I'm back!

Ah, high school retreat... a time for 100 or so high school students to run amuck in the forests of Hungary. Surprisingly, this wasn't a bad thing! We have such great kids. The seniors pretty much do all the planning, so the role of the teachers is basically to count heads, pray, and hope that no one dies on the tire swing.

Highlights included the food -- ok, I'm kidding about that one. but it was a slight improvement over last year's spaghetti with ketchup! yuck. The real highlight was getting to talk to the kids so much. You get to know students in a totally different when you share a dorm with them! And I got to have really good conversations with a lot of them. One in particular stands out, because it was from around midnight until almost 2 in the freezing cold outside our dorm while I shivered in my pjs. Surprisingly, I really enjoyed it. It was with a student who is an atheist but has tons of really good questions, so I enjoyed getting to talk with her and share my perspective. Another highlight was the bonfire. Students are encouraged to share on our last night, and it was encouraging to hear so many of them talk about how they love the school and the teachers. Let's be honest -- it isn't often that students share with you how much they love class. You're far more likely to hear, "Do we have to do work today?" :) So it's nice to hear that they actually do appreciate what we do! And it's refreshing to hear that they genuinely like our school. I love working here.

So today was back to reality! We're almost done with the first quarter -- I have no idea how that happened so quickly...