Some of break thus far

Winter Break

Given an entire month of break, I like to maximize my time by traveling, seeing as many of my friends as possible and relaxing and enjoying people's company at the same time. While there have been some hectic moments, here's a recap of the past week or so with some photos to show!

This is a late photo Kathryn took while leaving Columbia to head back to Chicago, dropping her off at the STL airport on the way. Here's how packed our car was...not including bags on people's laps. Who ever said girls overpack?

Lena and I celebrating Christmas!
Becca, Jessie and I went sledding with the great amount of snow we got on Christmas! We even went two evenings in a row so thank goodness there was something to do before the snow melted on New Years!
College Conference

College Conference is an annual event held for Orthodox Christian college students across the country to reunite and give college students an opportunity to discuss faith through programs and meeting new people. I stayed at Antiochian Village in Bolivar, Pennsylvania, slightly outside of Pittsburgh, which is one of the most beautiful campgrounds and retreat centers I have been to. Besides the camp area which we mostly stayed off of, it has the Sts. Peter & Paul Chapel where we held services each morning and night, a dining hall that looks more like a banquet hall with good food, a large room for speakers that looks like a fellowship hall, an auditorium, three floors of hotel-like rooms with room service and a two lounges and/or game rooms on each floor to hang out in. Football, soccer fields and basketball courts were snowed over, but the Pennsylvania hills and sleds provided allowed for some fun sledding late at night.

Originally, the Project Mexico interns planned to meet at College Conference as a reunion to see each other, but in addition to this, we all met so many new people and brought our friends together. With the four interns that attended being from Long Island, New York, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, Charlotte, North Carolina and Chicago—we all had connections and friends there, but made more. I became a lot closer with the other Chicagoans there, and especially the other attendees that flew into Pittsburgh instead of driving to Bolivar. This group of approximately 30 people spent 7 hours together waiting at the airport and driving to Antiochian Village in traffic, so it was great to meet such a variety of people.

Some of my observations from the conference:

• Chanting differences in the services and Greek and Antiochian singing styles--it's interesting to see how different a liturgy can be when the same hymns are sung with different wordings, languages and paces. It's nice to hear a variety, but almost makes me appreciate the Greek church's style more
• The Greeks and Arabs (or Greeks and any ethnic group for that matter) create everything into a competition of some sort. A Greek-Arab soccer game, general gossiping around the retreat center, and dances are a competition of who is better.
• One of my favorite things to do is bring my friends together. I’ve done this in the past by having a birthday party with both Mizzou friends and Northbrook friends, but the retreat allowed for all of my Greek Orthodox friends to meet each other in a nice environment. Seeing Yianni and Gregg from Mizzou OCF sitting with Nick and Dean from Sts. Peter & Paul, hanging out with Anna, Emily and Sotiri from Mexico, joining the St. John’s Des Plaines group, with Penelope from Fanari, along with other miscellaneous priest’s children and friends we met along the way is just fascinating to me. There’s no reason to have a non-unified group so I am thankful to know people who are easygoing enough to meet other people I consider friends and get along so well.
• This was partially intended, but the conference really inspires you to improve your college's OCF (Orthodox Christian Fellowship) chapter and encourages involvement in religious events while living the busy life of a college student. I was inspired to apply for the Student Advisory Board to build this program across the country and will hopefully fulfill this goal!
• Participants get to attend four breakout sessions on a variety of topics, mostly revolving around sacraments. Besides "Building your OCF," I went to a speaker on why we value teh sacrament of confession, why baptism is important and Orthodox Christian marriage, all which taught me valuable lessons the topics in a forum of other Orthodox Christians who were interested in hearing the information.
• The keynote speaker was a Northwestern professor Dr. Gayle who discussed the impact technology has on today's society in relation to the Orthodox Christian faith. She raised points such as effects genetic traits have, and if traits are genetic, what it says about sin. As a medical expert, she talked a lot about technology that prolongs, delays or ends life. We also discussed invetrofertilization, and I had a lot of respect for Dr. Gayle because of her well-roundedness and superb intelligence not only in the medical field, but about the Orthodox faith, hierarchs and membership of archdiocese groups that support philanthropies and missions. She is one of those women that serves on multiple committees because it gives her something to do, which is obviously something I envy. While starting off slow, her presentation definitely picked up and I enjoyed hearing what she had to say.

Photos!

Greek dancing in the airport
Some of our friends going sledding
The Antiochian Village Retreat Center

The people I hung out with: a combination of Project Mexico interns/participants, Chicagoans, PKs and friends
Arab and Greek dancing
PK (priest's kids) photo...we're special
Beautiful sunset from the campgrounds!

Our group at the banquet

Sts. Peter & Paul Chapel
New Year's Eve and Chicago trip

Anna had her car at the conference, and offered to drive us home for a vacation to spend time with the Mexico interns and see family and friends in the Chicago area. We made excellent time out of Pennsylvania, and decided to spend New Years in Crown Point, Indiana where our friend Jiori lives. Our New Years Eve consisted of the Wii game Just Dance 2, looking at photos from our past four days together, learning and practicing our Greek and Arab dancing skills and a lot of food.

Here's us dancing in Jiori's kitchen!
We drove into Chicago on New Years Day in the afternoon and continued our social circle from College Conference at a party the next evening! Here's Sotiri, me, Anna and Emily at a friend's birthday party!
After attempting to get some sleep, going to church and filling our stomachs at Pinstripes, we began our downtown adventure by shopping, roaming the streets and walking to Millennium Park. Our reflections looked awesome and we got some great photos!

Anna and I posing at the bean

If brunch wasn't filling enough, Emily's relatives own the restaurant Greek Islands in Greektown so we had a phenomenal dinner there, so much that I probably won't go to another restaurant in Greektown except there ever again. Emily even went back to lunch with her family there the next day, and we explored the city more since Anna and Sotiri had to leave to drive home. We probably walked about eight miles throughout the day between Greektown to Navy Pier, Navy Pier to the car, and around in general. Here's us on the pier!