Last Paper of the Semester

I can't tell if it's a good thing I can churn out a 2000 word paper in 24 hours, when writing a paper of that length used to be my worst enemy in highschool.

Does it mean that I've gotten more efficient when it comes to writing scholastic papers, or that I'm more efficient in writing a bunch of hokey-pokey?

Ten Day to Rome/Assisi - Part II

On Monday, we had another ridiculously early breakfast, than Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica, in front of the Chair of St. Peter. 

In a way, it was awesome that we were having Mass there, but at the same time, it felt kinda…off. Like it didn’t quite fit. I got that feeling from most of the Mass’s we went to over the week, because, I dunno, those churches were built inspired by the Latin Mass, and so the Novus Ordo Mass felt a little awkward in them. Maybe it was some of the terribly ugly second altars built (seriously, WHY?!), but it did feel a bit unnatural.

After Mass, we went on a walking tour with Dr. Carreno, who is Columbian, and very jolly. From what I can recall, we saw Castel Sant’ Angelo, the Bridge of the Angels, St. Phillip Neri, Sancta Maria Sopra Minvera (where I saw some Asian tourists taking selfies of themselves with the tomb of St. Catherine of Siena right behind them…odd), the Pantheon (I remembered it bigger), the church where the original Our Lady of Perpetual Help icon is (this was my favorite church – it was smaller and felt like a homey parish church), the church of St. Clemente III, and some other places that I can’t remember.

We had some free time for lunch, after which Krista and I had a Scavi tour.

We thought we had to meet right outside of St. Peter’s, on the steps (like we did for the tour on Sunday), and because we were running late, we cut. 

Again.

Then we found out that we were supposed to meet at a different left colonnade (meaning we didn’t need to cut the line) and then chilled out there before the tour.

So the current St. Peter’s Basilica is built on top of Constantine’s St. Peter’s Basilica, which in turn, was built on top of a pagan cemetery (with some Christians). The Roman’s had this thing, where instead of completely demolishing buildings, they would just level them out, then build on top.

Some archeologists did some excavations about 50 years ago, looking for the bones of St. Peter (which they think they found), and also found the old pagan mausoleum, so the Scavi tour is basically a tour of that mausoleum.

We got to see the oldest “picture” of Jesus – three mosaics of Him, represented on a chariot of fire (replacing Apollo), as a shepherd, and then another mosaic which was partially destroyed. Those were actually really cool and my favorite part of the tour, but honestly, I was really distracted the entire time because I had to go to the bathroom.

When we finished, we/I made it a priority to get to a bathroom, then we wandered around (I don’t remember where) until dinner.

After dinner, there was an optional praise and worship thing with seminarians from the North American college of Seminarians (or something along the lines of that), but Krista and I both opted out of that. People told me later how awesome it was and how loud the drums were, and I just “smiled and waved.”

Tuesday, we had Mass at St. Cosmas and Damian in the Forum. 

St. Cosmas and Damian is the motherhouse of the Franciscan TOR’s, and has had Mass said every

day consecutively since the 4^th century (I think). It was a smaller church, but very interesting. It had some really old mosaics, then some side altars with varying styles. It was pretty interesting, and afterwards, one of the priests there showed us their reliquary, where they had a TON of relics stashed, including the arms of several saints.

There was more interesting history about the church, but I missed out on most of it, because I was out cold during the homily. This was a recurring theme throughout the pilgrimage – I don’t know why breakfast always had to be so dang early!

Afterwards, another tour of “Ancient Rome/Early Christian Church” – in my group, led by Dr. Carreno again, ending with the Coliseum. I don’t remember much, but we stopped at one church that supposedly holds the pillar Christ was scourged upon.

It was actually quite small, and if Christ was chained to it, He would have had to crouch down in a really humiliating primal position. It was pretty amazing.

In the same church, there was a large red stone on one portion of the mosaic floor that covered up the opening to a well, where way back, some noble Roman ladies had secretly buried the bones of martyrs.

After, we had lunch with Dr. Carreno, Sr. John Paul (who is ridiculously smiley, has a hilariously loud laugh, and makes the most ridiculously facial expressions) and then two other girls.

We sat in this park, which was previously some sort of palace for Nero – he burned down part of Rome just so he could build it. Lunch was short but relaxing – we had a little entertainment provided by this lady “walking” her small, super fluffy and super energetic dog.

The dog was absolutely nuts, pouncing all over the place, alternately scaring the flocks of pigeons and in turn, being scared by the flocks of pigeons.

After lunch, we parted ways, and again, we wandered around. Krista and I actually planned on going to the hotel early and napping before supper, because we were so dang tired, but we decided to stop at the Circus Massimus for a little bit, as it was one stop before our hotel.

