seriously though, it was fun. and cold. and wet. and tired. when the sun came up, at about 8:00AM (a beautiful sight to me), i began to see dark squares flying all over the place, i was so tired my eyes couldn't properly function for about 10 -15 minutes. or maybe it was an hour. i don't really know.
but, lets start at the beginning.
so, when we got there, it was dusty, crowded, hot, and litter was everywhere. there was very little grass, but there was some kind of itchy hay everywhere.
it sort of made me think of a refugee camp after some kind of huge disaster. a very big disaster, seeing as many different countries flags were waving, everywhere in sight. i wasn't the only one to think that, many news shows and people we talked to said the same thing.
we trudged through the crowds, seeing the sights, cheering when we heard songs, chanting the chants, etc, for what seemed like simultaneously an hour, and no time at all. we found our area, D2, and found some of the other brisbanians who had also got in. they'd made a little makeshift tent type thing. it was pretty cool.
while we were walking, we could see the dust going up high in the air, seeming to bump into a giant, dark cloud. it filled up half the sky. and, as everyone knows, dust + clouds = rain. if that cloud wasn't going to rain before, it sure was going to rain now. it was very hot, so i kind of marvelled at that awesome natural mechanic: when large crowds gather, dust is sure to rise, and the temperature with it. when enough dust rises, its more likely to rain, lowering the temperature. the large crowd, unless shaken by the weather, is no longer hot. how amazing and awe inspiring is that? (i probably didn't explain that very well, but i think you know what i mean)
ok, a lot of stuff happened, and i'm spending too long explaining every little thing.
we set up our sleeping bags and mattresses and stuff. i had to set up a bit away from everyone else, near some guys from western australia. i set up, put my bags down there, and went away for a bit, came back to find my sleeping bag and mattress moved, and where i had put them, was a huge, angry colony of ants.
the guys there were cool, laughing as they said that i had to brush up on my bush skills, cityboy. they hadn't noticed the ant colony either, as it had been covered by the hay. i tried to get the ants out of my sleeping bag and off my mattress, moved it somewhere else (checking for ants) and stayed there for a bit.
before the main events of that night, adoration, a speech by the pope etc, i talked to a few columbians, traded stuff, you know, staple vigil stuff.
ok, now, the storm. it got windy all of a sudden, my sleeping bag/mattress got blown away a few times, i weighed it down with some stones, and went to help others who had tarps, brisbanians makeshft tent (made out of beach towels, string, walking sticks and a pilgrim pole) and making sure a few of the new vigil-friends i'd made were alright. the sky was pretty dark, if i was inside it would have been a beuatiful sort of dark, but outside, it could only be seen with the eyes of someone surveying danger on the horizon.
lightning raged across the sky quite a few times. someone said, i don't think they were catholic, now i think of it, that god had sent the storm as punishment for worshipping the pope instead of god. i thought that was stupid, despite a large part of the crowd shouting for the pope to stop the storm. that was a bit weird. there was a woman on the stage, or perhaps that was the english translator, asking us to pray to stop the storm. it seemed a bit like an idea of some cheap magic "ok, if we all pray, maybe the storm will stop! 1, 2, 3!"
anyway, it didn't stop, not for a while, although it was very short lived, about 5-10 minutes. i managed to get some shelter with the group from western australia. i was, shivering and freezing and soaking, it wasn't good.
before the storm, it was hot. then it was freezing after the storm, then it was lukewarm, a nice temperature. we did adoration, talked, traded with people a bit, went to the toil- well, you get the idea.
when i decided to go to sleep, i went to my sleeping bag/mattress, and took the rocks off, i'd put on to keep it down from the wind. the first one crumbled in my hands. they were actually dirt-clay clumps, and they 'melted' all over my sleeping bag. i slapped most of it off, and slipped into my sleeping bag. i found myself waist deep in water. most people i had been talking to said their beds had dried very quickly, and i hoped mine had done the same. i was wrong.
