A trip in Christmas season

Last week, I visited my friend Deacon Joseph in St. Louis after 7 years that we met in China, that also as my first trip in U.S. As well, I had a different expirences about the Christmas in US.

After almost 6 hours of flying, the plane safely arrived at St. Loius airport. The weather there likes in Vancouver, at 4pm is already getting dark, and a little bit chill, but my feeling overcame all, above all, the joy of seeing each other. After a brief greeting each other, my friend drove me to see the Archbishop Robert J. Carlson of St. Louis. The bishop's residence is very close to the Cathedarl Basilica, a large beautiful bulding also is more than 100 years old, and now he is the tenth archbishop of St. Louis. During the conversation with the archbishop Robert, I knew that the Catholic Church in U.S is more active and amazing. The archdiocese has almost 800,000 catholics, 800 priests, 150 parishes and 60 seminarians, St. Louis also is a third oldest city in the West of Mississippi of the United States, more 150 years of history. Soon after, we had a good dinner with the archbishop, his secetray and chancellor. Close to 8pm, we said good night to the archbishop and my friend drove me to the cathedral rectory.

The cathedral of St. Louis is really beautiful, lies on an area out of downtown of St.Louis. It looks like 1/5 of San Peter Basilica, inset of the church, you can see the amazing mosaics everywhere, each of them narrates the Bible's unique fragment. The people call it "The New Cathedral", but it's real new, in fact, it's more than 100 years old. The people just distinguish it beings from "The old cathedral" which built in 1834, near Mississippi river, also is a very nice simple church.

Besides the The New Cathedral, another known historic place is The Gateway Arch. It is one of the newest monuments in the National Park system, and at 630 feet, it is certainly the tallest! The Arch is 75 feet taller than the Washington Monument and over twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty. The 60-foot heads carved on the face of Mount Rushmore are designed to the scale of men who would stand 465 feet tall, a height that would easily allow such giants to walk through the legs of the Arch! While the Gateway Arch is America's tallest monument, several buildings, such as New York's Empire State Building (1250 feet) and Chicago's Sears Tower (1454 feet) would loom over the Arch.