We ended up spending a bit over two hours there, talking, watching this guy play with his adorable little brother (or his son?), and then stopping in Sancta Maria in Cosmedin, which didn’t strike me much as a church. It looked like it was made for Byzantine Mass, the way certain parts were sectioned off.

On Wednesday, we got up ridiculously early to get good seats for the papal audience. It was raining and pretty dreary. After waiting two hours outside the square, they opened up the gates, and that’s when people went a little crazy. It was like I wasn’t even moving of my own accord – the people from behind me were what moved me. Some other students apparently got elbowed by some crazy old Italian ladies, and were quite disconcerted with the entire thing. I actually didn’t mind/didn’t pay attention – I got separated from Krista, then put some headphones on and listened to Irish drinking music, which made all the hustle and bustle almost make sense. At least it made it less annoying. Plus, I didn’t get elbowed…that I know of.

Once we got into the square, the FUS students quickly grabbed some sections for the good seats (though a good section got confused and sectioned off the wrong seats).

There we waited in the drizzle for another two hours, listening to Argentinian music, until Pope Francis appeared, took about 20 minutes to make his rounds in the Popemobile (in which everyone went absolutely CRAZY whenever he got close to them) then he walked up to the stand, sat, and everyone calmed down.

The next two hours were spent reading the papal address and the Gospel reading for the day in at least six different languages.

After the English part, I basically dozed off for the rest of the audience.

After all the readings, everyone said the Our Father in Latin (whoaaa….it’s like, there was one language which made it possible for us to pray together, making it kind of…universal…hm, fancy that!), ending the audience.

Krista wasn’t feeling good, so she headed back off to the hotel, and I spent the rest of the day with Christine, Jessica, Mari and Chiara. 

Christine and Jessica are more soft spoken girls, who usually wear long skirts and generally quite calm people. Mari and Chiara are “louder”, super funny, and make the funniest faces at each other whenever they’re talking. It’s really quite entertaining just to watch their faces when they talk.

We walked around, and I forget most of the places we walked to, but I remember that we accidentally walked into a large market place with the annoying hawkers, where some of the girls picked up some things (like scarves). Then we still had some time to kill before Mass in the evening, but we couldn’t get into the Holy Stairs (real close to St. John Lateran, where Mass was to be offered) because it was having it’s siesta.

That’s actually something you have to keep account of in Italy, and Europe in general. A lot of churches and stores close down for a couple hours mid-afternoon for a siesta, which can be inconvenient if you’re a tourist, but if I was a resident, I would love it.

So we spent the next hour and a half in St. John Lateran – I think Chiara and Mari wandered around the church most of the time, but Jessica, Christine and I sat in a chapel blocked off for prayer.

Lest you think I spent that time well polishing my halo, I actually spent most of the time snoozing in preparation for Mass (I was able to stay awake for the homily!)

Then we did the Holy Stairs and then returned for Mass.

After Mass, dinner, then another Holy Hour in Santa Galla, with maybe one or two praise and worship songs, which was a lot nicer.

We left early (surprise.) the next morning for Assisi, where I spent the few hours on the bus in a blissful nap (except for one part where this guy sitting behind me had music BLASTING out of his earphones, and yet somehow, was managing to sleep amidst all the racket)

Ten Day to Rome/Assisi - Part I

Our second/last ten day started with classes off on Thursday, so Friday morning, Krista and I took off for Florence. It took us the whole day to get there, and I missed my first train on the way! But it wasn’t actually our fault though, so I don’t really count it as a mark against me.

When we arrived to Florence, we had to stop at a fancy hotel to ask directions to our humble hostel, because, as the hotel man put it, our printed Google map instructions “did not need to be this complicated.”

When we finally found our hotel, we had to check in. I gave the lady my name, but the lady had trouble finding it, which had me worried. Then she suddenly exclaimed “ohhhh, Preaaaaaatttzzzeeah!!” It was really funny – I felt my Italian heritage very validated there. 

Then we got to our room, felt too tired to wander around in the dark, so we got to bed early.

The next day, Saturday, we wandered around Florence, popping into some churches that I forget the name’s off, then spent most of the remaining time wandering around the Florence leather markets.

EVERYTHING WAS SO PRETTY.

But it was annoying, because a lot of the stalls had the same pretty stuff, with each stall having an Indian hawker who would pester you as you walked by, saying things like “bellaaaa, look here!” and other annoying things.

With the last hour before we took off for Rome, we visited the Doumo, which was really pretty on the outside, but rather bare on the inside. Krista was freaking out over the symmetry…she’s also played some video game that was set in Florence, so she has “climbed” up the Duomo before.

Then we got a cheap yummy lunch, and accidentally bought ridiculously expensive gelato. 

