Day Of The Sun

After yesterday's day of driving around the greater Los Angeles area, it was nice to not be so busy today. Tony has been attending Mass at a church in Anaheim for the past few weeks, and our big Sunday activity was going together. He had the bus schedule all figured out, so after breakfast we walked to a nearby street corner and waited at the bus stop. When the bus appeared, I bought a one-ride ticket, but Tony bought a pass so he could run some errands later in the day. It took about 15 minutes to get to our destination.

A young woman got off the bus at the same stop as us, and I struck up a conversation with her as we waited for the light to change so we could cross the street. She said she was in the choir, told us that today was their once monthly chant mass, and that we were in for a treat.

The choir did a great job. Our church occasionally uses chant form for some of the common prayers, but I've never been in a setting where so much of the ceremony was sung. The chanting was beautiful, but it was hard to sing along because I didn't understand the Latin words. For the most part, I just listened and took it all in. I did know a few of the prayers, and it felt good to sing those.

The church has Mass in three languages--English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. The service before ours was in Spanish, and Tony told me they sometimes sell tacos. However, we were out of luck today, so on the way back to the hotel we got off the bus a few blocks early and stopped at a buffet restaurant for lunch. We walked the rest of the way to the hotel, and I only had ten minutes to get my things together and get outside for my airport shuttle.

The trip back home went well--there were no problems getting through security, the flight left on time and actually arrived back in St. Louis about 15 minutes early, and there was a parking garage shuttle waiting at the curb when I got out of the terminal. When I got to the house the cats were waiting for me, wanting to know where I'd been for the past few days. I tried to explain it to them, but I don't think they understood.