How I Spent My Winter Break Part 1: The Fellowship of The Ring
....Probably the Longest Post Yet
We had our last retreat of 2012 on December 14th, it was phenomenal. After that we popped on up to Newbridge, a decent sized town outside of Dublin and home-base for one of our local teams, and participated in a Youth2000 Retreat. Basically it was like if Awakening and a Steubenville Conference had a baby. It was great getting to spend some time with some Irish young-people my own age who were also into their faith. After that we went on over to our own Christmas retreat a few miles away. It was pretty wonderful getting to see everyone and just relax, tell stories, and goof around. The work were doing out here is great, and incredibly rewarding, but it really does take it outta ya. On the 18th I was officially a free man, no NET obligations until January 1st. It was a strange feeling being able to just go wherever you wanted to go. I wish I could pull this outta my head in a better way, the thrill of just taking on a country by yourself with just a little backpack. I love it.
I spent my first two days up in Derry, where I spent my first six weeks in "Eire", living with a small community of Capuchin Friars of the Renewal. Basically an absolutely wonderful order of Franciscans. Besides being subconsciously inspired to take my beard to previously unheard of levels of hairiness, I also was able to get a ton of amazing prayer and spiritual direction in.
Following that adventure I then hopped on a bus and rendezvoused with my teammate Devan in Letterkenny(big town in Donegal) and we proceeded to spend the rest of the day jumping from bus to bus on our way down to Navan (big town in Meath) where we'd be staying until Christmas. After a long, tiring, and sometimes stressful, journey we eventually made it in one piece to our host-home.
Relegating the Sheridan family to a couple paragraphs is doing them a grave injustice, and they will be the subject of sooooo many stories when I'm back stateside, but for now here's a brief summary. Big family with five grown-up kids, everyone plays Gaelic football(the country's national sport) at the highest level, with a couple of the boys being national stars. The house is constantly full of music and activity and Devan and I were constantly getting whisked away on some sort of adventure, whether that was busking on Christmas Eve for St. Vincent De Paul (my song was Feliz Navidad), an all-day shopping extravaganza in Dublin, driving half-way across the country to lead music for a prayer meeting, or going to the local pub on Christmas Eve. There was never a dull moment. The Sheridan's really bent-over backwards to welcome us into their home and they seriously succeeded. We got treated to so many meals, coffees, beers, they even got us Christmas presents!
(hopefully finishing writing this tonight....2 weeks later)
OK so what'd we do after that...we went to France!! WOoOoOoOO
Devan and I hopped on a plane at about 6 AM on the 26th with our backpacks and a lot of layers of clothing.
(Quick segway...my backpack has been through four years of University...countless retreats, camping-trips, and all around shenanigans, and now it is stalwartly carrying on through international adventures, getting stuffed way beyond capacity, and doing an admirable job. Way to go Backpack.)
On our way to Lyon we ended up having a 6 hour layover in Barcelona. Thankfully the Spanish were cool with us just walking out of the airport and exploring for awhile...so we got to have a sorta bonus trip to Barcelona as well. It was a really beautiful city and HOT. We were both pretty dang exhausted but we still managed to see a pretty decent portion of downtown Barcelona. We hung around the Placa Espanyola(yes that's the right spelling) for most of the time, took a bunch of pictures, and did some high quality people watching. The highlight of this leg of the trip had to be the Sangria and Paella at a street corner restaurant. It was so relaxing!!
After that adventure we passed-out in the airport for an hour or so and then hopped on our next flight that would take us to Lyon. Upon arriving in Lyon we realized our hotel was faaaaar away from the airport, and, thanks to a knee jerk reaction, ended up paying entirely way to much for a taxi out there. Live and learn right? Not really. We did the exact same thing the next day on our day-trip to Ars. EXCEPT THE TAXI DIDN'T EVEN TAKE US TO THE RIGHT TOWN.
Devan and I ended up going on a pretty crazy adventure that day. Like the above paragraph says, we got dropped off in the wrong town, and after a couple confusing conversations with some locals started walking in the direction we were pretty sure was right. After about 3 kilometers we were getting pretty discouraged...so like the Catholic missionaries we are we prayed a rosary. As soon as we started praying the rosary I immediately felt relaxed, I just knew we were going to be fine, and we were. Like a minute after we finished our rosary we were picked up by a nice, English speaking, young frenchman who took us straight to Ars...and wouldn't you know it....we walked in right as mass was starting.
Time to talk about Ars! It was beautiful, quiet, peaceful, contemplative, and all sort of other serene adjectives. Ars was where St. John Vianney, the patron Saint of priests and an all around baller, lived and worked. We were able to pray right next to his tomb! Devan has a huge devotion to St. JV and I am pretty convinced he would still be there praying right now if he didn't have missionary obligations. Anyways, we worked a little bit and were able to find a priest who spoke a little English who, after giving us some food, graciously drove us about 10 km to a nearby train station where we were thankfully able to get a very cheap train back to Lyon, right as the sun was going down. Since it was our last day in Lyon we decided to see the city...we ended up seeing so much more than we would've ever wanted.
