On the walk over to the home I thought of the types of situations I could be walking into. And, I also had an interest in getting to know the people who lived there and their background and life stories.

Going on this service trip was an eye-opener to the fact that Cape Cod not only has a large amount of people who are upper and middle class and who are also less fortunate. I learned that the people currently living in the Champ Home were not only homeless but were making the better decision for themselves to get back up on their feet by quitting drugs and the consumption of alcohol.

One woman who I spoke with said she rode horses for most of her youth and later as an adult got into drugs and alcohol and came to the CHAMP home for refuge.

While visiting I had the opportunity to meet the founder of the homes, Paul Hebert. He told our group about the first home he founded in 1988 called the House for All Corporations. He also spoke about the other homes; the NOAH Shelter, the Miracle Kitchen, Gleaners Second Harvest, and the Day Star Place. He told us how CHAMP house eventually became CHAMP homes and how he set out to provide homes for the people who had none.

I also learned some basic culinary skills and how to cook new things. I believe that working with my peers to do something good for someone else brought us all together to see the big picture.

In a way I believe that this Service Project brought us all back down to earth.

I realized that not everyone is as fortunate as you or the person next to you might be.

I will definitely do something like this again.

Anya Nicholson ’15

The tour brought the choir together in many ways, but I think that one task we had to accomplish multiple times was what really made everyone work together. This task was setting up and taking down the equipment.

I for one am not very strong and neither are other guys and girls in the choir. Moving a riser rail without another person was almost impossible for the majority of people on the tour. Just to lift one took two people working as one to maneuver the long and tall rail into the buildings where we were singing.

Setting up the risers alone took two to three people working together and even then it was difficult. None of the work we did, other than wrapping the chords, could have been done by only one person.

I don’t think that I ever saw someone struggle with an object longer than a few seconds before another person ran to help them. People who don’t usually talk to each other had to come together if anything was going to get done.

This type of work really did help create bonds between everyone in the choir.

By the last time we had to set up and take down the equipment we were faster than we had ever been before the tour. Everything that we did together strengthened us as a group and helped build a foundation for future concert choirs at our school.

I think that this trip taught me more than I had ever expected it to and it helped me to become closer with so many people in the choir. I now understand why Mr. Fish wanted this tour to happen so badly.

This tour represented not only all of our hard work and preparation, but it represented how far we had come as a family.

Every riser put up built another bond between each person there. Those kinds of bonds will hopefully last throughout the rest of this year and keep going as we continue to sing together.

Victoria Sirois ’13

P.S. View pics from the trip!

 I don’t know if I have ever been to a more peaceful place than Rosary Hill Cancer Hospice Home. I can’t even describe the feeling that I had felt while I was there.

I had thought that I would be upset to meet people who may die within a year, but I never felt any sadness while I was there. The joy that both the patients and nuns had amazed me.

It felt good to sing for all of the little kids at the schools, but it was incredible to be able to sing at the cancer home. I think that the kids may have heard and understood the music more, but the patients felt the music deeper.

Mrs. Marz had told me that she sat next to a woman during the concert who, after listening to Feed the Birds, said “Amen” once we had finished singing. She was clearly confused, but she knew that that song was special and there was something about it that had given her peace.

Most of the people listening to us were not all there because of how far along they were with their illnesses, but while watching the people I picked up things here and there that reminded me that they were still listening. I would see someone tap their foot or smile when they heard a certain line from a song. These things were far better than a loud applause.  Being able to watch their faces light up whenever we sang an older song that they knew gave me more joy than I think we gave them.

It’s funny to think that we went to give the people living there something, but through their peace they gave us something back.

I don’t know if everyone in the choir felt the way that I did after we left, but I know that being there was something more powerful than any Broadway show could ever be.

Performing at Rosary Hill will forever be in my memory.

Victoria Sirois ’13

P.S. View pics from the trip!

I know that I am small. It’s a slightly hard thing to ignore, but I have never felt as small as I did in NYC.

Being around huge buildings, thrown around in a crowd like I weighed nothing, standing in a theater with hundreds of other people, and looking up at all the huge screens with massive images twenty or more times bigger than me made me realize just how little I am. Not only that, but NYC is not even the largest city in the world. It’s a lot to try and wrap my mind around, especially for someone who still can’t reach the top shelf in a closet.

I am not just small in size compared to other people, but compared to the rest of NYC and even the world I am nothing. Being one person in over 6 billion in the world is crazy.

It is almost too much to try and think about, but at the same time it brings many questions to mind.

While in the city I kept thinking about what makes me different from every other person in the world. I think throughout the whole trip the concept of being different and standing out traveled into our Broadway class and to the shows we saw.

The idea that being different is sometimes good.

That wearing a weird scarf to an audition just to stand out or “defying gravity” against the world’s standards is good.

I don’t plan on auditioning for a Broadway show and I’m pretty sure flying is a little out of my league, but there are so many more things that I can do now and in the future if I keep trying.

Spending time in NYC reminded me that to the majority of people I am just another face in the crowd, but it doesn’t matter what random people (even Broadway performers) think about me.

