As mentioned in my previous post, I spend Monday and Tuesday away at a school retreat. In the morning, I went to school with my gear, which consisted of clothes, a pillow and a sleeping bag. From there, we went on the bus to a place not that far out of Dunedin. It was basically in the middle of a rural area so there were no shops or places to run away to. When we got there, I got my gear and went to my cabin. I shared this with 5 other guys, all but one of them were okay.

The whole time we were there, we did some games, discussions and some own time for personal thought. The group discussions were pretty interesting and mainly consisted of subjects about ourselves and our family. There were also some group activities such and the usual confidence course and getting over the giant wall etcetera.

During the night, we had dinner, which I do have to say was really horrible! They got fish and chips. The fish wasn’t that good and the batter on it was horrible. The chips were alright but I have had a lot better. Its not really the schools fault that is was bad, for they didn’t cook it. After that, we went and did our own thing, which was socialising for most people. The a bit later in the night, there was a mass. Yeah, its a Catholic School retreat so it was expected we would have something like this, but this was really the only religious stuff that happened, which I’m thankful for.

The next morning, we got packed and did a few more things. One of the things that we did was get back into our groups and individually say nice things about each member of our group. It was a really nice discussion and hearing what others thing about each other and what others thought about myself. We then wrote personal notes to each of our group members. This is probably the most interesting part of the retreat. Then it was time to go back to school.

We ended up getting back at 3:15pm. I had to catch the public bus to my house with a bag of clothes/pillow and a sleeping bag. This is rather awkward and I was tired from the lack of sleep that night which made carrying the items down the hill a challenge. When I got home, I realised I didn’t have my keys, they were inside the house. I also remembered that my sister wasn’t going to be home till late so she won’t be able to let me in. The only other person that could let me in was my neighbour, but she wasn’t home when I walked past. I went for a walk around the block and by the time I got back, she was home and she let me in.

The retreat was a great experience and I am happy I went. It didn’t bother me one bit that I didn’t have any computer or internet, or any communication to the outside (internet) world. The only problem with leaving the internet for more than 40 hours is the email banked up, the 20 or so pages of tweets on twitter, the dozen pages of articles on Digg and the thousand or so articles in my RSS reader. Lucky I was away during a quiet period or else I would have a whole lot more to catch up on. I AM BACK AND BETTER THAN EVER!!!