We stopped in a gelato shop really quick, tried asking the guy how much the gelato was, and he played dumb and gave us the impression that the gelato was two euro for a small (which is a good price). So we picked our flavors, then he started scooping and scooping and scooping tons of gelato on the cone, then gave us these whopping mounds of gelato, took us over to the side counter, where, rather conveniently out of eyesight, were the prices  - ten euro for one cone.

So basically 14 bucks for one (admittedly large) ice cream.

Urgh.

We took a two hour train to Rome, then took a metro to our nearby hotel, where the entire school was staying for the five days we had in Rome.

Our room was really nice, though the bathroom was odd. I’ll try to upload the video “tour” later.

We just chilled out at the hotel until Mass at a nearby church, Santa Galla.

The church looked….confusing. It looked like it was under construction, like things were rather scattered about. Plus, when we got in, no one could figure out where the tabernacle was.

After Mass, a super yummy supper, then sleep because Krista and I were too tired/lazy to go out and do anything.

The next day, Sunday, there was early breakfast, then Mass at St. Paul’s Outside the Walls scheduled. However, one of the girls I used to do Rosary with (Christine) and I had both talked to Professor Cassidy about getting to a Latin Mass in Rome, so using the information he gave us, we decided to give it a go. We talked about with another kid, Morgan (a future SSPX seminarian), and he wanted to go to, so we set a time to meet up later.

The Mass was at noon, so we were able to go back to sleep for a little while, then later left the hotel and walked to the nearby bus stop with about two hours before Mass started. Morgan actually never showed up after we waited some time for him, so we figured he changed his mind.

Mr. Pipp told us to take Bus 30, and that it took about half hour for the bus to make its rounds.

We waited for 45 minutes.

Eventually we realized, after looking at the bus stop board info thing, that Bus 30 didn’t run weekends – only Bus 130 (which we had watched stop by once) did.

Ugh.

We were getting worried about making it to Mass on time, so we hopped on the next available bus, even though it didn’t get us as close as Bus 130 would’ve.

Bad idea.

I don’t know why (Providence, maybe?), but that bus really took it’s sweet ol' time stopping in all these residential areas, making loops over and over again, and basically taking forever to get to our stop.

It drove us crazy every time some person would get up to press the red button for the bus to stop, or the bus would have to stop seeing someone waiting.

Eventually, when the driver completely shut off the bus, we asked him about our stop, and he said “thirty minutes”

So we waited thirty long minutes.

When we got to our stop, we pushed that dang red button with a vengeance, made our escape, and immediately tried making sense of our surroundings.

You’d be surprised, but I actually got us pretty close to where the church was – I would’ve found it right away too if the street numbering system hadn’t been so weird and a certain Italian shopkeeper hadn’t put us off the scent.

Anyways, we ran like mad men/tourists to the church, with our backpacks swinging like little papooses.

The church was in the general vicinity of the Campo de Fiori piazza place, so we ran around like nuts trying to find the number on the building. We were running about 20 minutes late, so we stopped outside of a little restaurant and almost walked in to ask the guy working there for directions, but he stopped us dead in our tracks with a little exclamation and hand waving.

He was mopping, so he told us to stay outside and ask our question. So we asked him about the church, he apparently didn’t recognize the name, but told us we were close, and gave us some directions.

Then we ran around for another 5-10 minutes, trying to find the church, when we got a hang out the numbers, and started walking back, where we found the church, right on the opposite side of that little store! To be fair, only the front of the church looked like a church (and it kinda reminded me of the temple in one of the Indiana Jones’ movies), but danggonit, now I wonder if that shopkeeper was toying with us ("bahahaha, stupid Americans! if they would only turn around, they'd see the church!")

Anyways, we got into the church, which was beautiful (but I’m not sure if I’m a little biased because I was so excited to finally find it), and found the priest in the middle of his sermon.

The rest of the Mass was heavenly, and the choir (I think just a three- or foursome) was really good. I was SO. HAPPY.

Afterwards, we walked to St. Peter’s with Morgan, who had quite randomly showed up sometime during Mass – I noticed him as we were getting up to receive Communion, and I must have looked really surprised (because I was), because he gave me this really funny, innocent look.

We got to St. Peter’s square late as well, so, following the instructions of one of the RD’s, we cut the line to get into the church in time for the tour.

What fine, outstanding examples of young American Catholics we must have seemed.

We were actually quite smooth about it – none of us wanted to be the one to break in, but Christine suggested we cut like we were just breaking through the line to get to the other side of the square. Very clever, but because neither of them would take initiative, and I sure as heck wasn’t going to be late, I got us in.

The people were actually quite nice about it – I don’t even know if they noticed, but that could just be my pride, thinking I was really smooth when in reality the people were probably laughing behind their hands about how clumsily “sneaky” we were.

We got in to the basilica pretty quickly, thanks to my my Wit, Cleverness, and we were a little behind on the tour, but not much. The seminarian that was leading us told us a lot of interesting stories, so I think I’ll remember them when I get home. If I have time (unlikely), I’ll put them in here.