We stepped off on train at about 4:30...we would end up walking for the next six hours. I absolutely love aimlessly wandering around foreign cities, a love that Devan shares as well. This particular time it would end up getting us in a tough, painful, annoying, frustrating, and above all else memorable situation. After we'd seen just about all we wanted to see of downtown Lyon we made the BRILLIANT decision to just walk home to our hotel! After all it was ONLY a couple kilometers. Nevermind the fact that we spoke no french and had no navigation/map. Despite Devan's very good sense of direction we ended up getting very very very lost and wandering around some very rough neighborhoods. This is where it gets awesome.
Lemme set the scene. We're in a scary part of town. We're tired, hungry, and sore. We're frustrated. We pray a rosary. Literally as the final amen is escaping our lips a man comes out of nowhere and walks up the street towards. We ask for help. Turns out he's British, and what'dya know he whips out his Iphone and gives us turn by turn directions back to our hotel! We make it home about thirty minutes later completely and utterly amazed at the power of the holy rosary. Not once but twice in one day!! Utterly exhausted, we passed out.
I'll write more tomorrow!
OK so what'd we do after that...we went to France!! WOoOoOoOO
Devan and I hopped on a plane at about 6 AM on the 26th with our backpacks and a lot of layers of clothing.
(Quick segway...my backpack has been through four years of University...countless retreats, camping-trips, and all around shenanigans, and now it is stalwartly carrying on through international adventures, getting stuffed way beyond capacity, and doing an admirable job. Way to go Backpack.)
On our way to Lyon we ended up having a 6 hour layover in Barcelona. Thankfully the Spanish were cool with us just walking out of the airport and exploring for awhile...so we got to have a sorta bonus trip to Barcelona as well. It was a really beautiful city and HOT. We were both pretty dang exhausted but we still managed to see a pretty decent portion of downtown Barcelona. We hung around the Placa Espanyola(yes that's the right spelling) for most of the time, took a bunch of pictures, and did some high quality people watching. The highlight of this leg of the trip had to be the Sangria and Paella at a street corner restaurant. It was so relaxing!!
After that adventure we passed-out in the airport for an hour or so and then hopped on our next flight that would take us to Lyon. Upon arriving in Lyon we realized our hotel was faaaaar away from the airport, and, thanks to a knee jerk reaction, ended up paying entirely way to much for a taxi out there. Live and learn right? Not really. We did the exact same thing the next day on our day-trip to Ars. EXCEPT THE TAXI DIDN'T EVEN TAKE US TO THE RIGHT TOWN.
Devan and I ended up going on a pretty crazy adventure that day. Like the above paragraph says, we got dropped off in the wrong town, and after a couple confusing conversations with some locals started walking in the direction we were pretty sure was right. After about 3 kilometers we were getting pretty discouraged...so like the Catholic missionaries we are we prayed a rosary. As soon as we started praying the rosary I immediately felt relaxed, I just knew we were going to be fine, and we were. Like a minute after we finished our rosary we were picked up by a nice, English speaking, young frenchman who took us straight to Ars...and wouldn't you know it....we walked in right as mass was starting.
Time to talk about Ars! It was beautiful, quiet, peaceful, contemplative, and all sort of other serene adjectives. Ars was where St. John Vianney, the patron Saint of priests and an all around baller, lived and worked. We were able to pray right next to his tomb! Devan has a huge devotion to St. JV and I am pretty convinced he would still be there praying right now if he didn't have missionary obligations. Anyways, we worked a little bit and were able to find a priest who spoke a little English who, after giving us some food, graciously drove us about 10 km to a nearby train station where we were thankfully able to get a very cheap train back to Lyon, right as the sun was going down. Since it was our last day in Lyon we decided to see the city...we ended up seeing so much more than we would've ever wanted.
We stepped off on train at about 4:30...we would end up walking for the next six hours. I absolutely love aimlessly wandering around foreign cities, a love that Devan shares as well. This particular time it would end up getting us in a tough, painful, annoying, frustrating, and above all else memorable situation. After we'd seen just about all we wanted to see of downtown Lyon we made the BRILLIANT decision to just walk home to our hotel! After all it was ONLY a couple kilometers. Nevermind the fact that we spoke no french and had no navigation/map. Despite Devan's very good sense of direction we ended up getting very very very lost and wandering around some very rough neighborhoods. This is where it gets awesome.
Lemme set the scene. We're in a scary part of town. We're tired, hungry, and sore. We're frustrated. We pray a rosary. Literally as the final amen is escaping our lips a man comes out of nowhere and walks up the street towards. We ask for help. Turns out he's British, and what'dya know he whips out his Iphone and gives us turn by turn directions back to our hotel! We make it home about thirty minutes later completely and utterly amazed at the power of the holy rosary. Not once but twice in one day!! Utterly exhausted, we passed out.
I'll write more tomorrow!
