Rafting Into the Future

By Maddie Rude

February 27-28, the seniors walked to Rainbow Paradise hotel in the scorching heat for the Senior Transition retreat. Once the seniors got there, they were able to sit and relax in the cold room, which felt good after the long, treacherous walk. The seniors started with some activities, they talked about the differences between the foreign TCK's and local TCKs, but with an added twist: as the students read the lists, they spoke in hilarious accents.

They discussed the grieving stages of transitioning and built little paper boats to help us say goodbye to people. "I've moved four times in the past two years, each time I've made a boat, and each time I've sunk; moral of the story: boats are pointless," said Georgia White (12).

After the morning session, there was a four-hour break for lunch; some people went swimming, chilled on the beach, went tubing.

After lunch, Mr. Brewster ambushed the seniors with a combination of physical exertion and financial stress in a well-crafted form of torture. "I ended with negative 20 Brewster bucks even though he forced me to do 50 push-ups," said Christina Beaman (12). After dinner, there were three panels of teachers and staff who answered questions directly asked by seniors.

The next morning, the seniors all had breakfast before the staff bombarded them with information yet again. They discussed their values and gave us their opinions and advice about college life in America and how to deal with finances as independent human beings. Lastly, they went over safety with Mr. Pagee: "Aim for the head," he said, telling Elizabeth Horton as he was teaching her to key someone in the head to escape attackers.

The retreat was very needed for many of the seniors; they learned a lot, some of them knew the information presented, but it was an excellent refresher.