‘You do you’, was the theme of our Year 8 retreat. On Friday of week 7, term 1, our Year 8 cohort came together for our retreat. The leaders were part of the NET team (national evagination team) and came to spend the day with us. Their goal was to give us confidence to choose our own opinions based on what we like and not what other people like. They started our retreat with a game which was called ‘chain tag’ in which we had to link our arms together if we got tagged.
So, to achieve that goal, they put us in groups for us to communicate with new people that we perhaps weren’t familiar with and increase our confidence. The teams we were in, would be our teams for the rest of the day.
After the first activity we played a game to relate to our theme ‘you do you.’ The game was agree, both and disagree; where there was a topic and we chose to agree, both or disagree. Sometimes, a lot of people chose to agree and other times, a lot of people chose to disagree. It was surprising to see other’s opinions on different topics.
After our lunch time break, we went in two lines into the auditorium. The NET team and our teachers told us to be quiet as we went inside and to bring a pen or a pencil as if we were doing an activity. Once we were inside the NET team told us the instructions, which were to find a quiet place in the auditorium, and they will give us some paper. But firstly, we watched a video about God and how God is no other like anyone else. After the video, we all went to our quiet spaces with our pen and paper in hand.
There were 2 sides on the paper, one of the sides said, “write down things about yourself that you hide from others” and the other side said, “write down some things about yourself that you show to others”. Some of the NET team leaders sat in chairs and students came to them, telling them their prayers.
Overall, the Year 8 retreat was enjoyed, and we all had a great time. We are going to look forward to next year’s retreat and see what they have for us. We appreciated the Net team and senior school student leaders for making out retreat special.
