Day 83

Katie and I got up to get ready to go to mass in the morning. There are two nuns who are basically our campus ministry here, and they agreed to take anyone who wanted to go to mass at their chapel (which, as usual, was actually huge and magnificent) at 10:45. Initially, they were going to take us all to mass at Notre Dame, but that just wasn't going to work out this weekend.

The nuns are super sweet, and American, so that's nice. Their chapel is about a five minute walk from our campus, so that was good, too. It's called the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal, and that's actually where St. Catherine Labouré saw Mary appear with the Miraculous Medal. St. Catherine was a Daughter of Charity, the order of nuns founded by St. Vincent de Paul, and St. Vincent is the patron saint of my school, so this is all really cool for us. St. Louise de Marillac (one of our buildings on the Queens campus is named for her) and St. Catherine's incorruptible bodies were present in the chapel. (Side note--St. Vincent de Paul's remains are in the church that's attached to our campus/where a bunch of Vincentian priests live. So we'll have to see him at some point, too).

The mass was beautiful. It was in French, of course, but the sisters at least gave us English translations of the readings. We also had a paper with all the prayers and whatnot in French, so I practiced my pronunciation some. They said the Gloria in Latin, though, so I was at least happy to be able to read that.

The nuns explained that in the homily, the priest was basically encouraging us to go out and be the joy that the world needs right now. That's not an easy thing to do, but I plan to try it.

We were also given time to pray at the altar following the mass. It was very special.

After mass, the school gave us pizza again. It was yummy!

Katie, Gina, and I decided (with the subtle encouragement of Matthieu) to go walk around our area some. We saw many people outside enjoying the gorgeous weather, trying to regain that sense of normalcy. I enjoyed it.

We went back to campus just for a minute (I really just wanted to see if they were doing 4:00 snacks again...and they didn't), and then headed out again with several more people just to do some more walking. I think we all really needed fresh air and exercise.

Dinner was at 6:45 again, and once again we were super thankful to the kitchen staff for coming to make us food.

Katie and I then Skyped with Anarita for a couple hours. It was nice to see her face, too. We had a lot of fun being silly and taking a million selfies so she could find the right one to post for my birthday.

With my birthday being just a few hours away, I was getting nervous! I always do for some reason. I'm crazy. But I think this time I'm just conflicted. I want to be able to do lots of fun things, but I'm also too scared to be out too late or with too small a group or in too touristy of an area. It sucks. But I mean, things could be a lot worse. When looking at the big picture, my birthday is pretty insignificant. Still, though, I plan on enjoying my day to the best of my ability.