After the tour, we had a little free time before dinner at the hotel. I honestly don’t remember what I did – most of my Rome evenings I have confused already, and I’m only keeping the general schedule in line by actually looking at the hard copy I have. I’m pretty sure I just wandered around a little bit with Krista. We saw this little dress shop that had super pretty dresses with decent prices, but alas, alack, they were all too short for me. It is times like that where Krista can take pride in her shortness.

There was holy hour after the delicious dinner, so we went to that.

I don’t know why they feel like they HAVE to pull out the guitar for every liturgical function, but at least they restrained themselves to only a couple annoying songs before we got some solid hymns, like Tantum Ergo and O Salutaris Hostia. I think even a lot of the other students didn’t like the praise and worship songs, because they only had one or two the next holy hour, and the last holy hour I attended, Father stressed the fact that the hour was supposed to be a silent one.

Thank the good Lord. 

Switzerland

This past week was Parent’s Week, and as such, we were given the “day off” on Thursday, giving us a four day (instead of the usual 3-day) weekend.

I was originally planning on trying to get to Fontgombault, but after talking with Dr. and Mrs. Newton about getting there and checking out a lot of different routes, they advised me against it, since it was at least a 25 hour train ride one way just to get close to Fontgombault. Ars turned out to be almost as far, so I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, especially as Krista was staying back with her parents so I couldn’t just let her figure out my life/weekend for me.

There was a talent show Tuesday night, and afterwards, I talked to one of the girls in my philosophy class, Arianna, for a couple minutes. I went with Arianna to the Broadway Mary Poppin’s in Vienna the weekend before, and already knew that I was pretty comfortable traveling with her, so when she suggested we go to Switzerland for the weekend, I was up for it.

I can’t remember what was going on Wednesday, but after classes, I felt very off and tired and generally like a big baby. I really didn’t want to do anything or go anywhere.

However, Arianna had already reserved a hotel for the first night and printed up train times that morning, so I knew it was happening and resigned myself to the fact.

She had classes for the rest of the day, and then Ministry to Mom’s right before we had to leave, so right before she ran off, she informed me that I needed to make reservations for the overnight train to Zurich and back, and figure out where stay the second night.

At the time, I was not pleased and was pretty annoyed - previously, I’d just been following people around to all my destinations and letting them figure everything out, so the fact that I actually had to take initiative, to MAKE DECISSIONS, was downright inconvenient. However, with Arianna busy running around like a headless chicken before we left, I was forced to step up to the plate, and as they say, the great aren’t always great, they’re only great when they have to be! But really, it was good for me – I now have a decent feel for train stations/times/etc, making reservations and booking sleeping places.

Anyways, we finally left Gaming around 6ish, and I was still in a big baby mood. I think the fact that it’s now pitch black outside by five freaking thirty effects my excitement. It’s a good thing that Arianna is awesome and a good big baby babysitter, because I was pretty awful (in the new sense of the term, Mary Ann ;))

We got to our overnight train around 11ish, and found to our dismay that there were two other people sleeping in the same couchette as we were. Awkward. However, one of Arianna’s friends was in couchette right next to ours, and since he was the only one and had three extra couchettes, he invited us to sleep in there. We ended up doing that, since we didn’t feel comfortable in the other room, and so we spent the night on the suspended couchettes, praying that we didn’t roll off to our death in the middle of the night, what with the train moving and all that.

We were awakened the next morning by one of the train people (I can’t even remember the proper name for them right now – how sad is that?) and he started asking Arianna something in really poor English. I couldn’t understand anything, what with his accent and being awoken so suddenly, but Arianna apparently understood him. I was quite impressed, until I found out right after that she understood nothing of what he said and just basically repeated things back to him and smiled. 

That’s something I learned about Arianna this trip – she’s perfectly willing to go up to strangers and bluntly ask “do you speak English?”, listen to their directions, and then come back with little to no new information. She’s just really good at looking like she understands people when she definitely doesn’t, and doesn’t bother to try and ask them to clarify. Oh well, it all worked out in the end – we didn’t miss one wrong important connection the entire trip.

Anyways, as a result of the miscommunication, we didn’t get the promised on board breakfast, which was fine – I made up for by getting some really yummy doughnut ball things in the train station later.

So there we were, in Zurich, waiting for our next train to take us to Murren, where we realized two things: 1) neither of our credit cards were working at the ATM, and 2) EVERYTHING is ridiculously expensive in Switzerland. As an example: one Swiss franc is worth slightly more than one US dollar. A McDonald’s cheeseburger is one Euro in Austria (about $1.50), while a simple McDonalds hamburger in Switzerland is 3 francs (a little over $3). Man, am I excited to get back to the US and enjoy a “cheap” frappe ($2.47).

