15th February 2016

What we did at Savio House

By David Hart.

Savio is a great place for a retreat. It’s brilliant for making friends and having a laugh. I was thinking that it was all going to be praying, how I was wrong! I am going to tell you what I did at Savio…

On Monday 25th January lots of us from the P band set off on the coach. The journey took about one and a half hours.

When we arrived the staff were really helpful and made us laugh. We got shown our rooms, one or two people per room. We were given a while to settle into them and then we went into a hall where we played a game called “evolution”. The aim of the game was to become a superhero through winning games of “rock, paper, scissors”. Unfortunately I didn’t become a superhero. Next we drew each other’s faces, which was entertaining to say the least. We then had to ask the person whose face we drew three questions which were:

1. If you could go anywhere where would you go?

2. What is your favourite food?

3. If you were an animal what would it be?

A little later on we went into groups – I think our group was the best! We talked a little about ourselves then after that we decided on a name for our group. We were the “Super Oreos”. Our group were all happy and there was no falling out because we didn’t leave anyone out or have disagreements.

Later on we went on a walk up a hill where there was a sort of white monument called White Nancy on the top. The view was extraordinary. You could see a village and Savio. It was wonderful. When we got back we said some prayers but they were fun! Then we had a discussion about choices which were relevant to all of our lives this year because we are choosing our subjects for GCSEs.

On Tuesday we heard about a man called Robert Rule who forgave a United States serial killer Gary Ridgeway for killing his daughter along with 47 other girls. We discussed if we could forgive him in our group. We then talked about reconciliation, before joining the other groups and practising songs.

Later in the day we had a walking competition. The walking competition consisted of using a map in order to get to a church while answering questions on the way. We were the first ones there and we got all the questions right so we won. Afterwards we had a debate on various topics like letting migrants in, war and things like that. Again we won, so we won the overall competition.

We had to do something in the Mass. I chose the role play and I ended up playing the part of Jesus. I wore a fake beard and with the wig it was extremely uncomfortable. We enjoyed the role play.

The highlight for most people was the disco. The music was not too loud and we were all encouraged to dance. There was a karaoke when Theo sang “Don’t you want me”.

Finally the next day we went into our little groups where we were doing trust exercises and we said something nice about everyone. It was a great ending to our visit.

To sum it up it was the best trip I have ever been on with school!