A touch of the Yellow Sea

Friday night through Saturday night was the faculty retreat. The retreat was held at the school's beach lodge on the Yellow Sea. I was excited about going and being able to swim in the Yellow Sea. This time I packed my swimsuit and was ready to use it. We left school around 5:00pm on Friday afternoon and arrived at the beach lodge around 8:30. We had a great dinner, some praise and worship, then the first of our sessions from Libby Stephens. Libby was speaking to us about transitions and TCK's (third culture kids.) It was good, but a long day. After the session ended around 10:30pm I went to my cabin and prepared for bed. A lot of the folks stayed up and socialized, but I was too worn out from the week. I went to bed around 11pm but didn't sleep well and was up for the day around 6:00am on Saturday. I debated what I would do at that early hour and decided to put my swim suit on and head to the beach. Now, to this point it had been raining for at least 15 hours. When I was preparing to go the rain had turned to a sprinkle. It was high tide so the water was partially up the walk way and I knew I would have little trouble getting to it. I invited two of the other girls in my cabin to go with me and off we went. Just as we arrived at the water (about 4 minutes after we left the cabin) the rain started again. I hobbled down to the water, and let the Yellow Sea wash over my good foot for about a minute. During this time the rain started to pour all of us got soaked, even though we had umbrellas. We made our way back to our cabin, wet, but content.

The rest of the morning flew by and the formal part of the retreat was over by 11:15am. At this point the rain had stopped, and it was brighter outside. I wouldn't go so far as to say the sun was shining, but at least some of the clouds had moved on. The tide had also gone out, so the water was about 50 ft farther from the shore than when I went out earlier in the morning. Apparently this beach has one of the biggest difference in high tide and low tide. I made the trip to the beach again, except this time I walked out quite a distance and enjoyed the feel of the sand beneath my good foot. After my second time at the beach that day we had lunch. After lunch there was talk of doing a number of things. I ended up joining the group that went to get coffee. It was a hike, but nice to chat with some other young teachers. Upon my return to the lodge I was informed that several folks were going to pack up and head to the train station in hopes of catching an earlier train home. The school had provided busses to being people back to the school, but the bus was scheduled to leave at 6:00pm and we ended up on a train that left at 4:00pm. The extra two hours were worth the W17,000.

As with most retreats I got home and was exhausted. I did nothing for a while then realized that I could add a feature to Skype where I would be able to call my friends and family from my computer. I took advantage of this and spoke to most of my family and friends before going to bed. It was just what I needed.