Yes, it is a stupid title, but I really don’t care. ^_^

The next day
We wake up. Nice and early. Oh joy. It is kind of sad that some girls got up extra early to put on makeup, they just cant live with anyone seeing them otherwise. And for some girls, “caked-on” is not an exageration. Those are usually the girls that need an “extra” boost of self confidence and security. I personally think they need a fire hose, though. Well, in any case, the day started with us having to do a prayer walk. Now, I really thought that the ASB had gotten rid of this event, but it decided to rear its head anyways. The prayer walk is where you get into your group and walk around and pray. Well, that’s what it was for all the other groups, while ours decided to walk to the boathouse and hideout. Also, when we were walking to that boathouse, I for some reason decided to take out the schedule for the day out of my pocket, look at it to check for the prayer walk event, then I exclaimed, “The prayer walk, oh shi…”. I never finished the forbidden word (I don’t really cuss in public, or not intentionally anyways, sorta) and added an “oot” at the end but quietly to myself. So what? you might ask. Well, a few days later in Drama class, the teacher was talking about that day, specifically about the prayer walk. She said she saw a person pull out their schedule and say “The prayer walk, oh shi…”. I, trying to be a class clown at that particular moment, raised my hand and said, “Oh yeah, that was me”. The sad part was, I was joking, and I didn’t realize that it WAS me until I started to think about it a bit later. Thankfully, the teacher could not remember who the person was, so I think I’m ok. ^_^
Back to the retreat, after the prayer walk we went and had breakfast. Blah, nonchalant stuff. Then we went in to have chapel and left midway for soccer. And the soccer trip was basically the same as last year, except we managed to dominate everyone at cow-land AND get a good night’s sleep – well, at least for the people who are able to sleep through basketball dribling at 3AM in the gym. I was one of those tight sleepers, but I heard stories the next day…and I also have pictures of the soccer trip included with the retreat pics. Email me if you want them.

I did two papers for two different classes about this retreat, and I posted them below. Yeah, that’s what those things are. The first is a shortened version of my blog posts basically, for Family Living. The second was a retreat recap for ASB purposes.

Retreat Overall Review
I personally thought that the first day of the retreat was excellent with just the senior class. We went up to the Ropes Course and I managed to get a lot out of the lessons they were trying to teach us. Through the low ropes challenges, they showed us a whole bunch of examples of how what we were doing was related to life, like teamwork, life’s frustrations, communication skills, and other analogies. I was later surprised to see most of my class overcome their fears and undertake the high ropes challenges. Later, within the tabernacle at Riverview, I realized just how important encouragement is and how much people will remember the things that you may have forgotten about but made an impact on someone else’s life. It also made me get out of my comfort zone and find other people’s impact on my life, something that I could earnestly thank them and appreciate them for. All of the games were pretty good besides the “Find the Seniors” one, and it may be due in part to the lack of enthusiasm on behalf of the lower classmen or just the “it happens every year” kind of thing. Lunch – food was great, seniors got to cut to the front of the line, everyone was happy. The speaker was good for the evening service, although I’ve heard some mixed reviews from others. It certainly wasn’t an altar call kind of sermon, more or less it was a discussion of Christian Literature, but it was still nice to know about. I guess it also served me as a reminder that everyone has some special talent and through God, it can be brought out to its fullest.
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- Find the seniors game was um, not as good as expected…enthusiasm was at an all time low as the freshman and sophomores (from what I’ve heard) decided not to even try to find the seniors. Asking some seniors, they commented that they didn’t even like the game that much as well.
- Save the Egg game was great and messy, but the Freshmen were again kinda not enthusiastic. Whether it be the fault of the atmosphere or whether the Freshman were just in that type of mood for the day is unknown, but everyone else seemed to enjoy it.
- Lunch – food was great, seniors got to cut to the front of the line, everyone was happy ^_^.
- Ultimate Relay Game – very organized, but you couldn’t see what was happening! That was one of the downsides. The other one was that the up-down thing at the end was somewhat unorganized and the class size was an issue, but otherwise it went well.
- Oatmeal game – should definitely be longer! Possibly have another bucket or two with oatmeal, as I’ve heard from some people. But then again, we’d just knock over the buckets in the end so yeah.
- Class meetings went well, nothing to say there.
- Free time is good too, everyone was pretty much occupied with whatever they were doing (some sleeping into dinner time…)
- Honor the Seniors dinner was great, mostly all of the seniors were honored and the entrances were nice.
- Talent Show was great again this year, not a lot more to say about it.
- The speaker was good for the evening service, although I’ve heard some mixed reviews from others. It certainly wasn’t an altar call kind of sermon, more or less it was a discussion of Christian Literature, but it was still nice to know about.
- So far, I heard no complaints about not having any night games, the Talent Show pretty much took care of it, but it still felt like some part of the day was missing.
- Park and pray – I thought we got rid of it, but then again it came back and I really only found out (or paid attention to it) on the day of. Some people like it, some people really don’t, our cabin didn’t really think much of it. It might have been better just to have gotten breakfast first and saved the prayer for the worship time (session #2).