Pope-ular Papa!

There's a total buzz around town right now since The Pope has been here, in Luanda, for the last 4 days! It's been pretty crazy. Even work was cancelled on Friday and Monday (the days the Pope was scheduled to be at the airport) because they predicted the traffic might be so bad that it could take the men 5 hours to get home from work (which is only 5 miles away). We were not on lock down or anything, but they did encourage us to stay on the compound if possible so as to avoid all of the choas surrounding the Pope's visit. We did not have a chance to actually go see him (for good reason- sadly 2 people got trampled in a stampede on Saturday while rushing to get a good seat to hear him speak), but it is pretty cool to think that he is in town while we are living here. The locals were all very excited to have him here too. There are posters up all over town with "Papas" face on them- they were taped to fences, store windows, brick buildings and the backs of taxis. An article I found on the internet reported: “Benedict arrived in Luanda on the second leg of his African tour, with tens of thousands pouring into the streets along his motorcade route, honking car horns and slowing traffic to a crawl. Many of the faithful wore white T-shirts emblazoned with the pope's picture and "Welcome to our land" written in Portuguese.” We enjoyed the extra days off and just hung out as a family. We had a cook-out with friends on Friday and I made potato salad for the first time ever, which was super yummy and in memory of this historical event (and to celebrate the extra days off) we renamed it "Pope-tato Salad"!

The Pope in the PopeMobile driving down the streets of Luanda