Despite these little inconveniences, we made our way safely to Murren. I think one of the Bond films were filmed there, because they had little Bond poster things scattered throughout the town, and when we took the cable cars up the mountain, they would start by playing the beginning of a Bond theme song.

It’s off season in Murren, so there were only two places open in the entire town for us to spend the night in, and the town itself was pretty quiet. A lot of the shops had odd hours – we couldn’t get into the grocery store for lunch and dinner the first day because it closed at noon on weekdays in the off season.

Water fresh from the mountains! Yumyum!

The Catholic church in the town, with cool tile/shingle things on it's side.

Thus we had to spend a decent amount of money on two sad sandwiches and two small plates of minuscule (but delicious!) chicken nuggets.

Hotel Jungfrau!

 We basically just chilled out the entire last part of Friday in Murren. We walked around a bit, and spent a lot of time in the hotel lobby either studying, sleeping or just thinking nothing. It was delightful!

The best lobby ever.

The next morning, after sleeping in, we got a pretty posh breakfast in the hotel. “Posh” here means a breakfast that consisted of more than just bread and yogurt. We actually got fruit, a couple pastries, and cereal! After breakfast, we packed up and got ready for something Arianna had been freaking out about since we left: paragliding.

Arianna was the one who planned everything out, so around 11:30, we met up with the two guys that we going to take us on the flight, hiked a bit up the mountain, and got ready for take off.

They gave us a wind-resistant jacket, a helmet, and then strapped this thing to us that I thought looked like a portable toilet. It had a little seat on the back of it, so you could really enjoy the flight, but it looked really absurd by itself. Then each of the guys strapped themselves to the back of our portable toilets, and gave us some instructions. Arianna took of first, and a couple seconds after her, the guide and I took some running steps and off we flew!

Right before takeoff

It’s pretty hard to describe the flight itself, so you’ll just have to wait till I get home and show you a couple of the videos.

It was super fun, but the entire time, I felt rather like a giant baby that was floating thousands of miles above the earth, strapped to a portable toilet. The feeling put a little bit of a damper on my excitement – I wish I could’ve flown by myself, but you have to get a license to do that.

After that super fun and super expensive flight, we took the cable car back up the mountain and chilled out for a couple hours before we had to leave for Luzern. We took the last half hour before we left to take lots of pretty pictures.

We couldn't resist. 

My oh-so-elegant cartwheel. At least now I know how ridiculous I look doing it. 

The train ride to Luzern was absolutely beautiful and so relaxing – imagine praying a Rosary in a quiet train that’s chugging up the Swiss Alps as the sun sets, and you've got an idea of how sweet it was. As Arianna kept saying the entire trip, it was “pure poetry”.

Going through Interlaken, on our way to Luzern.

We stopped in Luzern for a couple hours before we headed to Zurich for the night, because I had heard that Luzern was the prettiest city in Switzerland (which is saying a lot, for Switzerland). However, though it was only about 5:30, it was already pitch black out, so we’re just taking it on faith that Luzern is the prettiest city. It was definitely very beautiful at night, and very peaceful. We didn’t wander too far from the station – we made a little loop around a small river that had a lot of cool bridges over it.

From what I could see in the dark (which wasn’t very much), the water was very clear and very clean. The entire city looked pretty clean, and smelled like slightly of perfume and cologne (and I’m not one that usually notices particular smells)

Designer toilet paper. 

Nasty roasted chestnuts that tasted like brain.

We spent the last hour chilling on a few steps that led into the river, right in front of Jesuit (I think?) church. It was really fun, and eventually some ducks and swans meandered over to us. Arianna LOVES feeding birds, so of course she started feeding them, and one swan (who we named Bub) got really cocky and tried snapping some out of her hand. There was one white duck, who Arianna named Gertrude, and we liked her, so we gave her a lot of the bread. The other ducks tried scaring her off to get her bread, but she held her ground pretty well.

Bub

A lot of the buildings we saw had cool paintings on the side.

After that, we took a short train to a town just outside of Zurich, where I had reserved a room in a local house. Some other students recommended it, so while I was a little uneasy at first since it wasn’t an official hotel/hostel, it had good reviews and I was able to get a discount, so we went with it.

It took us FOREVER to find the house in the dark though – it was only a fifteen minute walk from the station, but it took us about an hour and a half. When we finally found it, we were pretty tired, so when a younger man came around the corner of the house and threw a giant bouncy ball (covered with a sheet painted to look like an eyeball) at us, we weren’t shocked at all. 

The young people who lived at the house were having a Halloween party, which isn’t normal for Europeans, but they told us they wanted to try it once. I think they wanted us to stay with them and talk about Halloween, but neither Arianna or I have had very much experience with the typical American “celebration” of Halloween, so we opted to go to bed.

The living room in the house we stayed, overlooking Lake Zurich.

