Alpha Retreat

Nov 15

Steph Mings’ mom came to visit for a few days! She even brought some goodies with her that the group enjoyed as we all sat around preparing a wonderful feast to share together. I was in charge of cutting the chicken breasts, but all of a sudden this big bowl of Oreos, both plain and mint, are placed on the table in front of me. Now, I had chicken gunk all over my hands and was sadly unable to get my own mint Oreo. So I did the only logical thing I could think of: I incoherently scrambled to find the words to have someone feed me a mint Oreo while flailing my arms everywhere and nearly flying out of my chair in anticipation. Finally, Steph Shelly gives me a mint Oreo and I sit happily calm in my seat as I savored the sweet cookie taste. Oh, what simple pleasures. After that, I grabbed a plastic bag that was sitting in front of me and used that like a glove to pick up more mint Oreos. Sweet success!

Anyway, for dinner we had chicken with mandarin oranges and mangos, and then two different stir-fry dishes (one with meat and one without), and mashed potatoes (I LOVE mashed potatoes <3). The food was amazing. I am becoming quite the little chef, though for tonight I was only Mike’s assistant. Though I did manage to cut the potatoes while they were already in the boiling water. What can I say, I like a little challenge. For dessert, Steph’s mom brought some sugar cane to share. It was like bamboo that you cut pieces off and munch on it to get all the sweet sugar out of it. Let’s just say that with my sweet tooth, I was quite pleased.

Nov 16

Tonight I picked up my usual chef position as I cooked dinner with two friends. I made a familiar dish previously created by Gabby and me: chicken with onions, garlic and corn served with mashed potatoes. Ieva had some borscht that she served, which is a wonderful dish that I would love to bring the recipe back with me. And Edita had homemade lazy cake, which was the very same that Gabby and I tried to make last week. Another thing that I need to re-attempt at making so I can know how to successfully make it at home cause it’s supposedly really easy. So easy, there’s no baking required! Fancy that.

Nov 17

Sadly sociology was canceled today. I like the class, but I was pretty happy to have the break after the previous week’s discussion topics. Plus, I got to sleep in two whole hours! After classes I went and got Calvin and Gabby to cook dinner together. Cooking together is so much more enjoyable for me than cooking alone, and I can actually say that it may even be considered fun because of it.

Nov 18

Grr, yet another night at Neumann. But I guess the reward of brownie sundaes was well worth it :). We did better at making brownies this time because Gabby and Lauren had actual mix to make them with. As half the group ran over to the store to get some awesome flavors of ice cream (including cinnamon apple with nuts), the rest of us stayed back to prepare the brownie goodness. Much much better this time.

Nov 19

Tonight after classes and Canada’s independence day celebration, a huge group of about 40-50 people went on the Alpha retreat. We got on the bus around 6pm and headed for the “cabin in the woods”, the prime location for any horror film. It was a short drive, under 20 minutes or so, until the bus pulled down this tiny little dark road and Emas hopped on the bus to tell us that we were walking the rest of the way. Certainly reminded me of a horror film, but we all trudged off the bus and followed as best we could down the dirt road that led to the cabin. Just for the record, I love my boots that I bought here before leaving for Russia because I can step right into a puddle and have no cold/wet foot damage from it. Sadly, the same could not be said for others.

The cabin was huge! Everyone quickly got settled in before heading down to the Baltic Sea, which was about a 2-minute walk from our cabin. It was a fun walk down to the sandy shore, but it was a cloudy night which didn’t help with the visibility. Then we headed back to have hotdogs for dinner, which are surprisingly good with cucumbers. After dinner, Emas talked about the Holy Spirit and how He is active in our every day lives and is always with us.

Oh, and I got to play ping-pong again which I haven’t played in so incredibly long. I was actually still pretty good, which was really surprising. And then movie night consisted of watching “The United States of Leeland P. Fitzgerald”. It was a great psychological movie that really got you to think about how people act and why. Ah, well, it’s the psychologist in me :).

Nov 20

After another talk from Emas, a few people decided to start the morning off right by going down to the beach. Oh how I love the beach and its calming effects. It was just fun to be with friends enjoying the moment and having a ton of fun in the process. We played the foot game, which is where everyone is standing in a circle and one person touches the foot of the person to their right. The foot that is touched must be moved to touch the next person’s foot, and so on. It gets crazy as people are all twisted around or stretched doing a split for a couple of minutes (Calvin!).

Then back to the cabin to hang out for a little while until lunch. Steph taught us an amazing game using the pool table, but only using the cue ball and one other ball. Each person must roll the colored ball to hit the cue ball, but if the person keeps missing and the cue ball stops moving, you can pick it up and the person whose turn it was gets a point. In this game, points are bad. It just makes me really want a pool table, cause the game was super fun and I really want to play it again. And I’m not just saying that because I won :). We had chili for lunch, and then sat around for the final time as Emas wrapped up about how we can properly use our gifts from the Holy Spirit in our lives. Sadly enough, the Alpha retreat was over, and we all headed back to the bus that would take us back to Neumann, followed by my half an hour trek back to Karklu.

As all you Harry Potter fans should know, the first part of the seventh movie came out yesterday!! But being at Alpha, I could not go until later on tonight. I was supposed to go with a huge group of friends, but some miscommunication and lack of cell phones to contact them, it ended up just being Steph and me meeting up with James and Calvin and Will later on at the theaters. But even that ended up being complicated. I was to meet Steph at 7:15 to walk to the bus stop, and of course until that time I kept playing the Harry Potter intro songs to get me pumped up! Finally, Steph and I were at the bus stop waiting for our bus to take us to the mall, but it ended up never showing. So another one drives up, and we’re contemplating whether or not it will actually take us to the mall, and all of a sudden Steph yells, “Yes! James is on this bus! Go, get on, get on!!” So we dash onto the bus and quickly find seats and talk about how excited we are to finally be seeing this movie. All of a sudden, during the middle of our conversation, I glance up only to see Calvin’s worried face looking right at me. I jumped out of my seat and rushed towards the door, quietly yelling behind me for Steph to follow. It ended up being the wrong stop, but only adding about 5 minutes to our walk to the mall. The walk helped release some building tension of excitement, which was nice and definitely necessary.

We finally got to the mall and met up with Will. Now to buy our tickets. “We only have 5 tickets left,” said the worker behind the counter. My jaw dropped and we all nervously laughed as there happened to be 5 of us in our group. It was at this moment that I was relieved that I had not found any of my friends before leaving, otherwise this would have been severely awkward. We were able to buy the last 5 tickets, but weren’t allowed to enter the theater until 10 minutes before the start of the previews. Kind of good thing about this movie is that it had assigned seating, so at least we didn’t have to fight over the best seats in the house. Steph and I ended up sitting together at the very top middle, which she and I both agreed were awesome seats. Though at this point, any seat in that theater would have been amazing for me.

Surprisingly, I really enjoyed the movie. Usually I find a lot of things that I don't like about these movies and end up severely disliking them for a while, but I was overall pleased with this one. I absolutely cannot wait until the next one comes out, and I think it should be released on July 19. Do you know why? If you are a true Harry Potter fan, you should know that July 19 is Harry’s birthday :). I think that would be a great way to end the series.

Nov 21

Well, after yet another very unproductive weekend, I have a lot of catching up to do. I have to watch a movie, Shawshank Redemption, and then write a 5-10 page paper on it describing the motivational factors behind one of the main characters. It’s just more annoying than it’s worth. Oh, and see all of you who were mad at me for having my week off for Fall Break, here is your Thanksgiving Break. So enjoy that stuffing for me :).