Crosslinks Retreat

I spent this weekend back in Annalong with all the kids from Crosslinks. I have to say I was not looking forward to going at all and James, Adam, and Joey talked their way out of coming so I was left to hang out with new people, and really who wants to do that? The minibus ride up was terrible. I wanted to go home so bad. The kids were loud and violent, and annoying. No matter how much I tried to talk myself out of my bad attitude it just wouldn't go away. When we got there we played a bunch of 'get to know you' games which were a lot of fun. After that I got into it and the rest of the weekend was really fun. I appreciated getting to know the kids and realized that they are really good, fun people. I also got to know the other leaders better and am going out with a girl from Sword of the Spirit called Nina on Monday. We had several sessions about identity, culture, unity, and peace. It was really interesting to hear what people from Belfast think about their own city and the situation here. A lot of them said that Belfast isn't a good place to raise a family and that it's still so divided that there isn't much hope for unity. It is really cool to be a part of west end kids, east end kids, and Chinese kids coming together. Lots of the youth here have never mixed with someone from the other side of the city, so what these kids are doing is actually a brave and gutsy thing. Some of their friends wouldn't understand it.
Nina, Elaine and I were sharing a room and I decided it would be a good idea to get up early Sunday morning to see the sun rise. Unfortunately it was really cloudy so instead of a glorious red sun peaking over the water we just got a slightly less dark cloudy sky. But Nina and I went out later around 10 and got some really nice pictures. It was so windy rough I actually got blown off of the boulder I was standing on. The internet is really slow right now, so I'll have to post my pictures some other time.
So all in all it was a really good weekend. I had a lot of fun and made some new friends.