Weird accordion style bench, made out of cardboard.

Pittsburgh was on the Swiss map!

We spent another lovely morning sleeping in, and after breakfast, we wandered around the little town. It had a nice little shopping street that was fun to walk around, and had a decent amount of clothing stores (all of which seemed to have the same old boring, drab, expensive and slightly strange European clothing). However, we had the most fun in the Coop – a grocery store chain that you can find all over Switzerland. We also wandered in another grocery store – we probably spent more time in grocery stores than in any other kind of store. It was really fun to see their little Christmas sections, and to look at all the yummy expensive food.

In the afternoon, we left the house along with a man from Serbia, who was staying that night at the house and wanted to know how to reach the train station. He worked for BMW at some assistant resources manager or something…I can’t really remember. He was nice enough but not very interesting.

We had about seven hours in Zurich – we originally planned to wander all over the city, but we were tired of lugging our big backpacks everywhere, so we spent most of the time chilling at a little park, a Starbucks and a Subway.

The little park was right next to a river, and man, that river stunk, so we didn’t get too close. I’m pretty sure I saw a guy finishing up number one right as we walked over, and there was a group of high school age kids that was smoking weed or something (I’m not sure what it was – it just smelled like skunk). Still, smells and strange people aside, it was a decent view, so we just sat there for a couple hours till it got dark. Then we went to a small Italian pasta shop, where we got some chow that was, again, expensive, but more reasonable than most other places.

After we finished there, we tried going over to McDonalds for WiFi and to study philosophy, but it was packed and smelled of major B.O., so we waltzed on over to a nearby Starbucks instead.

Man, I loved that Starbucks. It had two floors, and the top floor was full of nice comfy chairs, some tables for studying, and looked out on to the street. We spent the next couple hours there, finishing philosophy, looking at pictures of the other persons family, and again, just relaxing. Because we both needed to use the bathroom, and it cost two francs unless you bought something (in which case, you got a code for the bathroom), we bought the most expensive chocolate milk I’ve ever had. It was a large, about $10, and absolutely delicious. We also needed to use up the coins we had, since you can’t change coins into a different currency, so it worked out well.

Super expensive but delicious hot chocolate.

Arianna borrowed my phone for a little bit...

Starbucks closed about an hour before our train left, so we spent that time in a Subway (where the foot longs were twelve francs – about $14) just playing two player Euchre and Baseball. Then we peaced out of there, got to our train for Zurich, discovered we had the couchette all to ourselves, and enjoyed our overnight trip back to Gaming, arriving just in time for 10:00 Mass the next morning.

So, that’s Swizterland in a nutshell! Sorry if the account isn’t very interesting – I think I’ve been losing my knack to blow small tales out of proportion since I’ve been in Gaming.

Ah well. Until the muse strikes me.

Routine

....I actually have one! I know, crazy! Today's post is all about "that hum-drum" life, because I'm too lazy to finish the Slovakia post right now.

For the weekdays, general routine:

I set my alarm for 6:45, and snooze it about five times before I actually get up around 7:25. Then I take a shower, and either eat a quick breakfast and stop in at church real quick before class, or I stop in at church first and then eat breakfast. I had an even better schedule when they had 7:30 Mass for a couple weeks in September! But alas, alack, they have that no longer, to the woe and misery of many people.

After lunch, I don’t have a set plan for what to do until 5:30 supper – I either do school, go to the Spar, or piddle. After supper, I either do school, go to the Spar, or, piddle. At 5:30, they have Rosary in the church, so I usually go to that.

Anyways, I have two classes each day – one at 8:40 which ends at 10:10, then another one at 10:20-11:50.
In all of these classes, we’re supposed to get a little break during the class itself, but only Dr. Hass in Western Civilization II actually gives us a decent break. He doesn't give us on in Medieval World because that’s his specialty and he loves talking about it. Cassidy I think just forgets to give us breaks, and MacNamara technically gives us a break, but it is a three minute break that is strictly enforced, so there’s not really a whole lot you can do with it. These classes are divided into A days (usually Monday and Wednesday) and B days (usually Tuesday and Thursday), so I’ll just go through the days of the week to give you the general outline.

Monday: morning routine. History of Civilization II class with Dr. Hass first – we technically have a ten minute break between the first and second class, but he usually goes over time, so I have just enough time to get to Philosophy of the Human Person class. I’m okay that he goes over, because I don’t do anything during the little break anyways aside from sit in class and wait for it to begin. 

After Philosophy class, I go back to the room and piddle for half hour until lunch begins at 12:30.

