I Saw the Pope! But first I rode in a bus and wore a backpack.

Whew, this might be a long post.  Buckle up.  If you don't want to read the whole thing, I totally understand.  You're busy.  You have a life outside of this blog.  So to make it easy I will tell the short version of this story.

I saw the Pope in Korea and it was an amazing experience.

Done.  That's it.  Nothing more to know.

Hahahaha, no.  Of course there's more to this story!  I'll break up the events into the different things we did on different days but first, some background.

In order to see the Pope I signed up for Korean Youth Day (KYD).  Korean Youth Day is the Korean version of World Youth Day, a week long celebration of young Catholics coming together to celebrate being Catholic.  Do we have something like this in America?  I honestly don't know.  I tried to look it up online but couldn't find anything.  If anyone knows more, please tell me because I am interested in this information.

Korean Youth Day happens every 3 years (I only found that out after I got back from it) and this year was special because it was combined with Asian Youth Day (the same concept but for all of Asia) and Pope Francis was coming.  Big stuff.  I applied through my church and went with a group of about 100-150 people from my diocese, the Diocese of Wonju.  I could have theoretically gone with the Wonju delegate to Asian Youth Day but it overlapped with my American vacation.  So that was out.  Before the actual big event we had two "meetings" where we met our teams and did group activities and learned about the history of Catholicism in Korea.  Actually, I learned about that later on the internet because my Korean isn't good enough to understand a 45 minute lecture on the history of Catholicism without the use of visual aids.

Side note: Do people want to know more about the history of Catholicism in Korea?  It's actually kind of interesting and really unique.  Google it if you want to know more.  Or ask me and I'll write a blog post about it.  Just remember that I'm not a very reliable source of information on this topic because I don't study it, I just learn about it as I go.

Our two meetings went well for the most part.  The first one was really good but the second one wasn't as fun for me because I really wanted to get to know my team better but didn't have the chance since we were so busy listening to the Catholicism lecture.  But I was still mildly hopeful that the actual KYD would be fun.

Before we started off on our journey, we all received a mini backpack filled with 3 shirts, a collapsible water bottle, a high quality poncho (yes, that's a thing), and a hat.  Koreans are really, really good at giveaways.  I feel like in America we think it's branching out to do clickable pens.  But in Korea people are always giving away useful things like wet wipes or face masks.  One time I bought a box of cereal and it came with a mini hanger that you can dry socks from.  Good job, Korea!  I use that thing.

We all changed into the shirt we were supposed to wear that day and got on the bus.  Together we went to a town about 2 hours away (I'm not positive where it was to be honest with you) and had lunch.  Then we walked around a religious site where many martyrs were killed.  Once we got back on the bus we journeyed to Solmoe the place where we would spend most of our time.  Solmoe is also the site where St. Andrew Kim Taegon, the first Korean priest, was born.  At Solmoe (actually, kind of just near it in a field) they had a GIGANTIC tent-like structure set up to hold thousands of people.  We actually have structures like this in Iowa but usually they hold livestock and are a little smaller.  This one was pretty comfortable and had a stage, 4 gigantic TV screens, and approximately a million air conditioning units.  We all met for mass but were a little late so the priests and bishop were already filing in.  The priests from Wonju ran up the aisle behind them while putting on their vestments.  It was really funny.

Site of many martyr burials.

Crazy old tree.

A pretty church.

A nice grotto.

Giant Blue TV screen with priests on it.

Gigantic tent full of excited Korean Catholics. And me.

After mass we hung out a bit in the tent and played some games that I did not understand.  But I got an inflatable beach ball out of it.  Mostly we just socialized with one another.  In time, we met our "Leader" and got back on the bus.

I want to take a moment here to pause and just say how incredibly well organized this was.  Do you ever watch something like the Olympics Opening Ceremony and think to yourself, "How did they organize and coordinate all of this?  Who's in charge of making sure there is enough toilet paper?"  I think this type of thing all the time.  And that's exactly what I thought throughout this entire event.  The most incredible thing to me was that nearly everyone was a volunteer.  Like a really, really committed volunteer that was organized with coordinating jackets and t-shirts and umbrellas and dance moves and stuff.  I'm really very thank to the people of the Daejeon diocese for volunteering and organizing everything for all of us.  They did an amazing job.

The bus took us to Cheonan where we went to a parish to meet our homestay families!  This church was brand new and so pretty.  At the church we met our homestay families and I mentally prepared for a new Korean adventure.  More on that tomorrow!