December 9, 2012

Christmas in the City

Over 100 Trinity students and adults joined about 5 billion people yesterday in New York City (I have never seen so many people in my life and I've been to New York dozens of times).  We left Trinity around 5am and arrived near Times Square at 10am or so.  We broke up into a number of small groups and everyone was off to shop, sight see, etc.  Many kids had never been to New York before and were so excited to be there.  My group mostly wanted to hang around Times Square and visit stores (Toys r Us, the M&M store, etc).  They had purchased tickets in advance for a tour at Rockefeller Center.  They thought we were going on a tour of the NBC Studios but it turned out we had tickets for the Art and Architecture Tour of Rockefeller Center!  I was pretty excited but the looks on the kid's faces was devastation!  The guided tour - of both inside and outside - was actually fascinating and the students ended up really enjoying it.   Our tour guide was a Quincy, MA native and was very upbeat and good with the kids.

At the end of the day we all met up for the 5:30pm Mass at Saint Patrick's Cathedral.  Every spot was taken and about 20 of us had to sit at the very end of the cathedral in a little chapel called the Lady Chapel (you can see where we were sitting at this map).  We couldn't hear anything and were facing the other direction but it was still wonderful.  It was nice actually to be tucked away from the crowds.  After the homily I turned to the kids and joked, "Did you get all that?  Wasn't that the best homily you ever heard?"  We were back on the bus at 7pm and arrived at Trinity shortly after midnight.

Everyone had an absolute blast and kids were already talking about doing this again next year!  Thanks to everyone who came and to the adults who chaperoned.

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