Sunday, September 30, 2007 Day 4 of my 4 day weekend: Procession of the Virgen de Carmen

Sunday, September 30, 2007 Day 4 of my 4 day weekend: Procession of the Virgen de Carmen

Since I went to bed this morning around 4:30 I didn’t mind when I woke up at noon. I convinced Olga I didn’t need breakfast since we would have almuerzo in about an hour, so I worked until 1, and then ate. I worked more until about 3:15 when Olga and I bundled up (it was suddenly a cool day, very much unlike the entire week before) and walked to the Plaza de Armas and the Cathedral for the annual Procession of the Virgen de Carmen. The Virgen de Carmen is the patron of Chile and since September is the Mes de la Patria (Month of the Country, with all the Fiestas Patrias and such), the last Sunday of every September they have a huge procession of the Virgen.

We got there a little before 4 and the Plaza was full of people. And many of the streets surrounding the plaza were different churches, high school groups, etc. already lined up and ready to march. There were two Cardinals and about 10 bishops and from 4 till about 5 the different groups marched past us then the cardinals and the statue of the virgin, the whole time praying the rosary and singing, which was being transmitted through the plaza and the processional route through huge speakers.

After the streets around the plaza emptied, I realized that those people were the beginning of the parade. After they all marched through, the cardinals et. al. went, then the Virgen. Finally they slowly let all the rest (i.e. Olga and I and the thousands of other people) follow behind. We were really luckily and ended following about half a block behind the Virgen. We marched through the heart of downtown about 8 blocks in a big loop and ended up back at the Plaza around 6, which was now set up for a HUGE mass. At 6:25 the Cardinal (who I later found out is a personal secretary for the Pope and worked with JPII for 17 years) began the mass. I’ve never been to a mass with so many people (well over a thousand) and amazingly it was barely over an hour long. But absolutely beautiful.

Olga and I hurried home to meet up with Mario, Rino, Evan and Miguel who were all coming over for once. We were both cold, hungry, and had to pee, so Olga bought us some kettle corn and we joyful scurried back reminiscing on the beautiful day. Mario was at the apartment when we got there and when everyone else arrived we feasted. They stayed until about 11:00 after dragging Miguel off my computer where he’d been playing games for the past hour +. I helped Olga clean up and then headed to bed to finally start my homework, which if you’ve read attentively, you’ll notice that I really didn’t do any all weekend! But of course, I ended up chatting with Jamie online then talking to Trevor until about 2:30! Today marked the 4 month mark that we haven’t seen each other, and I finally had a pretty intense breakdown. Needless to say, I didn’t get much homework accomplished.