This is our baby!! Yay - we had an 18 week ultrasound, as opposed to a 20 week one, because by the time we get back to Canada, find a doctor, book the ultrasound that baby would probably be closer to 22 weeks, and the doctor said since the baby was in a good position that it was fine to do it early. (not to mention we won't have medical in Canada for 3 months, so it would all be out of pocket)
There were these pit stops set up by Days in the Diocese Melbourne (they plan events in Melbourne for pilgrims the week before WYD) and they have food and toilets and a "prayer experience". At the first pit stop Monica, our leader, made us go to it...it was really weird...there was music playing and then a projected video of the journey of the cross and icon while she read about some saint...she must not have liked it in the end because she didn't even mention the prayer experience for the other 2 stops! haha
Other than not being able to sleep, and a girl being sick on the bus, it was alright. Then all the confused about where we were getting dropped off happened! Originally we were set up to stay in a parish hall for the week, except the first night we were going to stay in a place called homebush where there was a big like convention center or something, alot of other pilgrims would also be there. But we found out the night before that instead of staying in the parish hall we would be doing homestay (getting split up and sleeping at peoples houses from the parish). For some reason they decided to put our luggage (along with other pilgrims that were leaving Melbourne at the same time as us) in a truck and our stuff would get delivered to where we were staying.
I knew something was going to go wrong! Just after our first pit stop, the bus driver told Monica we were actually getting dropped off at the parish that night, and that we wouldn't be going to homebush at all...so she called the bus company to make sure that our luggage was getting delivered to the parish and not Homebush, and they confirmed. But when we got to the parish our luggage hadn't arrived...so we all registered and met our homestay parents and our luggage still hadn't arrived...so we just had to go without it.
It was really frustrating, but we had to be thankful that we were in homestay, with nice warm beds and a shower per household (as opposed to the recommended shower per 75 pilgrims at other locations!!)...and we got our stuff the next morning and were able to change before going out for Day 2.
Oh and another funny thing...this parish had been planning for WYD for 2 years, and were all excited to be getting people at their houses, but they probably hadn't planned on having people just from Melbourne (as opposed to having people from all over the world)...but we thought our homestay parents (mine and Conor's) would be happy because they were actually getting "foreigners"....but they were a little weird, and when we said we were from Canada they just said "oh, that's nice". Haha, oh well!
Sooooo many people!This all changed when I agreed to for a short shift on Saturday as someone had called in sick.
It was REALLY busy in the late morning, and there are alot of pilgrims coming to Melbourne before they go to Sydney for World Youth Day. Well one pilgrim from Switzerland was talking to my co-worker and she came over to ask if we knew anyone who had a place where he could sleep for 2 nights, because he had to place to stay, and he was going to be meeting up with his group on Monday.
But he had already booked himself onto a tour which would be leaving at 1:30pm and not getting back to the city until 10:30pm, so he needed to arrange accommodation before then. Well finally I said that he could come stay at our place...I found out he was a seminarian so I thought we could handle that :)
He spoke VERY little English, and his main language is French, but my french is terrible! So we struggled through a conversation and decided that Conor and I would come into the city at 10:30 pm to bring him to our place, and we would figure things out from there.
We had no problems finding him, and we brought him to our place....Wimbledon Tennis was on, so Conor wanted to stay up and watch some anyways so we started chatting with him.
We soon found out that he was not your typical seminarian...and throughout the weekend we learned about how...special? (I guess that is how to describe it) he was! Haha...when we were on the tram back to our place that night, we thought that he was telling us that he was going to meet the prince of Germany on Monday in Adelaide, and that he was the secretary to the prince.
NOW we realize that he was saying that the Prince (I don't think the prince of Germany, but the prince of the German speaking Swiss people) is HIS secretary!! He has also been to Rome 5 times - and will be ordained into the Deaconate by the POPE in December!
We found out that he is the ambassador to the Pope for Switzerland. And not long ago he had a private audience with the pope and that people bring gifts to the pope. So as a gift from Switzerland, this seminarian arranged with the popes "fashion designer" (haha!) to have one of those White caps that the pope wears, made. When the seminarian gave the cap to the Pope, Pope Benedict XVI took of his cap and switched with the seminarian...so he got to take the Popes cap back to Switzerland as a gift!!
It was just AMAZING hearing all these things, and what topped it off was to find out that his seminarian is only 22 years old!! (we thought he was at least Conor's age!!)
So on Sunday he had another tour booked for the morning, so I woke him up and told him how to get back to the city, and we arranged to meet him in the afternoon.
Conor and I went to the Cathedral for the 11am mass. I had been very much looking forward to it, as it was my first Sunday off in around 9 months. But was a little anxious to see protesters outside of the cathedral when we arrived. They weren't being allowed in, but we could hear them chanting from inside. THEN when the liturgy of the word started they because VERY loud and we realized that they had been let into the Cathedral.
We couldn't hear any of the readings or the gospel because they were chanting sooo loud "WE WANT JUSTICE". At that point we weren't 100% who the protesters were...I assumed it had something to do with the sexual abuse issues in the church, and the fact that WYD starts next week is just going to fume alot of protests.
The archbishop decided to skip his homily, and one the police finally got them all out, they locked all the doors for the liturgy of the Eucharist (I was sooo thankful for this! I couldn't even imagine what would have happened had they tried to come up for communion!). Then after communion the Archbishop gave his homily.
I have NEVER experienced anything like that before, kind of scary and very frustrating!! We found out later that a small group of the protesters were there to stand up again the sexual abuse issues...but the main group were people from a Chaldean Christian community. I don't know all the details, but the Bishop to the Chaldean's had decided to move one of their priests from Melbourne to Iraq, and the archbishop of Melbourne "supports" the other bishops decision (although it didn't really sound like he agreed with him) and so these Chaldean's had been trying to contact the Melbourne Archbishop for the past week with no luck, so decided to protest at mass, and will again next week, until he agrees to speak with them.
Anyways, yes, things are going well here...we have our last poker night on Sunday...I'm not really looking forward to it, as I can be very emotional these days!!! But we're having it earlier and having a BBQ and it should be great!!