(Warning: This first entry is a long one – to match the length of the day. The pictures are distributed throughout the entry.)
I don’t quite know how to begin this thing. In fact, I don’t quite know what day it is. What I do know is that it’s early on the second morning of being in Australia, and yesterday was a day that stretched from Sunday into Tuesday when somewhere beyond Hawaii we crossed an imaginary dateline and managed to lose all of Monday.
Sunday already had been a very busy day with both our regular Sunday Mass at Mont La Salle and then an afternoon Mass celebrating the 25th anniversary of the ordination of Fr. David Deibel, our chaplain there for the last 16 years. Around 6 PM one of the novices drove me to SFO where I would meet up with the rest of the contingent going to Australia from the United States. Packing was a challenge, of course, since I wanted to pack light and yet bring all I might need (the parachute didn’t make the cut). But I managed, repeating the mantra of “tickets, money, medicine, passport” as I went along.
I arrived at SFO at about 7:30 PM and the flight was scheduled to leave at 10:40 PM. I Proceeding to the Qantas counter, I found a long line to check bags in economy with almost none (of course) at the Business and First counters. Just for giggles, I walked over to the Business class counter and asked what it would cost to upgrade. The attendant smiled benignly and said: “Oh, about five thousand dollars.” My response was, “I’ll go get back in line now.” A half hour or so later, after glancing back and seeing a huge group of Vietnamese kids and adults, carrying big boxes and luggage and dressed in bright yellow t-shirts, getting into line a bit behind me and stretching out in a line down the hall, I got my ticket (seat 70E) – sorry, no window or aisle seats available – and headed over to security and the gate. I said a little prayer that 70E wasn’t going to be the middle seat in the 747’s economy section.
There was hardly anyone in the gate area at first, so I simply waited and read a bit.
Soon the place began to fill up and I discovered that the bright yellow t-shirted Vietnamese were 67 Lasallian Youth and their chaperones from the Vietnamese community in San Jose. I knew at least one of the chaperones, and we got re-acquainted. She explained that Br. Phong was in Vietnam with another contingent of 30 and they would all meet up in Australia.
Gradually our own group of twelve trickled in. When Paul Avvento got there, he told us that he was going to be keeping a website record of recorded conversations, film footage, and photos of the experience. He started in on
the interviews right there in the waiting area, speaking with some of the Vietnamese contingent. (Don’t know the URL, but I’ll post it here when I do know.)
Time came for boarding and they called rows 65 – 70. The others in my group had seats in rows 35 – 37, so I got into line and inched forward, being located near the end of this rather large group. Just as I was about to hand my ticket to the agent at the door, another agent reached over and grabbed my ticket from the other side. “Sir, are you traveling alone?” “Yes, I am,” I said.
He fiddled with the computer a bit, put another blank ticket in, gave it to me, and said “We’ve upgraded you to Business Class.” I said a polite “Thank you” and didn’t ask questions. Don’t know how; don’t know why – I was simply grateful. It turns out that they had changed planes in midstream and needed to rearrange folks in the three cabins. I was one of the lucky ones, and most of the others in our group were upgraded to Economy Plus. I love Qantas.
The trip was rather nice as a result. The “seat” turned into a bed at the touch of a button, and the service and food was pretty decent as well, as you can imagine. I decided to begin living the time schedule in Australia right away, having my dinner later and then trying to sleep during the time is was night in Australia. Generally, this worked pretty well. Would it be inappropriate if I spent some time during this trip praying for a similar
happenstance upgrade at the end of my time in Australia?
About fifteen hours, several movies, a couple of recorded TV programs, and half of a novel later, we arrived in the Sydney airport. We got our luggage, gathered together in one spot, and were processed by a lady from “quarantine” who asked if anyone had any pop-corn, wooden crosses , or other potentially disease-bearing food or plants. The guys had great fun later imitating her and what she might have said if anyone had indeed had a package of microwave popcorn in their luggage. I took a few pictures and was politely told not to do so, with a customs agent then going through my photographs and telling me the ones to delete. (We were told later that the
Vietnamese contingent had boxes with 400 plastic hats in them and were made to open up each box so that each hat could be shaken – don’t’ know why.)
Then it was off to another terminal, via bus across the tarmacs at Sydney, to catch our domestic flight to Melbourne. Our group was split up among two different flights, but they left pretty much within the same time frame. Otto, Brendan and myself went to our gate as the others went to theirs. That's a picture of them with a copy of The Australian newspaper. What I didn’t know at the
time was that Paul (the one doing the interviews, etc.) had realized that he’d left his very nice camera either on the plane from SFO or in SFO. So he stayed behind in Sydney trying to sort things out with Qantas and would figure out a way to get to Melbourne. More later about this little tidbit.
