RETREAT Batch 2010 - 2011
I just got back home from our retreat and boy do I ever miss our computer. I slept for about four hours last night, woke up at six and took a cold, cold bath, and, somewhat miraculously, survived the five hour session - and yet I don’t feel the least bit sleepy. xDD So… Computer overload time! Srsly, I was absent in Tumblr for one day and now my middle finger is feeling sore from all the scrolling down I did.
Anywho, our retreat was pretty enjoyable. Okay, we felt a little disappointed after we first saw the retreat house we were going to stay in - Santo Nino (I don’t know how to type an enye) Spirituality Center at Consolacion. But that’s only because the teachers raised our expectations so much. Maybe it was just to ‘punk’ us or maybe it was because their definition of ‘beautiful’ involves weird architecture (the place looked like a giant modern art sculpture) and unpainted walls. Though I think the walls looked like the way they did to suit the style of the building/s. It wasn’t what we expected but… the place was undoubtedly beautiful in its own way. Plus, the view from up there was pure awesomeness. Absolutely breathtaking. The hills, the trees, the sky looked so surreal. It was as if they were just painted there instead of actually being there. I wish I brought a camera with me back then :(
The activities we had at our retreat were kind of fun. I liked the Make Your Dreams/Kite Fly and Soar High, wherein we made a kite out of Japanese paper in one hour and had to get it to fly. Unfortunately, the entire class - except for one - wasn’t able to make a decent kite let alone fly one. Us = EPIC FAIL. Only one classmate got his kite to fly. And it was really unexpected since the said classmate is… somewhat a joker and stuff. But even though no one expected him to get his kite to fly, he was the only one in class who wasn’t on the EPIC FAIL boat. His kite flew so high that it looked like a really small diagonal piece of paper stuck on a blue canvas i.e. the sky. But in the end, the kite’s thread snapped and it flew away. Hehe, good bye S’s DREAMS.
After the kite-making and kite-flying we had a small sharing and then we had dinner. Dinner made most of the girls mad. Why? The boys and their oh-too-huge appetites, that’s why. We watched ANAK after the frustrating dinner. It was a really beautiful and touching movie. I watched Anak when I was younger but I seemed to have forgotten most of the scenes and the general plotline. Anak was really amazing. Why aren’t directors nowadays making movies like that anymore? All they make are predictable romance movies and not-really-scary-at-all horror movies. Ugh, I’m starting to rant. *steams*
We finished our first day session at around 11 p.m. After completing our evening rituals, we went to sleep early since breakfast the next day would be at seven and the session would start at eight… *laughs* As if that was even possible. No. Actually, we stayed up til four or five a.m. and ate snacks and went ghost hunting, and talked as if we hadn’t seen each other in ages. At least that’s what the others did. I was out for the count at around 1 a.m. What? I like to sleep. Besides, I didn’t want to have to keep on pinching myself in order to stay awake for the rest of the day.
Sleeping on a bed that wasn’t mine and at a room that wasn’t at home felt weird. There were a few times when I half woke up and was on a sleepy daze where I wondered why the hell the pillow I was hugging was so small and smelled different and why wasn’t I covered from head to foot with my blanket. Then I’d hear the boisterous laughter of my classmates and the munching of snacks and it would all come back to me.
The next day, which was earlier today, was very emotional. I won’t go into detail but I will say that by the end of the retreat/session we were all hugging each other with teary-eyes.
As the facilitator (Fr. Rich) said, You (we) are Fourth Years. You’ve spent four years together, and now you’ve only got four months left with each other. Four is a significant number to you now. Spend the next four months wisely.
On a side note, SCHOOL!! By that I mean that we have regular classes tomorrow. WTF? Don’t we get at least one day of rest? Well, at least we’ll have half-day classes tomorrow since the teacher’s will head to the same retreat house and have their retreat. It would be better for both sides if the school just didn’t have classes tomorrow. le sigh.