Monday, August 15 Arrival to Madrid, Spain

At last we have arrived. The way here, however, was not the least bit eventless. When we reached London, we met several other groups traveling to Madrid for WYD including a charismatic group from Tampa, FL, a boys and girls group from Connecticut, and even a group of girls from the Philippines. Having lived in the Philippines for two years, I was eager to talk to them. Meeting people from other countries who share your same faith and values is a frequent occurrence in WYD.

When we arrived to the Madrid airport the entire atmosphere seemed to be absorbed in WYD fever. We were definitely not the only ones slightly clueless as to where we should pick up our bags nor were we the only ones who were encountering complications with transportation to our lodgings. Keep in mind though that this is all part of the full pilgrimage experience.  A welcoming committee of young WYD volunteers greeted us as we exited customs. We easily recognized them as Regnum Christi members because of their exclusive and distinguishing sombreros, which you will surely recognize in the pictures.

With the help of two cheerful RC volunteers, we got on a bus with other RC groups to the University of Francisco de Vitoria and then to the Everest school. All of the RC groups at WYD are lodging at the University where we were going to stay originally. However, due to the influx of RC members we were moved to the Everest school, an RC grade school.

We were all extremely excited and relieved to finally arrive at the place we would call home for the next five days. We showered for the first time after 36 hours of traveling and we were able to begin the pilgrimage with Mass that evening in celebration of the feast of the Assumption. Afterwards, Caroline Wilders (our director and a very experienced pilgrim) gave us our teams and our official WYD backpacks, metro tickets and maps, food tickets, WYD passes, and all the other important things that we must make sure we don’t lose. Next in the make shift schedule was dinner. We Americans (and I will take the liberty to include the Canadians as well) are used to the typical three meals a day at approximately 7am, noon, and 5 pm. However, Spaniards prefer to eat a later lunch at 2 pm and a much later dinner at around 10 pm. After a quick picnic dinner on the grass we went to bed in our sleeping bags and blow-up mattresses, happy to be sleeping in the horizontal position.

The peaceful sleep was short lived, however. Several of us woke up at midnight, thinking that it was already morning, but we soon realized that the noise and commotion outside was only a group of about 100 Venezuelans who had just arrived. About an hour later we were all back to bed and asleep.

This concludes our second day of our journey and our arrival to Madrid. We are all excited for our first day in Madrid. Stay tuned for more updates to come.