Campus Retreat 2005
(general mail, October 4)
It has been sometime since I last wrote. How have you been? I was away for the annual campus retreat last week and had a ball of a time. We went to this place, Nasu, located in Tochigi-prefecture, slightly northwest of Tokyo. It seems that the emperor has a holiday villa there, and right next to the resort hotel that we were staying at! Fancy that!
I noticed a few things when I was there. Most of the signage and signboards are of a dull tone. It seems that there is a law that all signs put up can only be in brown, white, or black… accented by maybe, only red. All the signs are like such, even the road signs. This is because the area is a forest reserve (so to say) that they didn’t want the signage to clash with the natural beauty.
We spent 3 days 2 nights there. Ruth and I shared a room that was meant for 4. We had a Western and Japanese style room. It was really cool. The resort came with the usual public Hot-Spring. We stayed at the same chain of hotel we did last year in Shizuoka-prefecture, LaForet. Yup! We get to travel the Kanto area with the campus every year.
The food was great. We had buffet style this time. The foreign students were more than happy to have food to their palate of taste, and the rest of the students being able to choose what they want and eat as much as they like. I remember the years where only very Japanese food were served in the usual Japanese events and function portion. Well, no doubt as classy it may be, we always end up hungy soon after.
We had talks by the chairperson of the board of directors of the school, Rev. Akae. He shared with us messages in the theme of "Denying Yourself." It was refreshing… but I skipped the meetings on the 2nd day to catch up with my sleep. I stayed up late chatting with Ruth and Yuka the night before and only had 4 hours sleep before getting up to do translaton for Dr. Ito’s testimony he shared in the Morning prayer meeting on the 2nd day. I also got the opportunity to visit an Art Museum and did some art work myself with some students. Dr. Kikuchi treated us to the entrance fee and we could spend our money on making ourself a souvenir. We were like kids once again painting and all doing glass art. I painted an angel.
Though it was just a short stay, I had tonnes of fun. Hehe… I did something nasty too. Anyways, it is my final campus retreat. I enjoyed the time spent with classmates of the same grade, participating with students of the regular Japanese class in a time of games, etc. I also loved the quiet time spent in the sauna, and jacuzzi, sitting in the hotsprings (indoor and outdoor). Man! I think I spent close to 1 and a half hours there. Ahh… how refreshing!
I hope to share with you some pictures if possible, do check them out at the album on my blog (not so soon… but soon.)
Have a great week ahead. As usual, yours truly will be buried in work till the weekend. Be good to yourselves wherever you are and in whatever you do. Hugs and kisses… XOXOX
