Sofia Somewhere

A few weeks too late... but I'm back home. Home sweet home. :)

Since we had no classes on Friday, I went with a few friends to visit Torreciudad for the day. Torreciudad is a shrine dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It's located in the north of Spain, about a 3 hour drive by car from Pamplona. Since the eleventh century, people have kept alive the custom of coming on pilgrimage to pray to Our Lady. The actual shrine was built under the guidance of the St. Josemaria Escriva and was inaugurated on July 7, 1975. He built the shrine out of his love for Mary and so that other people may come shore their love and receive spiritual miracles. He hoped for “the conversion and the peace of many souls.” The story of St. Josemaria is that when he was two years old, he and his sisters fell seriously ill. His sisters died, but after much praying to the Virgin from his mother, St. Josemaria lived. Later on, his mother with his father brought him to Torreciudad (then just a tower, and a small hermitage) to give thanks to the Lady. Much later on, St. Jos...

Way overdue but here it is. We left Pamplona for Rome on the 3 rd of April and as the bus pulled out of the parking lot we prepared ourselves for a 24-hour trip on the bus. I was part of the Larrabide group, we were ten: me, Larri, ShanShan, Marina, Emilia, Patri, Isabel, Elisa, Teresa and Clara. But we were part of a much larger group, which was composed of practically all the women in the University of Navarra (and from Pamplona) that were going to Rome. We started the trip off with a prayer, of course, and then passed around some gummies. Bad idea; I ate too much and spent the next two hours with a stomach-ache. Fortunately, we stopped soon after that at a gas station in the border of France. The trip went smoothly from there. We watched a film, I read a little, and stopped a few hours later for dinner. We watched another film afterwards but I fell asleep in the middle. When I woke up we were in Italy already! The hours passed by and the journey didn’t feel too tiring. We stop...

Happy Easter to everyone! How was your Holy Week? Mine was great. I spent an amazing week in Rome, but I'll blog about that another time. In the meantime, here are photos from Valencia , but I have yet to get the ones from my cousin.

I left Pamplona Monday evening at around 11 for Valencia. The bus ride was about seven hours, and I tried to sleep during most of it. We arrived in Valencia at 5:30, and it was pretty cold. My cousin Andie picked me up. I haven’t seen Andie in probably more ten years, as she lives in Spain, and it was good catching up. We drove to her place, and went to sleep. I woke up at about nine, thanks to the loud firecrackers going off every five seconds. We had breakfast together, then I showered and changed, and met her husband, Miguel. At about eleven, we went out. Andie lives to the west, out of the center so we took a taxi to the Old Quarter, where all the craziness of the festival is.

I'm going to Valencia tonight so I won't be able to upload pictures from the Javeirada. But here are a few... Some pilgrims on the side of the road. Me with a background Lunch break! (L-R) Lorena (Valencia), ShanShan (China), Bea (Madrid), Carmen (Sevilla), Ofelia (Taiwan), Me

I woke up at about 7:30 on Saturday morning. I showered, dressed, and prepared my food for the day. Then Bea and I went down and met up with ShanShan and Carmen from the other apartments. We walked to the parroquia (parish church) together. There we met with two other girls, Ofelia and Lorena. There would be plenty of pilgrims from all over Navarra, and some parts of Spain, and the parroquia helped organize buses for us to take. The complete pilgrimage is actually 50km, but we opted for option B: to ride the bus and then walk 23 km. There was also a third option, in which you only had to walk 5km. Anyway, by 9:00 everyone was in the bus, and ready to go. We prayed a little first and the priest explained about the Indulgence Plenary. Since it is the Pauline Year, the Pope has granted to the Archbishop of Navarra to grant the Plenary Indulgence to those who, aside from doing to the pilgrimage to Javier (birthplace of Saint Francis Xavier), 1) prayed for the Pope 2) went to mass and 3)...