i think i slept, but i'm not really sure. after a while, i couldn't stand it any more, and got out. the days were hot, and so was the first half of night. but the 2nd half was freezing. standing in a freezing cold paddock, soaking wet and in summer clothes, it was pretty uncomfortable. i stood there, trying to think of what to do for a very long time, i don't know how long. after a while, i asked a woman in a wheelchair what the time was. she said in a very thick US accent 'uh... its about ay qwarter payst four.'
i thought that group had been columbian, so i was kind of surprised to hear an american accent 'are you american?' i asked. she said no, she is columbian. i told her she spoke very good english.
i decided to get a nice hot coffee. i walked down there, talked to two amrican girls (i don't remember which state, but its famous for its paranormal activity)
and got a coffee. but you could only get an iced coffee. i got it anyway. i wandered around for a bit, heard news about stuff damaged by the storm, about 3 people injured (apparently six were injured in all, an more passed out due to the heat of the day)
i went back to D2, and waited for the sun to rise. a french guy came up to me, he only spoke french, so i didn't understand a lot of what he was saying. i asked if he spoke spanish or english, he said no. i think he was looking for some bags, or a sleeping bag.
then this columbian guy and his girlfriend come in. apparently they'd snuck in, with a group from brazil. they were pretty interesting. he'd been training to be a priest, but ended up not, because he um, like girls too much. his girlfriend asked if she could borrow my sleeping bag, she was cold. i explained it was wet, so it was a bit unusable at the moment. she found another sleeping bag, from some girls who'd left about half an hour before. they were pretty surprised when they came back, but very forgiving.
as always, there is a lot, a lot more. as i write this, more is coming back, and its difficult to believe all this happened in so short a time. WYD, or any event of such magnitude, or even just going to another country, or a new place, with friends and meeting new people, is an experience that words can't describe.
i don't know if i'll do another of these. i can't do it justice. it is good to remember everything, though.
heres a riddle. the answer? tune in next time! or look it up.
some will use me, while others will not,
some have remebered, while others forgot.
for profit or gain, i'm used expertly,
i can't be picked off the ground, or tossed into the sea.
only gained through patience and time,
can you, unravel my rhyme?
Saturday 26 November 2011
Tuesday 15 November 2011
WYD bytes 1.2 : chuckles rides again
so, i don't know who chuckles is, i like to imagine him as sort of like pennywise the homocidal dancing clown, apparently with a horse, and maybe one of those wooden rubber band guns, or even a gun that shoots a flag saying 'BOOM!"
i guess he'd also have a cowboy hat. and yell 'hi ho silver! AWAY!'
if you're wondering why its in the title, i can't help you. there should always be a mystery in someones writings, something even the author doesn't know or understand. its like rule 16 or something.
anyway, back to the walk to the vigil in WYD madrid, that was in my last post.
so, after waiting for a few people, we left our accomodation, and got walking.
after figuring out which way to go, we started our walk down the street. alot of it you really had to be there for, but just walking through a city, especially an old one like in europe, really nice, you see so much stuff that kinda blows your mind. to be honest, you wouldn't look twice at these things in your own town/city. you'd probably think they were ugly.
we stopped a bunch of times, it was a really hot day, through streets, up hills, through parks, etc. at one point we stopped in a park, and the sprinklers were on. we took our bags off and ran through them. there were nuns and monks running through them as well, it was really fun.
there were also people who had wisely decided to profit from this walk. people had filled up bottles of ice cold water and were selling them for 1 euro each. like 1-2 litres, it was good. i'd just run out of water when i saw them. its probably even luckier they had water at the vigil, otherwise it would have been a much longer night. soaked, freezing, tired, and dehydrated.
we met a bunch of people on the walk, including an irish group. i don't remember much about them, but i remember they were awesome. i mean, they were irish...
