Benedict, Morgan; Morgan, Benedict

That's right, I met the Pope today, sorta. I did meet up with Jessica and her friends outside of their B&B at eight thirty on Wednesday morning. I had agreed to attend the papal audience with them as my Wednesday nine a.m. was canceled, providing me with a rare opportunity to be blessed by the pope. We walked to the Vatican together and stood awkwardly outside the gates for half an hour trying to figure out if we needed tickets to get into St. Paul's piazza, or if you only needed tickets to sit in the pre set up chairs. Everyone going through security had tickets, but we couldn't be sure. Finally an American woman asked the guards the question on our minds, apparently we were allowed to get in. We went through security with no troubles and found a central position right up against the rail that separated the chairs from the standing room. We were quite early, but that worked out in our favor. Once the audience started we saw a German marching band enter at the beginning, and listened to the pope address the crowd in seven languages: Italian, French, English, German, Spanish, Portuguese,and a mystery one at the end that sounded like it might have been Russian or polish. My bet at the time was on polish as I was pretty sure that was where JP II was from, and I didn't think there was a large population of Russian Catholics. However, at the Easter service Russians were definitely addressed. It was a really neat thing to be able to witness, and we had a pretty good vantage point for the ceremony. At the very beginning of it The Holy Father rode around the crowd in his popemobile, waving and smiling at the cheering crowd. I do not have pictures of this...sorry. But! Jessica does and she has a much nicer camera than I do, so I will be stealing her pictures off of facebook once she uploads them :)After the mass we parted ways with plans to meet at seven for dinner and one gelato with one last trip to the trevi for the girls. I went back to my apartment and prepared for Art Gallery Management, and then walked up to the school for my last class of the day. Many of us had questions for our professor regarding our frustrating projects, and we got no sympathy, and little feedback to our curiosity. We were assigned groups, and luckily I was put in a group with a guy who knows what he's doing; he's interning for a gallery right now and has a great knowledge of modern art, he also knows a local artist. So hopefully this project wont be as difficult to coordinate as I'm anticipating. We'll see. I fell asleep a lot in this class, it was not good, I couldn't even tell you what the lecture was about, granted I'm writing this almost a week later, but still pretty inexcusable. After my less than satisfactory midterm grade and daunting project assignment I have very little motivation for this class. After class I had a little down time in my apartment before I met Jessica and her friends for supper once again. We went back to old trastevere to a different cheap restaurant. I really like these places, you can get a pizza (like a large thin crust) for three euro, and a huge pasta dish for five euro, it's a sweet deal. After dinner we went for Gelato and I had much better luck with flavours. I can no longer remember what I ordered, but I know I stayed away from all things pink, and it worked out well for me:) We sat at the trevi for awhile before heading home. The girls had an early flight, and my full belly was making me sleepy. I said goodbye to Jessica promising a summer picture exchange/get together.