Since my freshman year I thought I knew what the senior retreat at Calvin Crest would be about. I imagined swimming in the pond, riding down the infamous flume, trusting my peers in the faith fall and star gazing during the renowned night hike.

I did not realize that riding down the flume would mean a class-wide competition, or that the faith fall would really take trust in people I wish I had gotten to know before I was in that position. The night hike meant more than just watching the stars; it meant talking to the people that I had lost contact with during the 13 years I’ve spent at FC.

Most will say that senior retreat was a blast, but I will say it was much more. On this trip, I realized how much I valued my classmates’ company.

As soon as we arrived at Calvin Crest on Sept. 6, I realized I would be spending the night with girls I had not talked to in a while. It made me nervous to think that the girls may not like me, because we had lost contact throughout our school years. During the time I spent with them, we imitated Chris Brown dance moves, sang the current hit songs and talked about normal girl stuff.

Somewhere between mattress wrestling matches we were able to reconnect and go back to old times when having fun was the ultimate goal. This made me wish I had not waited this long to reconnect with these girls. However, though spending time in the cabins with these hilarious girls was special, the senior retreat had just begun.

In order to participate in the initiatives we separated into groups with people we did not normally hang out with. Spending time with the kids in my class that I wished I would have made time to talk to before my last year in high school was enjoyable. Those games sparked the class bonding throughout the trip.

While playing kickball on the green, it registered that this kickball game could very well be my last with the family I had created around campus. A flashback of playing against Matthew Andreatta and Taylor Brouwer when I was five years old came to mind. For 13 years I have taken for granted the strong friendships I’ve formed, but this is my last year to relish them.

We ended the retreat with chapel. Scott Orcutt, our student body president, delivered the sermon. He spoke on living with God fully. He ended the chapel in a communion after asking us all what we hoped for our final year in high school. Some talked about revival, some about spirit ? but I talked about my hope for a community within our class.

Senior retreat gave me a glimpse of that community I hoped for. The seniors of 2009 went on senior retreat as individual people in their individual cliques and returned a unified class.