I know that what I do and say to the people that do know me is what makes all the difference.

Knowing that I can help others in my own way is even better than defying gravity.

Victoria Sirois ’13

P.S. View pics from the trip!

But then something happened that changed all that. Singularly proud of our accomplishment, we decided to cross over into the development opposite our own. The street separating the two can be rather busy and as we came to the end of our street, I cautioned my son to use his brakes. “Use your brakes,” I yelled, but compelled by the momentum of a slight decline, my son headed straight for danger. I leapt from my bike in an effort to stop him, but my grasp fell short. With pebbles imbedded in my knees and elbows, I helplessly watched my eldest son move away from me.

He made it.

No cars came; he didn’t fall; he didn’t panic.  In fact, there across the street, in a family friend’s driveway, he stopped, looked back and waited for his fallen father. I got up, brushed myself off, righted the bike, looked both ways-modeling appropriate bicycle safety- and walked the bike across. The rest of our ride was fortunately unremarkable.

The story – often shared at family gatherings-has a parable-like quality, which lends itself to a parable-like interpretation. A father must let go of the son, who must make his own journey filled with peril and, hopefully, Providence. While it may be true in a universal rite-of-passage way, such a message is not my intent; rather this story is Pope John Paul II High School-centric and the guiding hand of Providence, which led me to the end of High School Road, is what I wish to comment upon.

As my current group of seniors re-think, re-vise and re-write their college application essays, so often I find myself reading the story of how each came to PJPII and the positive difference this school has made in his or her life. Someone felt ignored in an over-populated public school classroom; someone underachieved in a class filled with low expectations; someone chose to follow the crowd rather than lead it; someone simply felt unsafe. Out of this cacophony of need, a new Catholic school emerged under the vision a courageous and hard-working assemblage of adults who desperately wanted a Catholic high school on Cape Cod, the Diocese, and Mr. Keavy, offering the benefits of a Catholic school education and a community founded on Family and Faith, Trust and Respect. Even if they didn’t know it or regularly did it, my students’ prayers had been answered; and Providence delivered them from Harwich, Brewster, Falmouth and the many other towns represented by PJPII’s students, here to Cape Cod’s only Catholic High School.

Though I am a teacher and not a student, I feel the same way. How I got here though is less important than the fact I am here at a school that encourages me to be the living embodiment of my Faith, that challenges me today to be a better, more effective classroom teacher than I was the day before, and that makes me want to immerse myself in the life of the school and its students. All these things are not laid out in my contract or found in some memo to the staff, rather it is the result of an undeniable spirit which permeates the building, this community. One can’t help but be inspired by it.

Back to the metaphor.

The training wheels are off and there are many challenges ahead on this journey. But in the subsequent months, there are a few things of which I am certain. Yes, to a certain extent, I will  try to guide the direction of my students through the nature of the reading and writing assignments I give and the direction in which I try to steer classroom discussion. But just as certainly, my students, like my son, will elude me sometimes-an absolute good thing-as they make their own way through the school year and across the street on their own personal journey. But I also know that as Psalm 16:8 instructs “With the Lord at my right I will never be shaken” and with the school, its mission, its students and my colleagues at my right, I, too, shall be ok, safely at home at Pope John Paul II High School.

A part of the ceremony that stood out for me was the opening comments by the president of Providence College; he said that if you only ever say one prayer in your life, make it a prayer of gratitude. As someone firmly rooted in the Humanist movement (shout out to the sophomores!), I immediately thought of all the people I am grateful for and I wanted to blog a bit about this “prayer of gratitude.”

I am grateful for my 2nd and 3rd grade teachers, who told me I wasn’t “slow” and that I could read and write as well as anyone and to my college professor and advisor who told me taking on English as a second major was a good idea.

I am grateful for my 6th grade teacher who made me memorize the countries of Africa and the Provinces of Canada, instilling in me a love of travel and geography. I am also grateful to my 10th grade teacher, who affectionately called her students “maggots” and who won the Teacher of the Year award from the students who adored her for it.

I am grateful for my parents and sister, who are my first, best and most beloved teachers.

I am grateful to Mr. Keavy for taking a chance on four fresh-out-of-college strangers and for Mrs. Wile who kept (keeps) us alive and sane. I am grateful for all the faculty at this school who treated us like equals and friends from Day 1, and who didn’t judge us when we sang “Friday” at the talent show.

I am grateful to my fellow teachers in the class of 2011; for Christmas Walking, obscure modern American poets and for strawberry frosted donuts that magically appear on my desk. We’re a crazy team, but somehow it works!

I am grateful for the PJP2 families, who are so invested in their children’s education and who support them and this school in a truly inspiring way.

I am grateful for all my students; for Richie, Greg and Jackie who I have never taught but try to sneak into my English class before the bell, for Chris who took one for the Vassal team during a Feudalism Game assassination attempt, for Sean, who I have to shush in the library and for Eric and Leticia, the best Torvald and Nora from A Doll’s House I have ever heard. I am grateful for every student who smiles and waves to me in the hall, brightening my day legitimately every single time.