Tuesday: morning routine. Medieval World class with Dr. Hass, then Christian Marriage with Professor Cassidy. I have these classes with Krista, which was why I liked them most at the beginning of the semester – I could actually talk to someone between breaks. But now I actually like my A day classes themselves better than B days, plus there are a couple people I can talk to anyways.
After class, I go to noon Mass and try to sit in the back. Fr. Shell said if Mass is so distracting for me, then I should just close my eyes during Mass, so I sit in the back so no one thinks I’m ignoring them. After Mass, it’s the Mass rush to the Mensa for lunch and it’s super crowded and depending on what mood I’m in, it can either be tiring to have to sit with other people, or just kind of like “hm, whatever.”

Wednesday: morning routine. A day classes. Lunch. At 2, I have Holy Hour.

Thursday: morning routine. B day classes. In Medieval World, half the class comes at the normal time, and the other half comes later. I come at the usual time, and we have “discussion”, which is where we put all our chairs in a circle, ask Dr. Hass questions, and he answers them. We don’t actually really discuss anything. I wish we could use this plan with philosophy, because we have so many people in it and I’d rather discuss it more. Oh well, ce la vie! Enjoy your crown! Mass. Lunch.
At 2, I go to the Newtons for Ministry to Moms until 3:30. I don’t really have a routine of what I do with them, as it depends on what kids are at home. Mrs. Newton is trying to have me teach Allie (youngest) and Hannah May (second youngest) Latin, but it's kind of a laugh so far - the girls get really distracted by the little mouse that "teaches" Latin in the book Mrs. Newton gave me to use. 

The rest of the weekend is totally up for grabs!

Slovakia Mission Trip - Part One

The Slovakia mission trip was "born" out of the Romania mission trip, something the University puts together every semester. I signed up for the Romania trip because a) I wanted to do something worthwhile during my ten day, b) it was cheaper and, c) I liked the air of mystery it had about it.

However, a lot more people than usual signed up to do it this year, so the director, Dr. Healy, found some more places in Romania to send people, and then also two places in Slovakia.

The entire process, Dr. Healy kept asking people for their preferences (though no guarantees) and I kept telling her "I don't care where you put me."
Honestly, I was worried that if I tried going to a particular place or go with a particular group, I would have expectations and if those were frustrated, I would spend my mission trip being a big ol' baby.

God really worked things out well though - I was in one of the two groups that went to Slovakia, and I was not in the group that got sent to the parish that was apparently veryyyyy charismatic, while we had a small, quiet Byzantine Mass on Sunday in Kosice.
In the most reverent way possible, God really is swell.

Anywho, most people left to begin travelling on Thursday, right after classes, but the Slovakian teams didn't leave till early Saturday morning. Basically, that gave me a lot of time to 'kill' and honestly, I don't remember how I wasted it, except that I am now seriously regretting that I didn't get more work done on my philosophy paper that is due THIS THURSDAY. (I'm not panicking - do you see me panicking?! Nope, NOT panicking.
At.
ALL.)

I hardly got any sleep the night/morning before we left, because of talking with Sister Maria, but I was able to get a lot of sleep on the trains.

It was kind of funny, because I woke up in a bit of a daze, and was basically following the other group around the Kartuase and then the train station, and at one point, one of the girls in my group started asking people if they had their passports. I was sitting on the bus bench and was so out of it, and when she asked me, I just smiled, shrugged and said "I think I have it, but I'm not sure." Then the girl, Allison, and a couple other girls freaked out a bit on me, telling me I should check, and since I was too tired to argue, I checked, and sure enough, I had it.

Basically, that describes how I've traveled in Europe - followed other people around and been a little too unstressed about those little things like passports.

The next situation that describes how I interacted with my team most of the week: we were waiting at the bus stop, and after sitting there for a while, I spoke up and said that I was pretty sure we needed to be down at the further bus stop. Allison, in a not unkindly manner, replied rather assertively that we were supposed to be at the one we were waiting at. I didn't argue, because I knew it would be pointless (plus I was too tired), and hey, if we were at the wrong stop, then at least we'd be missing something together!

Fortunately, Dr. Newton was on an early morning jog, saw us waiting, and told us we needed to be at the stop further down.

However, for the rest of the travel, I remained pretty clueless and just followed everyone around and smiled at everyone freaking out about making it on time (we did perfectly fine). It didn't take very long for some of the team to realize this and stop asking me questions about where we were, because my answers were always the same - "Hmmm....I don't know..."
I hope I was at least useful in being stress-relief in the very fact I was so unconcerned about everything, because otherwise, I was very useless and slept most of the time.

When we finally got to Kosice, my half of the group (Allison, Savannah, and Morgan) went with a Byzantine deacon, Father Lukas, to a place called the Dorka.

The Dorka is kind of like an orphanage, but not really. The way I view it is a place for people who are struggling to get back on their feet to get some help. Most of the people have self-inflicted problems and are still working on getting their act back together, but there were some people that were there because of others. One of the residents, an older lady they call Babka, was taking care of her granddaughters - Gabbitka and Nikolka, born of two different fathers.

