Happy Easter!!

Kelsi: I have now posted my 3rd and final posting until next week. I am trying to catch up but I didn't want to mix it all up in one subject so I divided it. So Easter weekend and we are headed to Rome to see the Pope. We stay in Florence until Sat. and then get on a train and head to Rome. We have both been there before so we didn't need to do the whole tourist part of it although I did want to see inside the Colosseum since last time I went it was closed. So when we got there we checked into our hostel and headed to the Colosseum. Oh and did I mention that there was suppose to be 600,000 tourists in Rome Easter weekend! So we knew we would be dealing with lines. We got to the Colosseum and the line was sooo long. This woman walked by and tried to sell us the little tour deal which says that we can cut line and get an english speaking tour guide that will take us around the Colossseum for 20 euros. Well I was like ok lets do that since we get to skip this line. Oh I know what your thinking which is how in the world can they get away with that. Well the tour guides there and at every other famous tour site are protected by the Italian mafia so the police don't say anything to them and the people that have the little souvenir shops along the these tour sites are apart of the Jewish mafia. Crazy huh!! Anyways we go inside the Colosseum take a few pictures and head out. We wanted to go to church at St. Peter's Basilica but we found out that the only do the services in Latin and Italian and we were really wanting to go to an english Mass. Well so then my mom calls and tells me that she has gotten a hold of Sister Susan. Ok so we have family friends who is related to Sister Susan and she works at the Vatican and lives in Vatican City so mom has been trying to get in touch with her for us. Mom then gives me her number and I call her. I was a little nervous but she was so very nice and informed us of an Easter Vigil Mass that would take place that night and it was in english. We got directions to Santa Susana which is the name of the church and head that way. We get there rather early and we sit in like the 4th row. This church was so beautiful inside which should be of no surprise because all the churched in Europe are absolutely beautiful. The church begins to get crowded and as we are looking around we realize that 3/4 of the people were nuns. It was cool I mean we didn't feel weird or anything but it was just really interesting to see as many nuns as we did taking part in this english mass. I was suppose to try and find Sister Susan but after seeing all the nuns I didn't even know where to begin to look. The Mass was phenonmenal. It was the most beautiful Mass I have ever seen. Since it was the Easter Vigil they gave us our candles and they turned out all the lights and had a bonfire at the back of the church. The readings were so cool because they had 4 different speakers and it was in total darkness as they were reading. We saw 3 people get baptized which was also cool because I had never seen teens get baptized through the Catholic church. Sister Susan sought me out and introduced herself. I introduced her to Mary Shannon and we had a nice conversation for awhile and then we left. Sister Susan was so kind and helpful to us. After we ate we went back and went to bed since we were going to have to get up at 7a.m. to make it to the Mass with the Pope at 10:30. We got up and got ready and headed out. OMG the lines were ridiculous!!! There were hundreds and thousands of people heading to the Vatican and this was at like 8 a.m. We were told you were suppose to have tickets but they didn't ask us for ours so we just walked right on in and found a great seat!! We waited and waited and then after a couple of hours the place was packed. I mean you couldn't even see the St. Peter's Square it was covered with people. Thousands and thousands of people... people of all different kinds which was so cool to witness. Then we heard the Swiss guards and then we saw him!! Chills ran up our spines, tears down our face and there he was the Pope himself walking through the people up towards the church. The crowd was cheering for him and clapping and the whole place was just filled with utter happiness it was so amazing. He then reached the microphone and began to speak and within the first word the place went silent. These hundreds of thousands of people became so silent you could hear a pen drop. He proceeded to do the Easter Mass which was in Italian but the cool thing was when they did the readings they did them in different languages. Like someone would say the reading in italian then the next person would come up and say that same reading in a different langauage. It was really cool. They did alot of singing throughout the Mass which was different but way cool. Spiritually it was the most amazing thing I have ever experienced. I mean there we were Easter Sunday going to a Mass that the Pope was conducting. There's not a more perfect place to be at that very moment than where me and Mary Shannon were. After Mass he gave the Papel address to the world. He announced that "Christ has risen" in every language. It took about 10 minutes to say that small sentence in every language... I know hard to grasp right... As he would say the different languages the people of that ethnicity would stand and shout with praise as he said those 3 words. I will never forget the way I felt that very moment as I stood there watching the Pope and his every move just staring at him in amazement. After it was all over he stood there for about 10 minutes and just waved to everyone and smiled. People