Weekend

I had the best weekend ever.

On Friday night I attended a retreat that a few of my Mercyhurst friends were putting on. One of my favorite Behrend students went as well. It's really funny, actually, how this came to be. One of my really good friends from high school went to Mercyhurst. Towards the middle of junior year, I became really good friends with another engineering student. He ALSO has a really good friend from high school that went to Mercyhurst. And my really good friend and his really good friend?? They were practically best friends at Mercyhurst by the time we figured all of this out. I like it. They're both part of the campus ministry down there, which is doing a lot to further God's kingdom on campus there. Which means we both were invited, separately, to this retreat, and both came. I can't lie, though. Finding out that he had been invited had a bit of an impact about the fact that I agreed to go. :-)

It was a spectacular retreat. Friday night was some AWESOME worship, which I had been lacking in my life since the dissolving of the IVCF worship team. It really helped me to connect back with what I had been missing so deeply for the past few months. After worship was sledding. The sledding hill was really huge, and took approximately 10 minutes to walk to the top. It wasn't really steep though, so sliding down it was kind of like a water slide (still lots of fun!). I only went down once, though, before I decided that it wasn't worth it to walk back up the hill again. So I hung out at the top. There, my other Behrend colleague decided to start a snow-war of sorts, which involved shoving snow down my back and tackling me to the ground in an attempt to make me slide down the hill. Mercyhurst/high-school friend decided to join in this war. Before long, it evolved to include the entire top-of-the-hill crew in a full-blown snowball battle, boys vs. girls. At the end, the boys hopped on sleds and tried to escape down the hill, but I couldn't let that happen. Taking hold of the saucer-shaped sled I had been using as a shield, I took a running leap down the hill after them. I expected other girls to follow me, but they didn't. I thought this was okay until I felt a large weight of a 150-lb man jumping on top of me. My Mercyhurst friend had lost his sled, and decided that I was the next best thing. Great. Without the other girls to help me, I was helpless, sliding at an increasing speed down this hill with a stow-away on my back. My Behrend friend's reaction to this was hilarious. He said he was surprised to see the sled my friend was using move once he got off. We laughed about it, I cleaned off my face (which had been shoved into the snow on initial impact and was absolutely covered), and we drank some hot chocolate before bed.

Saturday was dedicated to a bit more worship, team-building activities, snowman building, and horse-back riding. My horse's name was Loreto. Then we went back to campus and I showered and ate dinner.

Two of my absolutely best friends from freshman/sophomore year had decided to visit this weekend. As soon as I got back from the retreat, they had decided to gather up the old gang and play some soccer. So that is what we did. I am terrible at soccer, but it was great to play with my old friends again. I had missed them oh so much. My least favorite part of college has been watching friends transfer to University Park. There have been too many.

After soccer was bowling. We were all kind of tired and didn't really want to go, but one of my friends practically insisted. We played two games, which ended up being pretty fun. Then we came back to Behrend and went to sleep. Saturday involved a lot of physical activity for me. Needless to say, when I woke up on Sunday morning, I was incredibly sore.

Sunday morning was church. One of my U-Park friends came to church with us, and we filled Aeriale's van! I also enjoyed church because I saw some of my Mercyhurst people that I had become good friends with at the retreat. I love making new friends, I think it's one of my favorite things. After church we went to Steel City, which sells sandwhiches that are made to give you a heart attack. Aeriale and Ayron almost ate half of theirs, Jason ate an entire half of his, and the rest of us ordered small ones. It was still delicious.

Nap time.

The old crew that I had played soccer with the night before then went to dinner together. After dinner we hung out in the apartment like old times and played catch phrase and watched movies. It was like we were freshmen again.

Monday morning was an early morning gorge hike. This involved walking in the gorge through the snow, and at one point sliding down the hill (using the packed-down snow as a waterslide). I got stuck at the top of the hill holding onto a tree branch by my fingertips. If I had let go, I would immediately be sliding down the "waterslide," but I wasn't ready to yet. Dan tried to help me and ended up falling down the waterslide. After he went down, he realized that there was a huge log in the way and suggested that I find another location to slide down. Perfect, since I was stuck. Dave tried to help me, and really only ended up replacing the branch I was holding onto with his foot. Brad finally climbed up the hill, came in from the side, grabbed me, and swung me over to where he was. He wins. I then could get myself to the second waterslide that we had formed, and slide down that one. It was fun! Although walking back up wasn't that exciting. I had to spiderman-crawl the whole way up.

After gorge-hiking I went to work at dobbins, and it turned into a boring-regular weekend after that. It still kind of is the weekend, since I have no classes today. But I will be going to work at GE today, which should be exciting. Then it's back to class tomorrow. I should really start putting some effort into senior design at some point...

This may be the longest post I've ever written. I think it's more for me to remember this weekend than for you to read. Anyway, it was great. Leave me comments and let me know if you made it all the way to the end!!