Finally, I am grateful to God for bringing me to this school, this community and this PJP2 family.

Sunday was a milestone in my life that I won’t forget, but the piece of paper I worked for these past two years would mean less if I didn’t have the people I am grateful for to share the journey.

500,000 people. That was the reported number of individuals who showed up for the March for Life. A half million people!

To be honest with all of you, I didn’t think that many people would show up to this cause.

After my experience, I realize that this event was much more than I expected. Much more.

The images shown are both horrifying… and true.

The march itself was cold and crowded.

There were also many different religious orders there from Franciscans to Dominicans and many others that I didn’t recognize.

Everyone was crowded together. I compare the beginning of the march to a flock of penguins huddling together.

A few of the participants stood out. One was a college whose students played bagpipes as we began the march. One student wore a neon rainbow wig.

Everywhere you went you could hear the faint chant of pro-life supporters.

After the march, we went for dinner to the Pentagon Mall. It was four stories high and had maybe 100 or more shops. It was great, but it was packed.

Later, we toured D.C. in our bus, stopping to party with Abe Lincoln and chill outside the White House.

Right now it is 8:44 PM on Monday, January 24, 2011 it’s extremely cold. Whoever invented hand warmers is now a personal hero in my book.

Tomorrow we’re heading home. It’s going to be a long day. I can’t wait until I am back at Pope John Paul II High School with my friends who I wish were here with me. I’ll see you all soon!

10 hours on a coach bus confined to a small area might seem like a nightmare for those who are claustrophobic. To be honest with you, I did not mind it. I had a good bus mate. And, now a good friend who’ve I’ve bonded with dramatically in the 10 hours (I have lost count of how long it actually has been, but it is a safe number for now!).

We’ve just returned from the “Life is Good Youth Rally.” My expectations were exceeded – far above and beyond.

In the rally, I was surprised to see a medley of songs that mixed together in perfect harmony.

The Mass was huge. With over 3000 people attending and perhaps 40 or more priests and deacons. At communion, the priests scattered about the entire room successfully distributing the Body of Christ.

Then came the concert and adoration. A musician named Matt Maher entertained us. You could feel the power within the music and the lyrics. There was dancing, clapping, laughing, and most of all, love.

When adoration came, all was silent. Even with a thick carpet underneath our feet and with 3000+ people, you could have heard a pin drop.

But then something broke my concentration. It was a group of teenagers literally walking up on the stage were the Host was and kneeling down in front of it.

Others joined them. Then more came. And then much more came.

They wrapped their arms around each other. Their faces were red. I could see that they were crying even though our group sat in the balcony. Some actually collapsed into a religious heap in front of the Body.

But all of them had one thing in common. They had a hard time moving when it was time leave.

But they still linked together, just backing up ever so slightly just to stay as close to the Lord as possible. My heart went out to them. The event made a religious mark on me.

But now I must go. It is 10:37 PM, and we have the March tomorrow, January 24, and my wristband number along with others was chosen to carry our school flag.

Wish us luck, Pope John Paul II High School! We are all thinking of you!

Marissa Milkey

P.S. All the kids would like to give Ms. Heston a personal shout-out to say thank you for taking us downstairs to see the band closer than the balcony.

That morning, one of those students, Leandra Smith, wrote this passage from a speech delivered by Pope John Paul II.

“America you are beautiful . . . and blessed . . . . The ultimate test of your greatness is the way you treat every human being, but especially the weakest and most defenseless. If you want equal justice for all and true freedom and lasting peace, …then America, defend life.” - (Saint) Pope John Paul II

Hi. My name is Graham Shopshire.

Before coming here I went to Barnstable High School.  All three of my sisters either have, or are currently in the process of, graduating from BHS.  I went there in the eighth grade.  I enjoyed being a Raider.  All of my friends went there and I enjoyed the opportunities that the school offered.  I would have been happy to have graduated from BHS, but for some reason I wanted something different.

As a matter of fact a friend had told me he was considering PJP2 and I kind of laughed at the idea.  Funny how it worked out because here I am now at PJP2 and there he is at BHS.

I did everything at the last minute and I wasn’t even sure where I was going until July.  I’m here now and I’m happy that I am where I am.

First of all I enjoy my classes and my teachers.  From English to biology the day flies by. I had been extremely skeptical of theology class, but even that has worked out OK.

I had never worn a uniform before.  I think I had worn a tie roughly ten times in my life before I came here.  I’ve already gotten used to wearing them both.

I guess my favorite thing about PJP2 has been community.  Barnstable was so big that I never felt like it was a community.  At PJP2 everyone knows and cares about each other.  It truly is a community of students and teachers.

I’ve just enjoyed my first month.  I’m happy to be a student at PJP2, and a Lion for that matter.  I’ve enjoyed playing football and making friends.  I can’t wait for baseball season and to enjoy all the other opportunities that the school has to offer.  I can’t wait to experience the rest of the school year because it’s sure to be a good one.