(come to think about it, i wish i'd met some welsh, i like them. there are two kinds of welsh accents; the one that sounds like a deformed monkey taught english by a german, and the other one, much rarer i think, i've only met one, but she had the most beautiful accent i'd ever heard. sort of like the sound version of the sight of flowers, or like rain, only quieter, and, uh, voicelike. or, um, whatever...)
just after we left the irish group, sitting under the shade of acoolibah tree, all the paths of other pilgrim groups began to converge, like the reverse branches of a tree, or a mamallian blood system toward the heart. there were also buses and trains, taking some tourists pilgrims to quatro viento. many of the bishops, archbishops and so on did this. not archbishop batthersby (i hope i speeled that correctly) or the bishops with us. they walked in our group, which i think was really humble of them.
after a while, it became very crowded, and this was about 2 kilometres away. it was about this time we splintered off.
after the crowded area, the closer we got, the less crowded it was. we walked through small streets, and people threw water on us because of the heat. (or was it?)
when we actually got there, it wasn't as bad as i thought it was when i saw it on tv that morning: but it was certainly kinda foreboding. it looked like a refugee camp. dusty, grassless, flat, crowded 0% shade, rubbish everywhere. but the main thing was, we were there.
next time, on WYD bytes 1.3 : Dead Men tell no tales, i'll tell the story of the stuff i remember at the vigil.
yes, storms, iced coffee, toilets damaged hosts, columbians getting in like mexicans across the US border, stealing peoples sleeping bags, and a very rude french guy, who could only speak french and german.
because i can, and more importantly because i want to, here, um, this.... enjoy.
(its a link)
http://www.youtube.com/user/communitychannel/
of course, i'm quite sure you've seen this already, so i show you this:
i guess he'd also have a cowboy hat. and yell 'hi ho silver! AWAY!'
if you're wondering why its in the title, i can't help you. there should always be a mystery in someones writings, something even the author doesn't know or understand. its like rule 16 or something.
anyway, back to the walk to the vigil in WYD madrid, that was in my last post.
so, after waiting for a few people, we left our accomodation, and got walking.
after figuring out which way to go, we started our walk down the street. alot of it you really had to be there for, but just walking through a city, especially an old one like in europe, really nice, you see so much stuff that kinda blows your mind. to be honest, you wouldn't look twice at these things in your own town/city. you'd probably think they were ugly.
we stopped a bunch of times, it was a really hot day, through streets, up hills, through parks, etc. at one point we stopped in a park, and the sprinklers were on. we took our bags off and ran through them. there were nuns and monks running through them as well, it was really fun.
there were also people who had wisely decided to profit from this walk. people had filled up bottles of ice cold water and were selling them for 1 euro each. like 1-2 litres, it was good. i'd just run out of water when i saw them. its probably even luckier they had water at the vigil, otherwise it would have been a much longer night. soaked, freezing, tired, and dehydrated.
we met a bunch of people on the walk, including an irish group. i don't remember much about them, but i remember they were awesome. i mean, they were irish...
(come to think about it, i wish i'd met some welsh, i like them. there are two kinds of welsh accents; the one that sounds like a deformed monkey taught english by a german, and the other one, much rarer i think, i've only met one, but she had the most beautiful accent i'd ever heard. sort of like the sound version of the sight of flowers, or like rain, only quieter, and, uh, voicelike. or, um, whatever...)
just after we left the irish group, sitting under the shade of a
after a while, it became very crowded, and this was about 2 kilometres away. it was about this time we splintered off.
after the crowded area, the closer we got, the less crowded it was. we walked through small streets, and people threw water on us because of the heat. (or was it?)
when we actually got there, it wasn't as bad as i thought it was when i saw it on tv that morning: but it was certainly kinda foreboding. it looked like a refugee camp. dusty, grassless, flat, crowded 0% shade, rubbish everywhere. but the main thing was, we were there.
next time, on WYD bytes 1.3 : Dead Men tell no tales, i'll tell the story of the stuff i remember at the vigil.
yes, storms, iced coffee, toilets damaged hosts, columbians getting in like mexicans across the US border, stealing peoples sleeping bags, and a very rude french guy, who could only speak french and german.
because i can, and more importantly because i want to, here, um, this.... enjoy.
