Natalie Robles
The retreat was great. It allowed
to take a step back from the hectic Duke life and reintegrate the Medellín
experience back into my life. Not that I’d forgotten about it, because I
certainly had not, but I was able to analyze how I wanted to continue with the
guidance of my directors, Tam and Jota, for the rest of my college career. I
plan on returning to Medellín, and reflecting upon how our lives changed after
the trip and how we have and can use our experience in other aspects of our
life was very nourishing. I was nourished in the sense that I felt out of the
loop and a little disconnected from the unforgettable experience I had had, but
now I was able to take a step back, forget about the stresses of school, and
put the experience into perspective. I feel like the retreat is perfect a year
after the fact; having a retreat immediately after coming back from Medellín
would have been too soon. Time has allowed me to reflect upon everything, and
everyone who came to the retreat seems matured by the experience. I feel
matured and enlightened by it as well, and I’m very grateful we had the
experience. They should do it again next year at the same place; the calm
atmosphere added to the reflecting we needed to do. It was a lovely space to
come together again.
Gideon Rosenthal
Thank you
so much for this opportunity to come on a retreat with my fellow Duke Engagers
and our program directors, Tam and Jota. It was an excellent opportunity to get
away from Duke and to reconnect and reflect on our trip. I enjoyed discussing
how we felt when we returned to the states and what the trip meant to us after
all these months. It certainly granted us with some closure on the experience. However, hopefully our time with DE has
not truly closed. I hope that we will
be able to stay involved with the program and that Tam and Jota will be able to
help us in our future endeavors. Thank you once again for giving us this
opportunity as well as DE Colombia itself.
Jessica David
Participating in this retreat with DukeEngage Colombia
students has been a great experience and a wonderful conclusion to the project
and my undergraduate career at Duke. It was great getting away from campus and
being able to reminisce on the time we spent in Medellín, the people we met,
and the videos that we were able to produce at the end of the project. We
discussed ways that we can continue to promote and help the project and ways in
which we can benefit from our experience. Tam and Jota have been great
directors and I plan to stay in contact with them in the future. We have truly
built a great relationship through DukeEngage Colombia. This bond that has been
established will remain for some time to come.
Cassidy Fleck
I am grateful for the opportunity to attend this retreat. It
was nice to leave Duke’s campus and reflect about my experiences both in
Colombia and how those experiences led to other events and opportunities in my
life. It was great to reconnect with Tam and Jota and to hear from other
students who have since participated in the program. For me, this retreat
reminded me that my experience with DE Colombia is applicable to so many
aspects of my life. As a graduating senior, I have had tunnel vision in terms
of careers and opportunities and being able to reflect has reminded me of how
open my life truly is to new experiences and even possibly revisiting old ones.
I believe every DE student should have this time to reflect and I only wish I
had had it sooner.
Gabriela Arredondo-Santisteban
The retreat
has provided me a great environment to reflect on my experience with
DukeEngage. Having a space that is away from Duke allowed me to reconnect with
my memories and come together with my fellow DukeEngagers. The cabin we stayed
in allowed us to relax and take our time developing our thoughts to reflect on
our time spent in Colombia as a group and individually. We each have our own
emotions, ideas, and memories to share. At Duke we are constantly moving around
with classes to go to and homework to turn in, so it was nice to take a step
back from that chaos to have a moment to reconnect with our DukeEngage family.
This retreated served somewhat as a closing for my time in Medellín because I’m
not sure when I’ll be able to go back, but at the same time it allowed me to
think of ideas for the future of what I can accomplish because of DukeEngage.