Anyways, when we got to the Dorka, it was night, so one of the social workers, Barbara (pronounced bar-BORE-a) showed us our rooms and gave us our schedules.
Morgan slept with the two other Byzantine seminarians in the basement, next to the kitchen. We girls were given two separate rooms, right next to each other, but we decided to all sleep in the same room because it was large enough, plus, the other room was usually used for physiologists, so we just felt more comfortable in the second room.

Our schedule consisted of a work "activity" that began at 8:45 and went until noon, then a two hour lunch break, followed by random activities with the kids until 6, then a one hour supper break, a skit and "Rosary" with the kids, then free time.

Our work activities varied from day to day.

The first day, we cleaned out a pretty messy garden room, but with five people working on it, finished with an hour to spare.
The second day, they needed one person to help them with the kids in the morning, so Savannah did that while Morgan, Allison and I cleaned out a really grody cleaning supply closet. We spent most of the time bagging detergent, which was a rather nice, mindless task. I can't give a good estimate of how much we bagged, but the fact that it took us two and a half hours should give you an idea.

The tons of bags of detergent were mostly donations from store owners, given because the bags were unsaleable because gypsies had slashed holes in them, taken some detergent, and left the rest.

So Europe has this thing with gypsies - Romanian "tribal" people that basically won't settle down and get jobs, have bunches of children to collect welfare, and steal a lot of things and basically act as a pain in the arse for most Europeans.

We had to bag all the detergent because the Dorka, instead of giving out the detergent free, sold the detergent to its "clients"(residents) in smaller bags for a minuscule fee.

The third day was my least favorite activity - they gave us two dark and musty closets to clean and organize. The first one wasn't too bad - Allison and Morgan took care of that one, which left Savannah and I to the second, larger, darker, most grody closet.
Yum.
The closet was packed full of boxes and bags stuffed with children's clothing, and it was our task to go through the clothing, toss out the really nasty articles, then fold and organize the rest. This clothing would later be distributed to the clients as necessary.
Anyways, this job took us the longest because there were so. many. boxes. And man, some of those boxes were NASTY. We ended up tossing two large bags of clothing.

We only finished this job on time because Allison and Morgan finished their closet an hour early and came over to help us.

We didn't have an activity for Thursday - we actually spent the entire day in the kitchen, making a Thanksgiving dinner for the kids.

On Friday, I awoke and discovered - you guessed it! - that I was sick! Again! Yay!
Our task that morning was to paint the walls of one of the apartments with this super thin paint that dried within minutes. Savannah got really excited at first, because she had been talking the entire week before about how she spent the summer on paint crew for Franciscan (i.e., painted a lot of the dorms, Heights, etc) and knew everything there was to know about painting.

No one liked that job (except for me, but I ended up leaving after an hour because I was feverish and so tired), but Savannah REALLY hated it. She was so flustered, because what Barbara wanted us to do basically went against everything Savannah knew to be right as a painted.

For one, the paint was incredibly thin. Second, we only painted two of the walls in one of the rooms, which freaked her out because normally, even when you're painting with the same white paint, the shades will be different between the newly painted walls and the old walls. Thirdly, we didn't "cut" the room, where you use a small paintbrush to basically outline the walls, so that you don't have to worry about getting paint where it's not supposed to be when you use the roller. Fourth, paint was kind of getting everywhere, but she didn't realize that it could be rather easily cleaned off if not let to dry for more than an hour or so.

Anyways, I could understand Savannah's frustrations, but Barbara kept reassuring us and telling us this was the way Slovakian's painted, and Savannah would keep talking about wrong everything was when Barbara left. For me, if the Slovakian's wanted it painted a certain way that I was unaccustomed to, I would tell them my worries, and if they reassured me that this was the way they always did it, I would just complete the task and then leave them to the product they desired, whether it fit my expectations or not.

But like I said, I was sick and I didn't have enough energy or patience to try to calm Savannah down, so I just worked silently until I got so tired and achey that I left.

I'm still a little sick today, and this post is already ridiculously long (what else could you expect after a ten day hiatus?), so I will continue it later with more details on the kids, Lukas and the staff, Igor the pathological liar, Thanksgiving dinner, and my team. 

PSA

I'm gonna be in Kosice, Slovakia on a mission trip from tomorrow morning to next Saturday night.
I'm worried about having enough to do there (this was rather a last minute mission trip set up by Dr. Healy since so many people wanted to do the Romania mission trip) and honestly, I'm also worried about my "team".

It's only three other people, but we all had dinner together this evening, along with the other Slovakia team and Romania teams, and man oh man, I don't know if it's just a mood or what, but I just got really tired of everyone really fast.

Maybe it's because I literally am so tired.

Anyways, you say prayers for me, I say prayers for you! It's a win-win situation! (though I'll probably get more win out it...)