The Papal Audience and Roma Calcio!

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wowwww, i havent written in a long time. sowwie! but sooo on Wed Feb 2nd we had no school because the school provided us tickets to go see the Papal Audience. The experience was pretty cool, but i would definitely not want to go again. We had to wake up at the ass crack of dawn to get there early enough to get good seats. Since my roomate left at 630 in the morning i woke up and got ready and went to the girls-next-door-to-me's room and they were all dressed up. im talking like wearing all black or dresses or skirts and here i have on jeans, obviously i showed how much i cared! but anyways to then i had to go change and that was obnoxious. so then we eventually left and that was probably at 730ish? and the actual thing didnt even start until 1030, so literally we just got to sat there. we did get really good seats though, we got third row. so yeah that was pretty cool, and then i just had to waste 2 hours of time.

the pope finally got there and he had a big entrance naturally and how a papal audience is conducted is the pop prepares a homily like speech and he says it in like 8 different languages. and before he speaks a deacon or bishop speaks before in that language. so for americans the bishop person would go up and speak and then announce all of the english speaking groups that were attending the papal audience that day and they would each get up and cheer for themselves. its kinda cool because for the split second the pope is looking at your group and yeah that is cool. but then after the groups get announced the pope gives his speech in that language and then another bishop comes up and starts speaking in a different language. so we got announced and that was interesting and then the pope gave his homily thing but he does not speak english that well. i actually had a really hard time understanding what he was saying. it was obvious that german is his first language because he sounded the most confident and fluent when speaking that.

but yeah so when our group was announced we stood up and cheered and that was it. literally every other group sang something afterwards, it was so bizarre. kinda cult like, i didnt like it. but there was one group that was INSANEEE. like they all had flags and t-shirts and they like chanted and screamed and sang like they were at a sporting event. and they kept doing it during the whole thing!!! they did it before the papal audience, when they got announced and at the end. i literally wanted to hit them because it was way to early for that nonsense. but anyways...

oh!! so during when the bishop was talking a little boy ran up on stage and like dodged a few priests and stuff to get to the pope and when he got to the pope he just fell to his knees right in front of him. it was literally the most moving site ever. the pope then talked to him and kissed his forhead and he was sooooo nice and gentle with this little boy. you could tell though that everyone on staged kinda freaked out when he ran up there because he wasnt supposed to be up there and they didnt know what he was going to do. but in turned out to be really moving.

i also got a few rosaries blessed to there which was cool, even though i thought it would be more of a ceremony having them blessed i guess? i donno the pope basically just said that because we are here in his presence any religious memorabila that we had in our posession was just automatically blessed? i donno, i think thats a load of bull and dont really believe it but thats just me. i guess i just thought that the different groups would go up on stage and its not liek i thought he would bless eveyrone's individually but i thought he would do it by group-just a little more personal. oh well whatevs. at the end we got pictures with the swiss guards and then just walked around.

then at nightt we went to a AS ROMA CALCIO GAMEEEEE!!!! okayy so calcio is, european soccer and its the only sport that they have. they dont have a bunch of sports like baseball, hockey, basketball, baseball golf etc. so everyone gets REALLLL intense about calcio which is so awesome because the game was sooooo much funnnnn! so you have to sit in the section of your team and you cant move because the fans get to intense and its stadium, seating but everyone is standing on their chairs trying to get the best views. and there are no assigned seats you kinda just go whereever and during the whole game they chant. its soooooo fuckin awesome. like the fans just scream out these chants and they are really catchy and funny and i loveeeeedd ittt!!! and there are people who stand up basically on these dugout looking things and lead the chants so the crowd knows what to sing, they have the best job ever. but it did get really cold but i layered up so i wasnt that bad. there was a huge group of us that went to from school so that made it even better. also, going to the game made it even more obvious how different american culture is compared to european. usually at football games or baseball games everyone is drinking having a good time and eating. but here theres none of that. no one is dirnking or eating they are just watching the game intently and screaming like craziessss. sooo different than america but definitely a good different. i wanna go to another game while im here and learn some of the chants beforehand. unfortunately tho the roma team tied the other team which apparently shouldnt of happened bc roma is way better than the other team? yeah i donno, something like that

then we walked home and i knew walking home would be a bitch in a half bc its at the bottom of this HUGEEEEEEEEEEE hill. so we had to walk up it at night and i was cold and yeah it was brutalllllll. i had shin splints for the next few days which hurt soooo bad. and it sucks bc all you do in rome is walk to get anywhere so i was in lots of discomfort to say the least haha

thanks for reading!!! my next blog will be about PARISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS 😊
love you all <3

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