In Melbourne, we were met by Mr. Matt Breen, a teacher at a local Lasallian school,
and by Br. Adrian Watson, the main organizer of this whole event, who seemed to be just a tiny bit harried. We were then all put onto a large bus, along with Lasallians from Malaysia, Mexico, and elsewhere, and Br. Adrian gave his welcome and explained what would happen today. Off we went to downtown Melbourne and the grand Discovery Hotel. As we left the airport, I took a quick photograph of an older woman who was part of an arrival group and evidently appreciated being in Australia, to judge from her shawl. We were brought to what turned out to be a Youth Host
el with a solid community atmosphere. The room at the Discovery Hotel was indeed a discovery - seven bunk beds and little else. Well, this would be a new experience, wouldn’t it?
We took about 30 minutes to divide up the beds and then met with another teacher from one of the Lasallian schools here, Ivan, who would show us the public transportation ropes and take us to La Salle College (the name of the high school) in Malvern – a suburb of Melbourne - for our nametags and the like. Ivan is originally Irish (pretty obvious), went to a Lasallian school and is now teaching at one of the three Lasallian schools in the area. He was a great tour guide, taking us on the train out to Malvern and providing commentary at different places along the way. At La Salle College they were all ready for us with name tags, a backpack full of stuff, a couple of polo
shirts for the Brothers and very nice jackets with ILYG logo on them (yellow liner for students; red lining for Brothers). We stayed there having some tea or coffee, meeting others arriving from all over, and generally settling down a bit. Then Ivan helped us make our way back to our “hotel” via the local tram – so that we would know two ways to get back to the school for the daily events – and we had the next few hours to ourselves.
A couple of the guys wanted to check out local hotels or motels to see if there were any other accommodation options, so we spent a couple of hours walking within a 20-block radius of the Discovery Hotel, inquiring about the rates at hotels and resident apartments that we encountered. Let’s just say that the cost was rather prohibitive. We did, however, see a lot of “backpack” hotels, which evidently are quite popular here, and whose accommodations were the same as the place where we were staying. When we finally returned, we spoke to the young ladies staffing the desk at the Discovery Hotel, and the guys sweet-talked them into having us speak with the manager in charge o
f the group bookings who came out and couldn’t have been nicer or more accommodating. We left with three more rooms in the place –two single rooms that that they had been saving for bus drivers and a room with three bunk beds. Now the 13 of us could spread out a bit more. I was simply happy to be able to have a room to myself – after having checked with the other Brothers (Well, I was a bus driver at one time.). Privacy is one factor, of course, but it’s also simply the fact of having had my own room for most of my life in the Brothers. I would have stayed in the large room with the others if needed, but this new arrangement was preferable, if truth be told.
At 5:30 PM, we all met in the Big Room for prayer and a meeting. We sat on the floor and said the evening prayer in the Magnificat booklets, which Br. Peter had purchased for everyone. The intentions were sincere and extensive, including both those who’d sponsored our journeys and our hopes for the next two weeks. After the prayer, we introduced ourselves and Br. Peter shared some thoughts as to how to make our time together go more smoothly. It was all very practical and timely. Just at the beginning of our prayer time, the door opened and in walked
Paul, who’d finally arrived from Sydney. He had called Qantas at SFO, spoken with Qantas in Sydney, tracked his movements and possible places where he could have left his camera, and had failed to find it. Then, when he’d finally arrived in Melbourne, he had to wait for 4.5 hours to get a bus into the city – meeting lots of nice people along the way, apparently – and then taking a taxi to the Discovery Hotel. Having been to previous World Youth Day experiences, his attitude was still positive and he wasn’t going to let this little hiccup ruin it. (I’m not sure if he loves Qantas.) It turns out that I’d brought an extra small camera and I was able to give that to him to use.
After our prayer and meeting, different groups broke up to go out to dinner on their own. Br. Peter, Br. Richard, Paul and myself followed the advice of the front desk and walked some five blocks to a street full of restaurants. There we picked a small Italian restaurant that looked good and went it for some beers (Melbourne Bitter for most of us) and pizza. For some reason known only to God, it took some two hours for the pizza to get there. After an hour or so, we were
joking about the whole thing and ready to just lay our heads on the table and go to sleep. Other groups would come in, have there food, and leave, and here we were still waiting for our pizza. Br. Peter make a comment, half in jest, to one of the waiters that we should have a free round of beers because of the delay, and darned if that isn’t just what happened. This was a different waiter, and I think that he went to check on our order, since it was only 30 minutes after that that we finally received our food. It’s one of the few times that I’ve not left a tip.
Then it was back to grand Discover Hotel and a well-earned rest. I decided that I could simply not write this blog entry at that point but that I would do it in the morning. And there you have it. It will be another full day today - Wednesday (I think).