(its a link)
http://www.youtube.com/user/communitychannel/
of course, i'm quite sure you've seen this already, so i show you this:
Sunday 6 November 2011
WYD Bytes 1.1
i was at a WYD dinner type thing, seeing and talking to people i hadn't seen since we left, hearing people talk about everything that happened, randomly remembering stuff i forgot about, which i can't believe i forgot, and i realised i haven't really talked about the things that happened there much. i'm not really particularly sentimental, the way i see it is it happened, its not happening anymore, so why talk about it? its in the past.
but suddenly, i think people might be kind of interested to hear some of the many stories from WYD madrid. i mean, there are a few, a lot of stuff happened. its kind of strange how even getting your clothes washed can be a semi interesting story, because you're sleep derived, you're not sure how the machine works, and so much stuff is already happening, its hard to stay focused on some things you probably should have focused on.
i'm going to tell the story of the walk to the vigil, as well as the vigil itself. out of my group, of about 38, only 4 of us got into the vigil. i was lucky enough to be part of that 4. the only reason i was there was a choice i made , i could stay with the larger group, about to take a break from walking for the second time in 5 minutes, or the splinter group, pushing on. i decided to go with the splinter group, to make sure they were alright. that little voice bugging me to make sure everyone was alright made a lot of decisions for me over there, and in the end, i'm mighty glad it did.
the story starts, um, well, i don't remember waking up that morning, or breakfast. i do remember hearing what time we were leaving, and that it was a 13 kilometre walk. i think i may have done my laundry that day, or maybe it was the day before. in any case, thats a different story.
at WYD, we got a packed lunch each day. after the 2nd day, i stopped taking them, picking the water bottle out of one of the plastic bags in boxes leaning against the lobby wall of our accomodation. it was a bread roll, with a small amount of meat, or eggy potato in the middle. for the vigil, we were given lunch for two days, and were told to eat a particular one first, as it would go off if we left it till the next day.
because there had been a few cases where the daily lunch had gone bad in our bags after just a few hours, a couple of us heard this and said, 'bugger that.'
we went to the shopping centre about, uh, 20 mintes walk from the accomodation, i think it was principe pio, to get some food for the vigil.
we looked around the supermarket, they had some really yummy looking foods. in the end i got a paper bag of triple chocolate cookies (they almost melted in your mouth, they were filled with chocolate, but not particularly sweet chocolate, proper chocolate. delicious. they were my breakfast the next morning.) some prngles (spanish pringles!) and some milk bread (bread made with milk. very sweet, like a mix between a cookie and a croissant. very dry though)
we spent a while there, and we had to get back. but not before lunch. we went to the food court, up some stairs. mcdonalds, kfc and burger king (i was about to say hungry jacks) were filled with people, and that was just the line.
a german restaurant was just opening, so we decided to go in there. while there, we saw on the news, the vigil grounds, cuatro viento. it was dusty, shadeless, i think i saw a single palm tree somewhere. and crowds of people. notice i said crowds, plural. there were lots of people there.
i remember thinking 'we should bring more water.'
we ordered some food, and waited for it to arrive. i found it funny we were in spain, siting in a shopping centre food court, and at a german restaurant. there was a moment when i was seriously considering getting a hamburger, which was on the menu. multiculturalism at its finest.
it took a little longer than we thought, and i began worrying we were going to be late getting back, but when we got back everyone was still there, it was fine. when it was time to pay, it was a perfect opportunity for me to try out my travel card. i adn't used it yet, and was pretty eager to.
the woman at the cash register accepted the card with a smile, and put it through the machine. i then waited to put my pin number in. and waited. and waited. i finally asked about the pin number, i think i said "PIN?" and mimed typing, with 'beep, boop, beep?' she spoke a little english, and said the pin was not necessary. but then, why did it have a pin number? we had to go, so we went as quickly as possible. i half expected them to yell back, but they didn't.
we got back, fit the food into our bags, obtained some more water from the plastic bags (there weren't many people willing to take the bags at this stage, so it was alright) and were waiting around for other people to get ready.
when most people were downstairs, a girl in our group had the idea of dedicating the walk to something. me and a few others dedicated the walk to the people at home, who had helped us get here, and could not be there with us, even though they wanted to.
