Pasadena Update #4
It’s 2015! Our group welcomed in the new year by celebrating
at the Rose Bowl Parade. We got up really early this morning (3:30 a.m. early)
so that we could leave the hotel and head towards Pasadena by 5:00 a.m. Our
hotel, Residence Inn, made us a nice bag of yogurt, an apple, banana and
granola bar for us to eat for breakfast. This food would have to hold us over
until we ate lunch after the parade.
Since we were driving so early in the morning, all of the
Christmas and building lights lit up Los Angeles. It was such a beautiful sight
to see! We were very blessed this morning when it came to parking as we headed
to Pasadena with no clue where we would park. We found a nice parking lot, with
enough open spaces to fit all eight of our cars in it. We only had to walk
about four or five blocks from the parking lot to our seats for the parade.
This was nice since it was cold outside and we were all bundled up to stay
warm. The temperature was 32 degrees when we got to Pasadena, which tied a record
low for January 1st. I’m glad to say it warmed up as the sun came up
and hit us directly during the parade to keep us nice and warm.
I’m going to say we had the best seats for the parade. We
were right on Colorado Boulvard and had a wide open view of the parade. Our
seats were saved for us by a family from Pasadena who attends the Lutheran
church. They stayed outside the whole night saving our seats so that we could
have a great view of the parade. We got to our seats a little after 6 and had
to wait awhile, since the parade started at 8. During this time, some members
of our group headed to the bathrooms (porta-potties) as the lines were fairly
short as most of the crowd hadn’t arrived yet. There were bleachers lining the
side of the streets for people to sit and watch the parade. By the time the
parade started, the streets were packed!
At 8:00 the parade started with a flyover, but the floats
didn’t start getting to us until 8:40. The parade route is 5 miles long and
takes about 2 hours to complete. The parade was filled with floats, bands, and
groups for us to watch. It was an amazing sight to see everything that we had
worked on completely done. Our Lutheran float was the seventh float in the
parade and we were glad to learn that it made it onto at least one of the major
TV networks’ broadcasts.
After the parade was over, we packed up our chairs and
carried them back to a pickup, so that they could be transported easily back to
the church. We walked back to our cars where we tailgated for lunch. We had ham
or turkey sandwiches, chips and crackers, fruits and vegetables, and cookies
for dessert. This was a great way to eat lunch and allow most of the traffic to
leave before us, so we weren’t trying to leave at the same time as everyone
else.
After arriving back at the hotel around 1:30, we were able
to rest for a couple hours. We then went to the 99 cent store where we bought
more supplies for our health kits. We bought deodorant, razors, toothbrushes
and toothpaste, soap, combs, notepads and pens, socks, and much more. It was a
unique experience to have 38 people in matching sweatshirts go shopping and
spending over $1,200 on hygiene items. (Money was donated by individuals and
churches.) We assembled more health kits tonight with our newly bought
supplies. We assembled a total of 537 hygiene kits this week!!!
Tomorrow is our free day and everyone has plans to visit
some museums and the beaches in Southern California. It will be a great day and
we all pray for safe travels as we make our way to our destinations.
Happy New Year from Los Angeles!
Jeni Zeller-Journalist
Ellie Menz-Photos
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