Retreat

Just got back from the IV student retreat at Emerald Isle - first i'll make the usual announcement that for pics, since i'm too lazy to upload them over here and also because if i did so i'd be posting them in two seperate sites which is pretty redunxant methinks, do take a look over there =======>

Well, the retreat took up almost the entire weekend, which meant that i had to cram as much work as possible before i left - which is also good in the sense of having the bitter before the sweet (xian1 ku3 hou4 tian2 - i like bitter stuff though, particularly bittergourd so maybe that isn't the best figure of speech to use...). Thankfully the more pertinent stuff (the weekly response for the tough gender welfare course i'm taking) was cleared by the time i left on Friday afternoon - and i even had time to clear my emails and waste some time in mindless chilling here and there in between... There's still two tests this wednesday to keep in mind though, especially since i have not really done much reading for either of them, and i looked at the past papers for one of them and i really didn't know how to go about answering the questions asked. I'll see if i can leave them as much for the week itself though - am trying as far as possible to keep my Sundays work-free (it helps to be lazy in this sense i guess =p)

The retreat itself was a great experience - the venue itself was really cool - it's in the southern Outer Banks - basically a chain of barrier islands along the northern NC coastline - which basically means that the island is very thin and long, and you can see the coast on both sides when you stand in the middle of the island - i reckon that as some points, it's no more than 200 metres wide. The water on one side is a sound - an inlet of sea water seperated from the open ocean by the island itself, and needless to say the water on the other side is the open ocean itself...

I don't want to always draw comparisons between how things go about in IV and the same back in VCF, but anyways, basically it's different... But i still had a good time at the retreat - time to spend some good (and some not so good) time alone with God, to meet new people, to have some fun, to have old and new things alike (re-)impressed upon my heart; that sort of thing...

The weather was just at it's minimally-acceptable temperature to be doing stuff at the beach - so i got acquainted (or at least tried to) with American Football - till the end i still was pretty clueless as to stuff like which direction am i supposed to run if i do catch the ball (and i managed to do so once - hooray for that) and that sort of thing... Frisbee wasn't very successful either - cos the strong winds blowing in from the sea muddled the course of practically every frisbee throw. Riding the surf didn't work out too well either - the waves were much stronger than the other time, so often the waves just picked me up and deposited me in shallower waters - but not before giving me nasty scratches on my chest, elbow and knee from rough contact with the sand (looked like i kena mauled by a domestic cat) - there was one wave which even caused me to do an underwater half-cartwheel before landing hard on the sand left shoulder first - not exactly a painless experience - and of course i probably exceeded my day's required sodium intake in all of an hour in the water... But even with all that, it was fun you know...

Yeah and on top of that there was other stuff like singing bizarre action songs (Baby Shark!), stories told that one will never forget, an ice-cream eating contest out of the gutter (that was an experience for sure)... Yup but too bad i have no pictures of those, and it's no fun to just verbally describe all this stuff without y'all actually seeing it, so i'll just leave it at that...

We had good lodgings while we were there - they rented some nice beach houses - far better than what we have in sentosa that's for sure - only problem's that they had to spread everyone out - less than 10 per house, and there were 130 people in total, so it was harder to get to know more people (oops i'm comparing again...)... I enjoyed how i was able to wake up early in the morning and sit on the porch and read the Bible - such a refreshing environment...

This morning i actually wanted to go for a run - reminds me of running at ECP, only far cooler and far more scenic - but i decided to pass because of a lack of time. I was semi-regretting not running afterward cos i helped myself to some Hostess frosted chocolate donettes - then i took a look after that at the nutritional information at the back of the box, only to realise that just three of the little donettes (only two inches in diameter) - incidentally the number of donettes i ate was three - would already account for 45% of one's daily recommended saturated fat intake or something or other - troubling... (though of course those thingies were so addictive that i ate one more anyways...)

Alright, back to school tomorrow then, hope can find time to finalize fall break plans...

ta!