POPE: Encounter with teh youth

Pope visit.

We left ella's house at 1 am. everything was dark, and surprisingly, there were still a lot of cars on the street. Prior to this, I was at the trapeze until 9pm and when I took a nap when I got home. anyhow, SLEX was traffic because there was a road block and when we re-routed to Roxas boulevard, it started congesting at the US Embassy. We took another route through Taft and eventually, we reached UST.

When we got to UST, there was a long LONG line awaiting us. We told ourselves that there was no way we'd get a good spot with this line, so we went straight to the front. There, we saw that there was no line and that everyone was just crowding the gate. With the help of my short friends, they helped us get through the crowd and so we got a little closer to the gate.

It was already 2:30am and people were already filling up the streets. We thought to ourselves that all we have to do is wait for 30 more minutes then we'll finally be able to get in. But after sometime, they announced that they'd open the gates at 4am. People got pissed and started yelling their griefs. Some of them even collapsed probably because of the heat and/or they probably felt claustrophobic. When they opened the gates, it was like all hell broke loose. People just kept pushing, to the point that I was looking back and I didn't have to move because they were the ones moving me. One of my friends almost fainted because she got squished.

When we finally got in, we scouted for a spot and luckily we got a nice one. it wasn't at the very front, but it was quite near to it and it was also near the aisle. We finally got settled at 4:30am and decided to rest for a bit. Later on, they announced that there was going to be a mass at 5am since it was a sunday and they thought that since we were there, we might not have time to celebrate the mass in our respective parishes.

After the mass, they had a program prepared for us. A little singing and dancing, and whatnots to keep us entertained while waiting for the pope. it was 6am that time, and all I wanted to do was sleep. It was a loooong wait for the pope. Luckily, we made baon food. Although we couldn't eat or drink much because we didn't want to use the portalet (which was a horrifying experience for me).

At around 9:40am, they started playing lively music. At this point, people thought that the pope was already here. there were some assholes screaming and making people think that the pope is on their side but in fact he wasn't. by 10am, People were screaming non-stop and that's when I knew that the pope has finally arrived.

We were told beforehand that the pope wasn't going to celebrate the mass in UST. Instead, we would just be reading the liturgy. Part of this, they chose several speakers to share their sentiments to the pope; One of which was glaizell. She had the shortest speech among all of them, but it was the one that hit me the most.

It was raining, we were standing, and we were getting hungry. by the time the event ended, people took selfies by the stage while my friends took their fair share of selfies. The time was 12noon. We passed by Mcdonald's since that was the said meeting place. We couldn't contact the driver because our signal was still blocked. We headed towards Mich's dorm and then we decided to wait by the nearby bakery. I fell asleep on the table and when I woke up, it was around 2pm. And by that time, they already found us and so we headed home.