Hey readers, hope you all had a great weekend! As for me, any of you that read my fellow freshman Hannah Moriggi's blog know that the two of us were on our PC Connections Retreat this past weekend. If you haven't gotten the chance to read about the first part of our great weekend, check out Hannah's blog here

After our photo scavenger hunt, the weekend continued with our 3rd delicious meal provided by the retreat center, and then another talk from one of our sophomore retreat leaders, Kelly, entitled "Freshman Year Hurdles." The talk centered around problems and difficulties she had faced during her freshman year at PC, and after we broke up into our small groups we discussed what we had seen as challenges thus far. My small group, the Awesome Armadillos as we called ourselves, discussed how oftentimes the biggest hurdle one has to face in college is yourself, that is the idea that we sometimes talk ourselves out of being who we really are and shooting for what we really want.
Following our great discussion and some Q&A with some of the adults in charge of Campus Ministry here at Providence, our leaders distributed to each team a Yellow pages ad which we had to act out in skit form--my group ended up with an ad for a Hair salon in the Providence area called "Matilda's Hair Extensions and Beauty Supplies" but I'll leave it up to the reader to guess who was cast as Matilda...well who am I kidding--it was me. After watching every group get up and perform (some highlights included our retreat leader Tim doing Zumba aerobics in short shorts and the general teasing of our Retreat Director Nate's mannerisms,) we trooped out for a wonderful campfire, in which we all joined in to sing plenty of classics from Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," to "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey. Here's an image of yours truly during one such song, backed up by several of my new friends and of course earning confused stares from at least of them as well:

After a very early wake up, which my cabin-mates and I were unfortunate enough to miss, we had one of our final talks from the Senior Steve, entitled "Running the Race, Keeping the Faith." Steve, and our small group afterwards, talked about how even though it's tough when it comes to our faith, we need to ask a lot of tough questions, and even if we don't always find all the answers, we at least lead ourselves to ask BETTER questions. We also did affirmations for our small groupmates, which if you've never done them is when each member of the group takes a large piece of paper or a journal, writes their name at the top, and passes it down to each member of the group who writes whatever they think most appropriate as an affirmation, a challenge, words of gratitude or just best wishes. My affirmations are hanging on my Dorm Room wall as I'm typing this, although my camera cord is MIA at the moment, so I can't show everyone, and it's a fantastic way to sum up the weekend. Following this up with a last team Brunch, punctuated by some new games I had never played (including a group game called "Crocodili, Crocodili" which my leader Claire had to teach me,) kept our spirits high.

As the morning waned and the sun rose higher in the sky, we trooped into the main room of the Retreat center for our final talk, given by one of my group leaders Katie called "Victory Lap." It was about how even though freshman year is a huge part of our college experience, we do have 3 and a half more years to figure out what's going on with us, and to find our niche at PC. We then decorated paper "runners" to tape up to a huge paper "racetrack" our leaders had made for us, during which we all did our best to sum up the weekend, gave our thanks, and came up with some things we knew we would work on when we got back to campus. With that, we finished cleaning up, packing those few stray socks that had slipped under our temporary beds, and trouped back to campus. But our retreat wasn't over just yet--last night we, as a group, went to 10:30 PM mass in the St. Dominic Chapel, which if you have the chance to come for is something I highly recommend. Even as we parted ways with hugs and good cheer, we all could feel the connections we had made over the weekend.

As our retreat leader Nate said, though we good naturedly teased him over his phrasing, "Great friends don't just fall into your lap." The point of this weekend, in my opinion, was friendship, as well as the idea that we would need to be proactive if we wanted to find what we were missing about home and high school here at PC. The best part about it, though, is that the college offers so many amazing chances to do things like that, and it definitely starts with retreats like Transformations and Connections. If I had known that at the start of the weekend, this group of people dressed up for Olympic Games,

would become some of the best friends I'd made at school so far, I would have laughed. But in the end, we all connected as was the intent, and I am ever grateful to PC for giving me that opportunity.
Until next time readers, remember to keep on connecting, and realize that PC will make it easy for you to do so here if you're willing to open up with the people around you. And some face-paint doesn't hurt either!