thats some of what happened the morning we were getting ready for the vigil, and the walk there. my next post will be the walk, or as much as possible until i feel like i'm making the post seem to long.
um, heres a random video from an old show called skithouse.
but suddenly, i think people might be kind of interested to hear some of the many stories from WYD madrid. i mean, there are a few, a lot of stuff happened. its kind of strange how even getting your clothes washed can be a semi interesting story, because you're sleep derived, you're not sure how the machine works, and so much stuff is already happening, its hard to stay focused on some things you probably should have focused on.
i'm going to tell the story of the walk to the vigil, as well as the vigil itself. out of my group, of about 38, only 4 of us got into the vigil. i was lucky enough to be part of that 4. the only reason i was there was a choice i made , i could stay with the larger group, about to take a break from walking for the second time in 5 minutes, or the splinter group, pushing on. i decided to go with the splinter group, to make sure they were alright. that little voice bugging me to make sure everyone was alright made a lot of decisions for me over there, and in the end, i'm mighty glad it did.
the story starts, um, well, i don't remember waking up that morning, or breakfast. i do remember hearing what time we were leaving, and that it was a 13 kilometre walk. i think i may have done my laundry that day, or maybe it was the day before. in any case, thats a different story.
at WYD, we got a packed lunch each day. after the 2nd day, i stopped taking them, picking the water bottle out of one of the plastic bags in boxes leaning against the lobby wall of our accomodation. it was a bread roll, with a small amount of meat, or eggy potato in the middle. for the vigil, we were given lunch for two days, and were told to eat a particular one first, as it would go off if we left it till the next day.
because there had been a few cases where the daily lunch had gone bad in our bags after just a few hours, a couple of us heard this and said, 'bugger that.'
we went to the shopping centre about, uh, 20 mintes walk from the accomodation, i think it was principe pio, to get some food for the vigil.
we looked around the supermarket, they had some really yummy looking foods. in the end i got a paper bag of triple chocolate cookies (they almost melted in your mouth, they were filled with chocolate, but not particularly sweet chocolate, proper chocolate. delicious. they were my breakfast the next morning.) some prngles (spanish pringles!) and some milk bread (bread made with milk. very sweet, like a mix between a cookie and a croissant. very dry though)
we spent a while there, and we had to get back. but not before lunch. we went to the food court, up some stairs. mcdonalds, kfc and burger king (i was about to say hungry jacks) were filled with people, and that was just the line.
a german restaurant was just opening, so we decided to go in there. while there, we saw on the news, the vigil grounds, cuatro viento. it was dusty, shadeless, i think i saw a single palm tree somewhere. and crowds of people. notice i said crowds, plural. there were lots of people there.
i remember thinking 'we should bring more water.'
we ordered some food, and waited for it to arrive. i found it funny we were in spain, siting in a shopping centre food court, and at a german restaurant. there was a moment when i was seriously considering getting a hamburger, which was on the menu. multiculturalism at its finest.
it took a little longer than we thought, and i began worrying we were going to be late getting back, but when we got back everyone was still there, it was fine. when it was time to pay, it was a perfect opportunity for me to try out my travel card. i adn't used it yet, and was pretty eager to.
the woman at the cash register accepted the card with a smile, and put it through the machine. i then waited to put my pin number in. and waited. and waited. i finally asked about the pin number, i think i said "PIN?" and mimed typing, with 'beep, boop, beep?' she spoke a little english, and said the pin was not necessary. but then, why did it have a pin number? we had to go, so we went as quickly as possible. i half expected them to yell back, but they didn't.
we got back, fit the food into our bags, obtained some more water from the plastic bags (there weren't many people willing to take the bags at this stage, so it was alright) and were waiting around for other people to get ready.
when most people were downstairs, a girl in our group had the idea of dedicating the walk to something. me and a few others dedicated the walk to the people at home, who had helped us get here, and could not be there with us, even though they wanted to.
thats some of what happened the morning we were getting ready for the vigil, and the walk there. my next post will be the walk, or as much as possible until i feel like i'm making the post seem to long.
um, heres a random video from an old show called skithouse.
Thursday 3 November 2011
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