Papal Audience

So, it is a JFRC tradition to go to a papal audience together as a student body. We all woke up at the crack of dawn and tromped down to the Vatican to stand in line. When they started accepting people into the hall we were all towards the beginning of the line. Everyone raced to get inside the hall first. We had heard that Benedict walks down the center aisle and shakes the hands of the people sitting there. So... everyone hurried to sit on the aisle. They load up the far side first and then load up the near side, but since all the aisle seats were taken by the time I got up there five of us went to sweet-talk a Swiss Guard into letting us take the good seats on the other side of the aisle. Luckily, this worked, haha and so we ended up with five of the best seats in the house (for us lowly people who didn't qualify to sit in the first 40 rows of reserved seating). So I ended up on the aisle in row 41!! Woo hoo!

The audience was interesting, for the most part it was anti-climactic after our four-hour wait to get our seats. But, Loyola University JFRC was mentioned and we all stood up and cheered. Unfortunately though, Benedict decided not to walk down the aisle, so I didn't get to shake his hand across the wooden barrier :(