Hiking Trip

From left to right: John, Brother Joe, Me, Alicia









Nick and Cassidy








Left to Right: Nick, Cassidy, Kat, John, Allison, Parker







View from about halfway up the Marlboro Trail

Skadoosh

That was the title of our retreat. It is taken from the movie Kung Fu Panda and thus I do not see the relevance. Oh well.

Anyways, the retreat started on Friday. We all got to the catholic Center for some pizza and soda before we headed out. The retreat was at St. Thecla's retreat house in Billerica, about a mile down the road from Mary's. So because I claimed to know the area, I was the navigator for our mini-van. Parker, the brother in training, was driving. Well, he just came up here this fall and has never driven on the Mass Pike, and hes from Florida and has never seen a toll booth, and he didn't really know where we were going... The fact that we didn't die is proof enough of God's love for me.

Well we got there without any major incidents and moved our stuff in. We all had individual rooms though they were more like cells. We all hung around for a bit, played ping-pong and goofed off. We played an ice breaker game where everyone has a balloon tied to their leg and the last one standing wins. I won because I'm amazing. We then had our first talk. Brother Brandon (from the catholic center) gave a talk about constantly climbing... I probably missed the main point because I always struggle with paying attention to talks and such. We then had a witness by one of the girls. Again, I don't remember much. We then broke up into small groups to discuss what was talked about and such. This is the part I always love because it truly allows you to get to know people on a very deep level in a very short period of time. There was a lot of music thrown in throughout all of this as well. We then had free time to just hang out and get to know each other. This involved lots of ping pong and card games. Eventually everyone called it a night, myself around one, because we knew it would be a long day ahead of us.

More to come later, I'm just lazy right now.

Broomball

I just started playing Inter mural Broomball with some of the girls on the floor and some of ther other friends. We had our first game last night. We lost... It was unfortunate, but very fun none the less. Its all in good fun anyways and I didn't mind that much, since I didn't expect our team to do very well anyways. Our goalie, Steph, had never played goalie for anything before. Also, she had never been on ice before... I don't know how thats possible considering she's from Sandwich, but whatever. I think we wound up losing like 6-2, I didn't pay to much attention to the score. I played center the whole time and feel I managed to get the best out of my line. Our line scored one of our goals and we only allowed 2 goals while we were on the ice. Being the top line center is always fun. We definitely have some things we need to work on, but there was some very promising results as well. I managed to win every face off I took, and i realized that it is very easy to gain possesion of the ball and drive to the net as long as your willing to slide about a bit and run right through the other teams defense (which is generally the girls on the other team). All and all it was fun and we went out to eat after.

Our friend Rocky Slaughter (thats his real name) is a photographer and he came and got some great shots so hopefully I can get those up soon.

I can't wait now for next weeks game.