Notre Dame Trip Days 3 and 4

Now that I've finally figured out how to connect to the wireless network here at Notre Dame I can give a quick update. First things first: yesterday. Two words: Chicago. Traffic. We left Jackson, Minnesota on time at 7:00 a.m., then around 2:00 p.m. got bogged down for two hours trying to get through Chicago. We were trying to avoid the Ryan Expressway because the official site said it was under construction, so we took what we thought could make better time on another road. Instead we became the incarnation of that old hobbit saying, "Short cuts make long delays." And if it wasn't the traffic it was the electrical storm. Sheets of water came pelting down on us as we rolled through Illinois, and we were surrounded by dozens of flashes of lightning. No one's car was hit by lightning on this leg of the trip, though, so we counted ourselves lucky. We rolled into Notre Dame at about 8:30 p.m., exhausted and two and a half hours late. We were afraid the youth group had missed important orientation information, but the ND Vision people were great and got the kids right into the keynote speech. ND Vision even ordered sub sandwiches for our teens (and for us!), since we hadn't had time to stop for dinner. The rest of us got settled in by about 11:00 p.m., and woke up fresh and ready to attend our conferences. My favorite line from the keynote speech last night: "Build a man a fire and he stays warm for the night; set a man on fire and he stays warm for the rest of his life." The campus here is absolutely beautiful. I've got room for over 1,000 pictures on my camera's memory card, and I may just take that many before we leave on Friday. And the campus bookstore is almost worth the drive in itself. I've never seen such an incredible section of religious books. I spent an hour in there today, and I imagine I'll go back a few more times before Friday. So far I've only bought a hat for myself, but that's only because I was too overwhelmed to get anything else. I'm going to have to bring this to a close. Sorry for the rambling nature of this post, but I need to run to dinner and don't have time to make it more coherent. Tonight I'm going to attend the rosary at the Grotto, then Vespers in the Basilica. And I hope to get to Morning Prayer tomorrow at 7:30 a.m. I'll let you know tomorrow what they were like.