JHHS Retreat 2019: Saly, Senegal

On November 6th at 1:15, all of Junior High and High School headed down to the dock to get in the cars. We were going on retreat! For retreat, we went to Saly which is about an hour away from the port in Dakar.

We stayed at a "compound" that was owned by a missionary family. It was right on the beach which reminded me of home. We made treasure chests that come in play later on the retreat. That first night, we had a session where one of the teachers shared about storms. Then we played this game called Stratego outside in the dark. Half of us didn't have flashlights..... but it was really fun! (Side note: earlier that day we had washed our mosquito nets, and they had rubbed against our faces. Sooooo, a small group of us had burning faces. :) We hung our mosquito nets around our beds and then tried to sleep.

The next day, we went to a place called Accrobaobab. It was a zip lining/obstacle course in the baobab trees. It was so so so much fun! We went on some super fun zip lines, and walked across a bridge that was over water with crocodiles!

When we got back, we went into the ocean. Going to the ocean was so much fun and that was something that I used to do all of the time at home. The water was definitely warmer than Malibu though! That night we did a murder mystery. It was so much fun! My character was called Tom (the least creative name in the whole group :). I was the helpful ship boy that was secretly a girl. I was really the governor's daughter. My sister Georgia was a sarcastic doctor named Sawbones McGraw. She was also the murderer.

The last day we did skits. They were really fun! Then we wrote notes to everyone in the group and put them in the little treasure chests. The last thing that we did was go in the ocean. It was so much fun! Then it was time to go home. Retreat was the best!

-Emma