.  In this we discovered that those little sleeper cars you can buy are actually kind of stuffy but at least they can fit up to six people and it's kind of like a close quarters sardine box with the smell of stinking shoes and dirty train body.  It was quite an experience to say the least, but I managed to get a decent night's sleep.

Our arrival the next day in Paris was delayed by a train connection we had misjudged, so when we arrived we ended up having to chill out in Brussels, Belgium for a few hours and catching a later train to the Gare du Paris Nord, or, the main Paris train station.

One of my favorite pictures I've taken, of the beautiful hall church St. Maurice's, in Brussels, Belgium

Inside St. Maurice

A street in Brussels

The outside of St. Maurice

One of its stained glass windows

In Brussels we walked around and got some food and saw the parts of the city around the train station.  Brussels is a pretty city with the same larger buildings as Krakow and Vienna that are basically apartments built with old style architecture and balconies, and then it has a good amount of other modern businesses.  Brussels doesn't smell as good as Vienna or Krakow though and isn't nearly as clean.  While the first two seemed to have a lot of maintenance done on them to keep them fresh, you could Iook at the bottoms of buildings and see wet spots where people had peed, and in fact we walked right past one woman pulling her skirt up to squat and pee on the beautiful St. Maurice hall church.

St. Maurice's was easily one of my favorite churches so far. It doesn't look like it was in use much, although they had the blessed Eucharist in the tabernacle, but it had wide open spaces and huge pillars and as the name implies, was built after the styles of the Viking halls.  It had lots of stained glass and was honestly more simplistic but elegant than a lot of the churches I've seen so far.  I kind of wish they still had masses in there.

Finally we made it onto our train to Paris and got through the various train stations where they rerouted us due to us getting lost. We showed up in the Gare du Paris Nord (north station) and discovered that Parisian train stations are actually like hell on earth.  This is because there are six million people, six million possibilities of being pickpocketed, there are signs but they are all confusing, and we managed to get onto the metro system and figure out enough that we purchased a ticket, escaped the craziness that was the station, and made it out into the city.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa - just kidding, just kidding.

Kristie, Leslie, and Elizabeth under the Eiffel Tower

A quick shot of Paris

Paris at night, as viewed from a bus

Note about the metros - I may be from the suburbs but I'm no city slicker.  I greatly dislike public transport, I don't like being in crowded stations, and I certainly don't like not knowing where I'm going.  Paris has two directions - Nation, which is towards one large main station, and Etoile, which is for Charles de Gaulle Etoiles, the main station on the other end of the city.  Somehow we managed to navigate through this labyrinth of about 20 different subway lines to get where we needed to go.

At night the city is gorgeous.

 We got onto the bus and drove down the main streets including the street with the huge opera building and made it out to the street with the Eiffel tower. We took some pictures, and chilled out under the tower for awhile (I was particularly tired because of my bag).  I was slightly disappointed because we had lost six hours and we didn't get to go see Notre Dame or the Louvre due to lost time, but I'm glad we didn't try, because that would have been absolutely hectic.

After that we headed for our hostel.  We were all tired and cranky because we hadn't had enough to eat and we had missed two trains and we just wanted to crash, so I figure that it was just a result of that that I was getting super annoyed with my group.  We asked a lady for directions and she gave them in French, and I understood what she said and tried to talk to her but I was interrupted by my traveling companions who told me to shush every time I tried to ask a useful question and basically informed me that I was wrong and knew nothing.

At that point I was feeling a little like the random extra in the group, so I was glad when we got to the hostel, finally took a shower, and got WiFi and crashed.

When you're out traveling, by the way, WiFi is a precious, precious commodity.  You thieve it off shops and nearby hostels, you hog it when you're in a hostel and they give you the password so the signal is strong.  It's key for making plans and goofing off and reading books and uh, keeping in touch with people.

The next day we had to pretty much just leave Paris. We did have some time in the morning though, so we went to the Rue Du Bac, which is the street on which St Catherine Laboure's body is kept in a shrine dedicated to the Miraculous Medal.  We also got groceries for food in an incredibly upscale grocery store.  I kid you not, there were several levels and it was also full of glass and gold display cases and when you paid, you inserted your money into a machine so the cashier didn't even have to touch your cash.

The shrine itself was pretty incredible. There was a statue encasing the remains of St. Louise du Marillac, the incorrupt body of St. Catherine Laboure, and a relic (we think it was the heart) of St. Vincent de Paul.  There was also the chair in which Mary appeared to St. Catherine to reveal the miraculous medal.  We were all a lot less grumpy due to having grabbed a decent meal.  I'll put up pictures of the Miraculous Medal shrine when I get them off my phone.

