Saturday, April 19, 2008

THE SCHEDULE SLOWS DOWN

Today I returned home from a Women's Retreat!! Whew. That's the end of the whirlwind I've been on since arriving back in NY. Of course it's likely that another one will begin in the near future, but for a while, at least, things will be calm and ordinary.

The retreat was great. We had an awesome speaker, the "class clowns" of my church kept things very lively and we laughed a lot, and the weather was about as perfect as it could be. A great combination.

This year is the end of our two year stint as the Organizing church for the retreat. What a relief--it's a ton of work and even though it's very gratifying, it's good to know that we don't have to do it again for a very long time.

At this time of the year, the buds are just barely showing their color, so this was the most creative shot of the lake I could figure out. I don't really have a lot of time for scenic shooting when I'm at the retreat, but every once in a while I get the urge to do something scenic. It's usually an absolute failure, but at least it shows the environment.

The next two images are of my church sisters. Okay, we can never do just a straight shot without horsing around a little, but I guess that's half the fun of going away together.




So if you'll notice, we are wearing leis and flowers in our hair--at least most of us are. In three months in Hawaii, I never wore a lei or flower. It took returning to NY to do that. Actually, the one lady who was responsible for organizing the ice-breaker game also came up with the idea of us wearing these items, as she said, in honor of me returning to their midst, and also to be identifiable to all the other ladies as the ones who could answer questions about room assignments, where the dining hall is, what time the session begins, etc., etc.

I was happy to wear the flower and lei when I found out that her first choice was bunny ears, but she couldn't find them in a large enough quantity. Whew, dodged that bullet, huh?




This is a group from other churches who were playing the ice-breaker. Everyone had to get in line in order of the letter of their first name, and they had to identify themselves without speaking, so they're trying to mime the letter of their name. The "not talking" part was the hardest as you can imagine with a group of 110 very peppy women.




This is a line-up of some of the ladies from my church. They kind of cringe when I show up with the camera, but they usually do what I ask.






All in all, it was a great time, but I'm glad it's over.

Mahalo for reading this post and Aloha for now.