Day 88: 29/3/13
I was wide awake early this morning as I had gone to bed so early. I still didn't get up properly until about 10!
As it was Good Friday I looked up Catholic Churches and realised there was one just 5 minutes walk away. So I had no excuse!!
The Stations of the Cross were on at 12 so I went to that. It wasn't a Father Hughes job anyway- we had to say a load of prayers at each station, pause for reflection and sing a verse of a song! It was the same verse for all 14 stations! It took about an hour I go through.
I intended to go to the supermarket then and buy some food instead of eating in restaurants and cafes all the time. There is a shopping centre really near me too so I went there but everything was closed as it is a public holiday. Restaurants and pub were open though which was weird! I couldn't do any shopping so I went bak to the hostel and read for a while and then decided I might as well go to the Passion at 3pm.
When I got there the church was packed. I should have stayed there from the stations as all the seats were gone and there was hardly even room to stand around the side. I found a spot I stand right at the very back. It was fairly crowded- you wouldn't want to be a person that would faint easily as it was really stuffy and we were a long time standing! The whole thing took a out an hour and a half!! The majority of the congregation were Asian looking. I didn't even realise that many Asians were Catholic. It definitely is a Catholic Church anyway- I checked that!! I guess most of the Australians that go to Mass are Protestant or Anglican or something.
Anyway, the Mass was disappointing as I didn't get to say Crucify Him or anything!! There were two different people reading the first and second readings and then the priest read the whole Passion by himself. It wasn't like ours with speaking parts it was just more the text from the gospel. There was a choir aswell that were doing real church choir singing with some parts in Latin in about 6 part harmony and they sang at the important parts of the passion. After that there was the veneration of the cross where the choir sang for ages and the priests all gathered around the cross but te congregation weren't given an opportunity to kiss the cross or anything. Then there was Communion which took a long time as there were lots of people there. The choir were fairly impressive singing some Motet that Handl wrote so that was nice.
I had texted Laura early in the day to see what she was at and I met up with her for tea after Mass. It looks like Jamie may be getting sponsored so that's good for them, but there's still a lot to organise about her panel and career break. So that's mostly what we were chatting about.
After that I went back to the hostel. I finished the book I was reading and then I was chatting to a German girl in the room for a good while. We were talking about school and in Germany at grade 5 you are sent to three different schools depending on ability. The lowest level will finish in grade 9 at age 15 or so and won't be able to go to university! The next level finish at grade 10 and they can only go to university if they do an apprenticeship with a business or something first. Only the highest level can go straight to university. It seems madness for it all to be separated so early!! She seemed fairly angry aswell about Germaby bailing out everyones economy so we veered off that topic quickly!!
Anyway, that was my day. Every now and again I was laughing to myself about poor Father Hughes and the pink snack!!