Back on the train to Fatima this time. It was going to be an over night but we hadn't gotten to reserve a sleeping car, so when we got to the first Spanish to Portuguese train, we received a rude awakening. The train wasn't near as nice - and I use nice as an extremely loose term - as the others we had been riding. We'd even been spoiled earlier that day by riding a train with an outlet to charge phones.  This one - was disgusting.  You could see the dirt on the seats from other occupants. We were also stuck in the only four seats facing backwards, which means we were facing two other people and we had no foot space.

The night turned out to be a long one. It smelled like bathroom and there was a group of drunk people who decided to party almost all night, turning obnoxious Spanish music up and yelling to it and screaming and drinking, and every once in a while, Leslie says they got off the train at a stop, ran around screaming, and then got back on.  I slept through it, sort of. I heard them, but I didn't realize what was going on - I thought they were a really bizarre dream.

Anyway, we woke up from that feeling absolutely disgusting and very tired.  We ended up in Caxarias, Portugal, which is a short distance from Fatima by bus.  Caxarias had a bathroom that wasn't nasty, and it was quite a while until the bus, so we all changed and freshened up. We then adventured out to grab breakfast at a little cafe across from the train station.  There I managed to actually utilize my Spanish speaking skills, including finding a supermarket. Turns out that if I slow down my Spanish and make a lot of synonym guesses, I can communicate.

Because we had eaten, my traveling companions were much cheerier and were were happy to let me do the talking. Maybe the long train ride traumatized them.  Caxarias is a tiny town and it was amazing how cheap everything was.  All of us got a pastry for breakfast and a drink and the total added up to about two euro.

(Note on the food.  I am so so so so so sick of pastries and breadstuffs. It's the cheapest thing you can buy, but my body wasn't used to the huge amounts of carbohydrates and lack of water, so while we were traveling I felt really sick.  Now that I'm back, I tried eating some other stuff and my body freaked out at the difference.)

In Portugal, we spent a little time in Fatima seeing the shrine and basilica, which were crowded because it was the feast day of Our Lady of Fatima.

Fatima Sanctuary

They were saying mass when we got there and it was raining and windy.  We were pretty miserable so we got lunch and WiFi and made a hasty reservation for the first place we could find to spend the night.  After reserving it we went and found a taxi and ended up going straight there.  The taxi ride wasn't as expensive as I thought it would be - between all of us it was maybe ten bucks each or even less.

When we showed up we were incredibly surprised. Turns out we hadn't reserved a hostel.  We were actually staying in a Quinta in Ourem, Portugal, which is basically a remodeled Portuguese country manor which had been turned into a bed and breakfast.  We were introduced to the owner's wife, who said she was from California and spoke good English as well as Portuguese.

Note on Portuguese - it sounds a heck of a lot like Spanish, but they mash their words together and use a lot of "shhh" sounds instead of "s" sounds.  When we were briefly in Spain I had been so happy because I could read all the signs and could understand a large chunk of what people were saying, not to mention communicate with them if I needed to.

Anyways this Quinta did not have a room reserved for us.  They had an entire apartment.  That's right.  It had a loft, a full bathroom, a kitchenette, a TV, a common area, and they gave us full access to the walking trails and to the remodeled barn which had been turned into a lounge, a bar, and a beautiful spot to relax.  On arriving there we ditched our bags, I took a shower and headed to the lounge.

A foresty road at the quinta

Our apartment had a spiral staircase.

The loft - I wanted to stay up here but also did not feel like sharing a bed.

Outside the Quinta Alcaidairia-Mor

Note on showers: when you've been in a train overnight and wearing the same gross clothes for almost 48 hours, when you've been sitting in dried sweat from other people and greasing your face by just existing in a compact car of other people's recycled breath, a shower is the most beautiful invention which definitely tops sliced bread.

Five or ten minutes after going to the lounge I came back briefly to grab a bar of chocolate I'd bought in Caxarias. Everyone except for Leslie, who was in the shower, was dead asleep.  Both Elizabeth and Kristie were upstairs making no noise whatsoever.  It was maybe six thirty in the afternoon.

Well, I took that as my cue to have a nice relaxing evening chilling.  Even when I enjoy my travel companions I definitely need to just have time to be on my own or thinking on my own or reading or writing. It was so peaceful in that barn.  I ended up skyping Mom and Dad.

This is when Nuno came in and introduced himself to me, he's the owner. He urged us to go to the candlelight procession at the square that evening because that's when bunches of people would be there. I told him it sounded lovely but that most of us were sleeping and we we would have to grab another taxi.

In the morning I went walking around the Quinta on my own waiting to go to the shrine and kick off the next day.

Good morning Portugal

We ended up sleeping and going to the procession the next night instead (there's a video on the previous post).  To get to Fatima the next day we ended up getting driven by Nuno instead of having to call a taxi. They fed us a heavenly breakfast all you can eat bread, cold cuts and cheese, brownies, coffee, fruits, and jam, beforehand.

