Saturday 24 September 2011

Day Twelve

I surprisingly managed to sleep quite well and woke up at 7 to the dulcit tones of Fr Phil telling everyone it was our last chance to go to the loo. After packing up I ventured off and discovered that the burst pipe leak was 100 times worse, and ended up with wet muddy feet. Luckily, it was already quite warm so they did dry quite qucikly.

When I got back to camp, I managed to swap one of my polo shirts for a Mexican one. That was very much down to Alan and I was so chuffed because it is a great t-shirt. We all then grabbed our stuff and walked towards one of the exits. After we got there and Fr Phil gave a few announcements we were aloud off, and so Lizzie and I went off to swap some shirts. We ended up swapping some shirts with some American's. Didn't get the shirt I wanted but it's still cool.

Laura and I then went on another search to find people to swap with. We found some portuguese people to swap with, and I got a Chinese shirt, which I was over the moon with. Laura later got the kind of shirt that I would have preferred but I was just so happy to have a Chinese shirt and it had the guy's name in it so now whenever I see it or wear it I will pray for Anthony. Laura managed after a lot of persuasion to get a Brazilian shirt, though they were rather reluctant. Lizzie tried her luck, but they didn't want to swap another one.

I also met some Syrians, some Macedonians, some more Chinese people and we also found some people from Hereford who had lost their group, and we managed to reunite them.

Before we knew it Mass had started and so we all re-gathered and attempted to partake in Mass. We read the readings and then the decision was made that we should leave. So, like a bunch of pack horses we gathered all our stuff together and made our way to a tube station. Fr Phil kept driving us forward and it was really hard for a lot of us to keep up. We finally got to the station and filled an empty carriage. We were travelling from one end of the line right to the other, but we managed to keep our spirits high, even through all the exhaustion, heat, and people insisting on cramming onto an extremely packed train.

Eventually we got on the coach and made our way to Vittoria. Everyone was shattered and I think everyone must have dozed off numerous times on that journey. Whilst we were awake we did some evaluations and we also shared the things that we had enjoyed the most, it was great to listen to all these things. Later on we put the Sound of Music back on...but it was on for all of about 5/10 minutes because we then began the approach to Vittoria. So we were destined to need yet another day to finish off the Sound of Music!

Lo and behold, just like in Valladolid, the road the coach needed to go down to get to the hotel, so we had to divert ourselves, but it was nowhere near as bad as in Valladolid and we were at the hotel shortly. The hotel was beautiful, and I feel like the best was saved til last. We were told that the Leeds coach had suffered a punctured tire, so we would have the hotel to ourselves for a while. We then treated ourselves to the best showers ever...simply because we had slept on an airfield the night before. We then went down to the lobby for 8pm to meet everyone for Mass, and it was so lovely to look around the lobby and see so many smiling faces. Everyone looked beautiful, and really relaxed.

Mass was yet again really lovely, even though I was really tired and things weren't really processing, it was great to have that time together. Fr Augustine did a fantastic homily, only because I was so tired I don't really remember the content, I just remember thinking it was really good and funny too.

We then had food and all us special diet people had to sit on one table, though there were so many of us we had to be on another table as well. It was quite funny actually because they wouldn't give me the normal dessert because I was one of the special diets so I was given a bowl of melon. However, John Paul and I swapped very quickly because he couldn't eat it because of his egg allergy and I could :) We were sat with the coach drivers and it was a highly entertaining time with them. I had a good chat with Peter, and they had us laughing a lot.

We then went and chatted in the bar for a while, and enjoyed being in a clean environment, before I headed to bed exhausted from the fun of the day.

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