I don’t quite know how to begin this thing. In fact, I don’t quite know what day it is. What I do know is that it’s early on the second morning of being in Australia, and yesterday was a day that stretched from Sunday into Tuesday when somewhere beyond Hawaii we crossed an imaginary dateline and managed to lose all of Monday.
Sunday already had been a very busy day with both our regular Sunday Mass at Mont La Salle and then an afternoon Mass celebrating the 25th anniversary of the ordination of Fr. David Deibel, our chaplain there for the last 16 years. Around 6 PM one of the novices drove me to SFO where I would meet up with the rest of the contingent going to Australia from the United States. Packing was a challenge, of course, since I wanted to pack light and yet bring all I might need (the parachute didn’t make the cut). But I managed, repeating the mantra of “tickets, money, medicine, passport” as I went along.
I arrived at SFO at about 7:30 PM and the flight was scheduled to leave at 10:40 PM. I Proceeding to the Qantas counter, I found a long line to check bags in economy with almost none (of course) at the Business and First counters. Just for giggles, I walked over to the Business class counter and asked what it would cost to upgrade. The attendant smiled benignly and said: “Oh, about five thousand dollars.” My response was, “I’ll go get back in line now.” A half hour or so later, after glancing back and seeing a huge group of Vietnamese kids and adults, carrying big boxes and luggage and dressed in bright yellow t-shirts, getting into line a bit behind me and stretching out in a line down the hall, I got my ticket (seat 70E) – sorry, no window or aisle seats available – and headed over to security and the gate. I said a little prayer that 70E wasn’t going to be the middle seat in the 747’s economy section.There was hardly anyone in the gate area at first, so I simply waited and read a bit.
Soon the place began to fill up and I discovered that the bright yellow t-shirted Vietnamese were 67 Lasallian Youth and their chaperones from the Vietnamese community in San Jose. I knew at least one of the chaperones, and we got re-acquainted. She explained that Br. Phong was in Vietnam with another contingent of 30 and they would all meet up in Australia.Gradually our own group of twelve trickled in. When Paul Avvento got there, he told us that he was going to be keeping a website record of recorded conversations, film footage, and photos of the experience. He started in on
the interviews right there in the waiting area, speaking with some of the Vietnamese contingent. (Don’t know the URL, but I’ll post it here when I do know.)Time came for boarding and they called rows 65 – 70. The others in my group had seats in rows 35 – 37, so I got into line and inched forward, being located near the end of this rather large group. Just as I was about to hand my ticket to the agent at the door, another agent reached over and grabbed my ticket from the other side. “Sir, are you traveling alone?” “Yes, I am,” I said.
He fiddled with the computer a bit, put another blank ticket in, gave it to me, and said “We’ve upgraded you to Business Class.” I said a polite “Thank you” and didn’t ask questions. Don’t know how; don’t know why – I was simply grateful. It turns out that they had changed planes in midstream and needed to rearrange folks in the three cabins. I was one of the lucky ones, and most of the others in our group were upgraded to Economy Plus. I love Qantas.The trip was rather nice as a result. The “seat” turned into a bed at the touch of a button, and the service and food was pretty decent as well, as you can imagine. I decided to begin living the time schedule in Australia right away, having my dinner later and then trying to sleep during the time is was night in Australia. Generally, this worked pretty well. Would it be inappropriate if I spent some time during this trip praying for a similar
happenstance upgrade at the end of my time in Australia?About fifteen hours, several movies, a couple of recorded TV programs, and half of a novel later, we arrived in the Sydney airport. We got our luggage, gathered together in one spot, and were processed by a lady from “quarantine” who asked if anyone had any pop-corn, wooden crosses , or other potentially disease-bearing food or plants. The guys had great fun later imitating her and what she might have said if anyone had indeed had a package of microwave popcorn in their luggage. I took a few pictures and was politely told not to do so, with a customs agent then going through my photographs and telling me the ones to delete. (We were told later that the
Vietnamese contingent had boxes with 400 plastic hats in them and were made to open up each box so that each hat could be shaken – don’t’ know why.)Then it was off to another terminal, via bus across the tarmacs at Sydney, to catch our domestic flight to Melbourne. Our group was split up among two different flights, but they left pretty much within the same time frame. Otto, Brendan and myself went to our gate as the others went to theirs. That's a picture of them with a copy of The Australian newspaper. What I didn’t know at the
time was that Paul (the one doing the interviews, etc.) had realized that he’d left his very nice camera either on the plane from SFO or in SFO. So he stayed behind in Sydney trying to sort things out with Qantas and would figure out a way to get to Melbourne. More later about this little tidbit.In Melbourne, we were met by Mr. Matt Breen, a teacher at a local Lasallian school,
