Now that we've had a few hours to unwind without a group of high school and junior high kids, take a much needed shower and sort out our laundry, I thought I'd tell a bit about our experience and post some pictures!
The retreat was a great experience and a lot of fun. It was two and a half days of pretty much constant activity involving plenty of games and food and (for most of the students anyway) very little sleep. I have a whole new appreciation for anyone who has ever been in charge of or in involved in planning an event with a large group of teenagers. All things considered, our group is very well behaved and gets along well with one another, so I tip my hat to those who have worked with groups both larger and more unruly than our 40 some junior and senior highers.
For the retreat we went to the campus of a Finnish Lutheran seminary that is a few kilometers outside of the city. Thanks to St. Petersburg traffic it took about an hour and a quarter to get there but geographically it isn't that far away. Even though we were quite close to the city, it really did feel like a retreat. The ever present suburbs that ring every urban area in the United States are pretty much non-existent in St. Petersburg, so driving out of the city makes for a rather dramatic change. You literally leave the city, go a few kilometers on a highway and then the highway quickly shifts to two lanes and you are in dacha country and it looks as if you may as well be 100 miles from the next town. Once you get outside the city you get a better feel of how far North we really are. The vegetation, in particular the tall, thin birch trees, is a reminder that we live on the edge of Scandinavia.
The seminary is small and consists of a few buildings that makes the place look like a little Finnish village. There is a dining hall, a main multi-story building, a two-wing building that has dormitory rooms, and another building that is actually a home for elderly people (don't worry, there will be pictures below:-) ). Our worship and meeting times were all in one building where about half of the students stayed, while Amanda and I were in the other building along with the remaining half.
Our speaker for the retreat was Ken Rudolph and he did a great job of communicating with the students. He was an extremely engaging speaker full of hilarious stories and the students all responded well and were enthusiastic about it. More importantly, Ken stressed the need to have a deeper understanding of who God is, why we need Him, and how to do great things for Him. These aren't new topics for anyone who has been a believer for a while, but this retreat was a reminder that being reminded of truth is equally if not more important, than learning something new. We also had small group times with each of us teachers leading a small group where we talked about things we had heard and prayed together.
In addition to times of worshiping together and hearing Ken speak, we had lots of fun playing games and hanging out with our kids. Our students are so enthusiastic and willing to participate! Amanda and I were in charge of games and we had a great time leading them (for which Amanda deserves about 99.8% of the credit since she found all of the games and planned them). I've never seen students so quick to play along and have fun without whining, being sarcastic, or acting like they were too cool to do whatever the rest of the group was doing. These are a special group of students and its easy to forget that the problems that do arise with them are usually things that most teachers elsewhere would kill to have to deal with.
Amanda and I actually got our own room to ourselves, so we manage to sleep well during the retreat:-) Anytime I would ask a student how much sleep he or she got, I would usually hear things like "2 hours" or "we talked all night," so we seem to have been the minority in this respect. It was refreshing to spend time with our students outside of school and get to know and see them in a whole new light. We learned so much about them (including that Korean students take FOREVER to brush their teeth!!!), and we hope that they got to know us better as well too.
Unfortunately, the way our schedule works out is such that tomorrow (Friday) we do have school so everyone has to turn around from our time retreating outside the city to get up early and head off to class again. I somehow suspect that focus and interest levels may be a bit low tomorrow:-P
There is so much more that we could share about the retreat, but this post is already dragging on and we haven't even gotten to the pictures, so without further ado, please enjoy these photographs:-)
Amanda and I stayed in this building along with two other teachers and approximately 2/3rds of our students.
This building housed the rest of the students and was also the site of our worship and speaking times.
This courtyard was next to the building we stayed in.
This is to help give a sense of the lay of the land. I took this photo at the fence marking the edge of the seminary's property looking out towards some nearby houses.
Amanda in our lovely orange room.
A group of our students leading worship.
Game time! This particular game involved correctly following instructions on stacking chairs:-)
Amanda hanging out with one of our 9th graders.
Last year's retreat started a tradition of bobbing for apples which we continued this year. Who knew it could be so much fun to watch people soak themselves while trying to catch fruit with their teeth while on all fours?
Even the teachers got in on the action:
Mr. K and Mr. Z (Jarod, one of our science teachers) show off the fruits of our labor.
This is almost too priceless for words:-P
A beautiful sunrise greeted us to start day two of the retreat
One of our three seniors, models our t-shirt for the retreat.
Mr. Moore, our other science teacher, led us on a nature walk through the surrounding woods.
Group photo! Grades 7-12 from the International Academy. I have all but around 10 of these students in my various history classes.
Merry go round at night! We had a bonfire the last night and some of us (including Amanda! look closely!) piled onto the merry go round at the nearby playground for a late night spin.
We made a fire and roasted hot dogs and made s'mores. Its a little harder to find some of the ingredients for these things in Russia, so we had to make do with strawberry flavored marshmallows that were about 1/3 of the size of the kind of jumbo jet puffed ones you would want to make a good s'more.
This is a little difficult to make out because of the lighting, but I took this at the bonfire at around 11 at night. The light in the distance is the city of St. Petersburg, lighting up the otherwise pitch black sky in the night.
And as a final parting gift to all of our readers, here is a short video of the students playing a game at the retreat. This way you can see that I'm telling the truth when I wrote that they are very enthusiastic!
That's all for now,
Matt
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