CalSO Berkeley Orientation, June 22-23
oh man, there are so many things that went on this past weekend at Berkeley. it was such a great experience and i’m so glad that i went :) brief overview of the program:
- several speeches and videos. those parts made me kind of sleepy, but some of them gave good information. that policeman and southern woman….. hahahaha i have no words.
- met tons of awesome people :) my group got to know each other really well which was extra nice because in the program, we’re with our groups for a lot of things. but even so, we spent even more time together than the program accounted for: we ate meals together, went exploring during the free time at night to go get food and boba at the asian ghetto, planned road trips to see each other, and did basically everything together. i am so thankful for them. they made my experience 10x better :)
- had great roommates :) you always hear horror stories of terrible ones, but my roommates and i actually got along really well. they were super friendly and easy to talk to! i was in a triple, so we had three people. i hope my future roommates are just as great as they were :)
- had an awesome counselor, EDGARDO! we all got so comfortable with each other that he decided he could made racist asian comments about us since he’s from el salvador…. but they were pretty funny, i have to admit. he was super nice and funny to be around. definitely easy to get along with :)
although all of these things made my experience so great at CalSO, i think the one thing that made me even more excited to go was the talk that i had with my roommates late at night in our dorm. i was able to share with them about my Christian beliefs and we had a really great talk about religion. one has been exploring different religions recently such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity. she joined a Christian fellowship a few months back and felt a connection during worship and prayers, which i thought was awesome :) the other has non-religious parents so she didn’t grow up believing in a God, but she was open to listening about it. i think she was more interested in the different cultures that religions have, but nevertheless, it was a great opportunity to share. i got to talk to them about my beliefs and views based on Christianity and it was a really great time of fellowship :)
through this talk that i had with them, i think God was trying to send me a message that i didn’t really realize until afterwards. until now, i guess i always had this subconscious thought/fear that i wouldn’t be able to reach out to people in Berkeley since they tend to be more liberal and so i thought they would be close-minded when it came to religion. but, through the talk with my roommates, i think God was really trying to show me that He can use me in so many ways to reach out to other people. He already used me to reach out to my orientation roommates! this was His way of assuring me that He can and will use me no matter where i go or what i do, and that really brought me a lot of comfort. that definitely changed my outlook on reaching out to others when i get to college. PRAISE GOD! :)
@11 months ago with 7 notes
