Thirst-day and the beginnings of a great retreat

I will not get to my awesome weekend, but I thought I'd get right up to it.... haha

Thursday I did not want to get up. I was in bed contemplating what class I could possibly skip... but instead I went to all of them and actually stayed awake, though it was hard in music class because we watched a movie about Indian drumming patterns that were super cool... but the lights were off! oh no...

Lunch with Bethany and Whitney -- made me happy

Chinese was fun. We went "shopping." We were supposed to go real shopping with real money, but I think the teacher doesn't realize that nobody has random stuff laying around their dorm room that they can sell, so we all brought candy from like Munchies, and pretty much exchanged that... It worked, but we didn't really know words for "piece of candy" and "trade" -- we knew the chinese money and give and give change. It was still an entertaining time. Lots of laughing. I think for the most part we just laugh if we're not sure what's going on.

It really made me think of Alex though, because he's actually over there doing all this stuff and surviving... and able to take visitors all over the city! Sooo cool! And Katie's sorta doing the same thing in France (but she doesn't have to bargain... that's the main thing I was thinking about).

In between chinese and education, I saw Drolma in the education building! It was fun to say hi to her -- and I invited her to dinner :-)

Education -- we planned part of the unit plan. I didn't realize teaching first graders would be hard, but it's hard to think of things that are appropriate for their age level.

did homework (nutrition project).

I had dinner with Andy, Yu, Kei, Drolma, and Andy's conversation partner... can't remember her name... Oh! Ellen. Yup. It was a good time! Laughed a lot, teased Andy a lot because all he talks about is food :-P Just different food, what's exotic for different cultures, interesting stuff like that, but haha, that's also what we talked about last week! And it just made me laugh.

I also helped him with his homework a bit... tried to explain some things, but I had to wikipedia some of it (like intrinsic and extrinsic knowledge?? It took me a while to explain that one. Apparently I just know it intrinsically). I'm impressed -- he's reading a textbook in English that is difficult enough for ME to read! I couldn't imagine doing it in like Spanish!

Lifegroup planning, waited around for people to come... played the piano there in the lounge at Verder! It's pretty nice. :-)

lifegroup! We split... I think I said that. But we split -- no, "multiplied" into two sub life groups. Though that sounds like we all have sub-par lives... Basically we're doing what we did last year, just with consistently the same people so we can get to know each other betterer.

It was fun. But I was falling asleep, so I went back to my room and went to bed!

Friday, I had class, (which went well, it was just research reports, and I have a Perc session lined up so she was happy :-P). Yukie had overslept and wasn't getting lunch, so I just ate lunch by myself which gave me time to study Chinese more. Soooo awesome to just go in and take a Chinese test going, "eh, well, if I don't do well, I know what I need to learn. But I think I've learned something, so I'll see if it's worth anything." NO stress, no staying up late studying everything. It was lovely. Exactly why I'm auditing the class :-)

Took the test. I'm pretty sure if I were to get a grade, it would be an A. We shall see Tuesday at the earliest. (y) <-- thumbs up [Skype]

Packed for the Core retreat. Got a visit from Kait, which was fun. She was borrowing the extra sleeping bag and chatted a bit while I continued stuffing things in my backpack.

Then we met up with the rest of the peoples and drove... and drove... and got Burger King and drove.... and drove... and the session was supposed to start at 9, and we got there at like 9:10, and it was on time. :-( We were hoping it was on GCM time. But that would have just made everyone waiting antsy, so it's ok.

We got registered and just started worshiping and such and... I think... I think I'll finish the night off just running through what we did, and I'll talk more about Saturday and the impacts and such tomorrow or sometime.

And then Steve H spoke. It was AWESOME! My favorite of the whole retreat, and it was the first one! :-) But the others were pretty awesome as well :-P

Then we worshiped some more! and then we unloaded the cars and "hauled" (that's a shout out to my awesome grandma :-P ) it all to our building. Tiedown/breakdown/breakout session time. pretend we're going to stay up "really late" hanging out, realize we're all really tired and go to bed.

I shall post pictures after the next post. There aren't that many, so don't get too excited :-P

Ah bed. I want to sleep now! Good night all!