something we were hoping to get a ticket to, but didn't get picked, which turned out to be not so bad. Boat-a-cade is a flotilla of boats, the pope's boat, and 12 boats following that one. All pilgrims get their assigned location for the big events, and ours was in a park with large screens, and not in the harbor. So, we saw the arrival and the opening ceremony (welcoming by the prime minister, gospel reading and pope address to the people) from that park. We arrived there early, around 12.30 to get good seats, even though the pope's arrival wasn't until 4.30. After that, the pope was going on a motorcade through the city. He first was moving slowly in his popemobile through the crowd at Barangaroo, which is the harbor where he arrived. They then speed up a bit through the city streets. The excitement was building up in the park as we saw on the screens where he is moving through the city. And then he showed up, proceeded by security vehicles. Everyone was taking pictures, waving flags, chanting,...and he went by soooo fast. None of us in the group got any good pictures. 
I don't think I even saw him except through the camera. We were all disappointed, to say the least.
But, the good news is that for the Sunday mass at the Randwick racecourse, we are assigned a really good location up front close to the altar, so hopefully we'll be able to see him then, and he won't be moving. :)
Thursday morning, we also had a catechises at the St. Paul's chapel. This time we had auxiliary bishop of Sydney, fr. Terri giving a talk, and I really enjoyed his honest and heartfelt sharing of his personal faith. It was followed by 30 min adoration with some music. I don't know if I mentioned before, but this chapel is part of the monastery of the missionaries of the sacred heart. There are about 40 friars and brothers there. The bishop was presiding the mass and 6 other priests joined him. I got to chat with a bishop a bit afterwards, and asked him to bless some rosaries.
On Thursday evening, after the dinner in the park, Stacie (girl from College Station who joined our group) and I went to see a multimedia production called Testigos (witnesses). It was about 10 people of the last century who are true witnesses of our faith. They showed a slide show with narrator telling of the life of that person (not all of those are saints - yet) and then performers would dance to a song that was in Spanish but English translation was on a screen. They did a really good job with the slideshow part, but the music and dancing was so slow, and we so tired, that we had a hard time staying awake.
A side note - we found out yesterday that we won't have to move to the Olympic Park on Monday, as was originally in our itinerary, and we can stay at this school for Monday and Tuesday evening. We are going to Melbourne on Wednesday morning, so that works out well, especially because the Olympic Park is a rough place to stay, with halls for thousands of people on concrete floors. I also was able to get the sleeping bag that we ordered for the girl in our group who wasn't able to come, so I now I won't be called for the vigil sleep out.
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