Bloggers share World Youth Day excitement

As I write this, it’s almost noon on Monday in Sydney, where World Youth Day activities are about to step into high gear. Our bloggers over on the CNS World Youth Day blog have been chronicling the excitement they’ve been feeling and some of the long journeys they’ve had to undertake to get to Sydney. Some highlights:

— Anna Weaver, a reporter/photographer for the Hawaii Catholic Herald, has been providing details on some of the American pilgrimage groups stopping in her state on their way to Sydney as well as Hawaiians heading to WYD.

— Joanna Lawson, who lives in Perth, Western Australia, admits she had mixed feelings about being a pilgrim in her own country, but later had no problem getting caught up in the excitement in Perth and later in Sydney itself.

— Paul Haring, the photographer we sent to Sydney to cover WYD, also saw the excitement during his layover at LAX, spent five hours stuck on the tarmac before his flight to Sydney was canceled (also reported by Tim Drake of the National Catholic Register), then photographed a unique early morning Mass celebrated on an airport ticket counter.

—Kris Dmytrenko, a Toronto-based associate producer at Salt + Light Television, Canada’s Catholic network, tells of the irony of running into an acquaintance whose life was changed by the last World Youth Day, in 2005 in Germany, and also writes about meeting more pilgrims on his flight to Sydney.

— Emily Anderson, a parish youth ministry director, tell how the virtue of patience was a lesson her charges had to learn on the first leg of their journey.

There’s plenty more at the blog. Make sure you follow it through the end of World Youth Day.