were showing emotions of all kind towards him crying, cheering, chanting, just doing anything and everything so that the Pope would know that his is loved and appreciated in so many ways that aren't even explainable. After he went in we began to work our way through the crowd. That was the biggest crowd I have ever seen I mean bigger than any concert I have ever been to. It was a mad house in trying to get out of there. We finally got out of there and went to find a quiet street to go eat. We find this place to eat because now it is about noon and we picked the wrong place. Man oh man it was so not good. But it was Easter and so we didn't want to complain and I don't even want to write it down to you all since it was Easter. Oh but it gets a little worse. Well so we were very unhappy about our lunch and by now we are tired and want to go take a nap so we head to the metro. Well in the metro your suppose to get a ticket which is 1 euro but most people never get a ticket because I mean the lines are long and usually you can just hop on and not worry about it. I know it sounds bad but after riding the metro so much the whole ticket thing just gets to be to much and you just start to get on ticketless. Well God was teaching us a lesson i'm sure of it. We don't get a ticket and head down the stairs to get on the metro and we see these 6 people in blue suits and they ask us for our tickets. Ummm ok I was like oh I have it somewhere let me look... knowing good and well we didn't have one. I keep messing around in my purse thinking they are going to grow tired and just let us go....nope they don't and so I pull out this old one and show it to them. They are like it's not valid which I knew and so I just played dumb and then we were like oh do we need to go get a ticket. They then are like no you need to come with us!! Crap we are introuble. They send us to this woman who wasn't going to give us a break at all. We start playing dumb and I say this is our first time out of the country and we didn't know and weren't aware of the fact that the tickets expire and then she looks at us and says it's not a language barrier the ticket says good for 75 minutes!! Ok now what!! Mary Shannon is like oh we didn't see that what do we need to do... do we need to go buy another ticket or what do we need to do? She then says to us you will have to pay a fine. We were like ok a 10 euro fine or something we understood. NO IT WAS A 50 EURO fine!!! Ok comon for not paying for a 1 euro ticket!!! She asks for my passport and all this information and I give it to her and I am like you want us to pay that right now. She says either we pay her upfront or we pay the post office the next day and it would go up to 100 euro!!! Omg this is nuts I tell her I don't have any money and she points me in the direction of the ATM. Well now i'm thinking we can just run away once we get up there but then she makes Mary Shannon stay with her so pretty much there is no getting out of this one so what do I do... I become even more frustrated and mad. I then say ok I need to see some i.d from you. Mary Shannon just kind of looks at me and then the woman was looks at me with confusion and I tell her how do I know you aren't trying to take me for everything I have just because? I said this doesn't make sense and I have never seen any of yall before. She then says ok and pulls out id. Ok so I throw in the towel and give her my money. I then asked if that 50 euro fine would get me on the metro or if we needed to go buy a 1 euro ticket and she says oh it will get you on the metro for only one ride!! That is the most ludacris thing I have ever heard!! I mean granted I know I was in the wrong but comon for a 50 euro ticket I would think you would have to do something really bad!! Now we are international criminals which haha is kind of cool but then one will ask for what and I'll will have to give that lame excuse. haha oh well we got over it well sort of and know that we can't really be mad because we got caught and we were in the wrong. So I have to just suck it up and go on! haha We went back to the hostel after that and took a nap and I called my family and talked to them and got really sad because that was the first holiday I have missed. I really did wake up Easter morning and was a little dissappointed that the Easter Bunny didn't find me ;) I have a 9 year old little sister so everything is still very big in our house! So yea I missed my family on Easter and all my extended family that gets together on Sunday and eats and catches up on everything. We always get together with everyone and always have a blast so that was sad for me but it's like my parents said I went to Mass with the Pope there is no better place to be on Easter than there which is so true I know but it was still a little sad for me. If my family is reading this I am so sorry I missed you all at Memaw's. I hope all is well with everyone and I miss you all and can't wait to get back and share stories!! Back to the rest of the story... sorry I tend to get side tracked really easy. We went out to eat that night and then came back to the hostel and met these cool guys and talked to them for awhile and then went to bed. We woke up the next morning to an early train ride back to home and layed in bed all day and had us some R&R!!! We were loving it too!!! We are now getting ready to head to Barcelona this weekend!! We are flying this time no overnight train for us so we are pretty excited about that!! We are hoping to find a beach so we can lay out all weekend!!! Cross your fingers for good weather!!! :) Love you all and miss ya! Talk to ya soon!!!