Nuno drove us because he was taking his little daughter Sofia to preschool.  She rode with us and I asked her a question in what I hoped was passable Portuguese, and she answered but I'm not sure what she said.

When he said goodbye to us Nuno was incredibly sweet, he gave us all kisses on the cheek and asked us to call him if we needed any help. He also asked us to rate his Quinta well online because he's bad at machines and doesn't know how to up publicity. I absolutely loved him, he was great. He was a little intimidating at first but he turned out a very fatherly figure. His little mansion was gorgeous. He said he didn't get a lot of American tourists, but that the Quinta had been used for several filming projects.  They also give horseback tours and have sheep.  I went on a walk in the morning before we left and said hello to the horses out in the field during the sunrise.

Fatima - we got to see places like the homeplaces of the three children of Fatima, which was a really long hike in the blazing sun carrying our backpacks.  There's a place full of Portuguese oaks where the children used to shepherd their sheep, and it's very old testament looking. There they had the stations of the cross and monuments where Our Lady appeared twice, as well as if you walked down to the city you could see the third appearance occurred, in a garden behind Saint Lucia's home.  We tried to do the Way of the Cross but we got lost on the paths and suddenly managed to get from the Fourth Station to the Crucifixion.  I wasn't too sad about it.  By that point in the sweltering heat I was exhausted from carrying my backpack and everyone else was walking so much faster than I was.

Earlier also we were allowed to walk through the basilica (which was being reconstructed) in one small area and see the tombs of the Little Shepherds.

In Fatima we got really familiar with where we were going because we were there for two nights, which would have been nicer if we stayed in the same hostel for both nights.  However, we didn't... we ended up going to Hotel Pereiras which was located on the main avenue leading to the Basilica.  We had paid for two separate rooms which were mixed dorms, which we were nervous about, but Armando, the guy in charge, gave us a four person double room together so that we could stay as a group, for no extra payment.  He was really nice about it.

At Fatima we also went to the evening procession which involves saying the Rosary in a bunch of different languages and carrying around the statue of Our Lady of Fatima which is crowned on the 13th of every month from May to October in honor of the major apparitions of Mary, and processed around the main square.  After every decade, they sing several verses of Immaculate Mary.  Let me tell you, they may sing it in different languages, but I am pretty freaking sick of that hymn (they played it for the Lourdes Processional also).

However carrying a candle around and singing and praying was kind of interesting.  There were less people because it was the day right after the major feast day.  Apparently on October 13th, the square is crowded with thousands who can barely move, so they just stand there and sing instead of processing with the priests carrying the Mary statue.

During this time we got awfully familiar with the main mall center, which had three levels and several touristy shops and some eating places.  We got a decent meal at one of the eateries which reminded me a little of Roaster's at home.  While we were in Fatima we also bought a heck of a lot of Rosaries and got them blessed.  I have so many Rosaries for people now that have been blessed at different places that it's hard to remember which was blessed where.  I also have to remember where I put all of them because they are so small.

The little stores in Fatima are crazy.  There are an incredible amount of small shops so that if you want to buy something, you have to do no more than just turn around and open your eyes.  Most of the shops sell the same thing, so I'm not sure why they bother having more than one of them or what the people get out of running individual ones.

We also got into a bit more of an equal footing. Hanging out with Kristie, Elizabeth and Leslie is interesting because they've known each other for a long time and are pretty close which meant I was sort of disadvantaged.  They're also pretty super-Catholic which I find difficult to associate sometimes when all they will sing is praise and worship hymns or all they can talk about is this Catholic family camp they worked at.

It was interesting talking to Leslie a little about the cliquey group I've seen her hanging out with.  She said that she decided to leave the clique and not travel with them anymore because everything ended up being centered around the guys in the group and none of the girls seem to want any other girls joining them.  They also apparently have a hard time deciding where to travel and so end up going nowhere, and just standing around in these cities doing nothing.

On the contrary when I was traveling with the girls, I had difficulty stopping to take a break sometimes.  They are very driven and don't seem to enjoy just standing to take pictures very much or just enjoy the view.  The only time we really took breaks were during Mass or Adoration, so I came to enjoy those times not only for some Jesus time but for some break time.

Traveling with them was also interesting. At first I thought they were aggravated with the fact that I just wanted to read my book on the trains, and they would just sit there or read or do whatever, and sometimes they'd also talk.  Turns out they were glad that I didn't talk much on the trains - we all just needed some down time to recharge and think and I guess they get motion sick on trains.  They told me when I got back this morning they think I'm the chillest of all of them and I didn't freak out at all.

Okay, so moving on from Fatima to Lourdes.  Having spent a couple of days in Fatima walking around and seeing various things, going to masses both in English and in Portuguese, going on a couple of cheap tours, we got on another train to Lourdes.

This post is getting really long so I'll continue it later.