and by Br. Adrian Watson, the main organizer of this whole event, who seemed to be just a tiny bit harried. We were then all put onto a large bus, along with Lasallians from Malaysia, Mexico, and elsewhere, and Br. Adrian gave his welcome and explained what would happen today. Off we went to downtown Melbourne and the grand Discovery Hotel. As we left the airport, I took a quick photograph of an older woman who was part of an arrival group and evidently appreciated being in Australia, to judge from her shawl. We were brought to what turned out to be a Youth Host
el with a solid community atmosphere. The room at the Discovery Hotel was indeed a discovery - seven bunk beds and little else. Well, this would be a new experience, wouldn’t it?We took about 30 minutes to divide up the beds and then met with another teacher from one of the Lasallian schools here, Ivan, who would show us the public transportation ropes and take us to La Salle College (the name of the high school) in Malvern – a suburb of Melbourne - for our nametags and the like. Ivan is originally Irish (pretty obvious), went to a Lasallian school and is now teaching at one of the three Lasallian schools in the area. He was a great tour guide, taking us on the train out to Malvern and providing commentary at different places along the way. At La Salle College they were all ready for us with name tags, a backpack full of stuff, a couple of polo
shirts for the Brothers and very nice jackets with ILYG logo on them (yellow liner for students; red lining for Brothers). We stayed there having some tea or coffee, meeting others arriving from all over, and generally settling down a bit. Then Ivan helped us make our way back to our “hotel” via the local tram – so that we would know two ways to get back to the school for the daily events – and we had the next few hours to ourselves.
A couple of the guys wanted to check out local hotels or motels to see if there were any other accommodation options, so we spent a couple of hours walking within a 20-block radius of the Discovery Hotel, inquiring about the rates at hotels and resident apartments that we encountered. Let’s just say that the cost was rather prohibitive. We did, however, see a lot of “backpack” hotels, which evidently are quite popular here, and whose accommodations were the same as the place where we were staying. When we finally returned, we spoke to the young ladies staffing the desk at the Discovery Hotel, and the guys sweet-talked them into having us speak with the manager in charge o
f the group bookings who came out and couldn’t have been nicer or more accommodating. We left with three more rooms in the place –two single rooms that that they had been saving for bus drivers and a room with three bunk beds. Now the 13 of us could spread out a bit more. I was simply happy to be able to have a room to myself – after having checked with the other Brothers (Well, I was a bus driver at one time.). Privacy is one factor, of course, but it’s also simply the fact of having had my own room for most of my life in the Brothers. I would have stayed in the large room with the others if needed, but this new arrangement was preferable, if truth be told.
At 5:30 PM, we all met in the Big Room for prayer and a meeting. We sat on the floor and said the evening prayer in the Magnificat booklets, which Br. Peter had purchased for everyone. The intentions were sincere and extensive, including both those who’d sponsored our journeys and our hopes for the next two weeks. After the prayer, we introduced ourselves and Br. Peter shared some thoughts as to how to make our time together go more smoothly. It was all very practical and timely. Just at the beginning of our prayer time, the door opened and in walked
Paul, who’d finally arrived from Sydney. He had called Qantas at SFO, spoken with Qantas in Sydney, tracked his movements and possible places where he could have left his camera, and had failed to find it. Then, when he’d finally arrived in Melbourne, he had to wait for 4.5 hours to get a bus into the city – meeting lots of nice people along the way, apparently – and then taking a taxi to the Discovery Hotel. Having been to previous World Youth Day experiences, his attitude was still positive and he wasn’t going to let this little hiccup ruin it. (I’m not sure if he loves Qantas.) It turns out that I’d brought an extra small camera and I was able to give that to him to use.After our prayer and meeting, different groups broke up to go out to dinner on their own. Br. Peter, Br. Richard, Paul and myself followed the advice of the front desk and walked some five blocks to a street full of restaurants. There we picked a small Italian restaurant that looked good and went it for some beers (Melbourne Bitter for most of us) and pizza. For some reason known only to God, it took some two hours for the pizza to get there. After an hour or so, we were
joking about the whole thing and ready to just lay our heads on the table and go to sleep. Other groups would come in, have there food, and leave, and here we were still waiting for our pizza. Br. Peter make a comment, half in jest, to one of the waiters that we should have a free round of beers because of the delay, and darned if that isn’t just what happened. This was a different waiter, and I think that he went to check on our order, since it was only 30 minutes after that that we finally received our food. It’s one of the few times that I’ve not left a tip.Then it was back to grand Discover Hotel and a well-earned rest. I decided that I could simply not write this blog entry at that point but that I would do it in the morning. And there you have it. It will be another full day today - Wednesday (I think).
More pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/gvangrie/AustraliaWednesdayJuly92008
