My Awesome New Digs

Here's a tour of the Cabrini Retreat Center.

You turn off of Golf Road onto our driveway, and these are the first things you see.

The entrance from Golf Road.

 Front lawn.

Front entrance.

The retreat center is shaped like an "L." When you walk in the front doors, the quests floors (3 floors, 72 single rooms in total), cafeteria, chapel, lounges, and rec/meeting room are to the left.

So to the left is:

Statue of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

One of three lounges for the guests.

The cafeteria!

My favorite room- the Kitchen! This is LC and Dirk's territory, but I hope to spend a lot of time in this room. So far so good! :D

Colleen and I admiring the facilities.

Our first pizza made from scratch in our reliable ol' oven...

It cooks better than it looks.

And THIS is my absolute favorite room- our giant walk in freezer! It's not my favorite just because it's where the Italian ices live, but because when you close the door a long, loud whirling noise escapes that makes you feel like you're walking through an arctic wind. It cracks me up every time. Noreen says I'm easily amused.

The Main Hallway:

Main hallway

If you go right, you have a couple of our offices, a personal kitchen, and the "fireside suite" which is rented out to the guests and doubles as my living room and dining room. Up the stairs from the fireside suite is where Colleen and I live. The fireside suite, the kitchen, my office, and the bedrooms upstairs were all apart of the original convent. Colleen put a welcome sign on the stairs for us so that we feel like we have a front door. Lol.

The Fireside Suite/My Living Room:

 

 My apartment:

The stair landing. Welcome to our home! 

The yellow carpet seems a bit much at first, but I have already grown quite fond of it.

My bedroom:

The closet is huge! 

The view from my window to the right.

The view from my window to the left.

the hallway from my bedroom door, which leads to the bathroom, a few closets, the living room and prayer room.

Colleen in the living room. :D

The prayer room.

We are trying to learn Spanish, so Colleen has started labeling things.

Our CAR! ... for official business only, unless I'm fillin' the tank m'self.

 Outside there is a fountain, a little gazebo, a bunch of secluded benches, stations of the cross nailed up on trees in a great circle (the sun was glaring so I am not going to put pics of them up now, but I'll get to it).  The Cabrini Retreat Center LOVES statues, too. They're everywhere. When I'm feeling mischievous I think I'll move some of them around and hide them in places Noreen and Colleen wont expect to find them. Mwah ha ha..

St. Anthony

St. Joseph and baby Jesus

Mary's Shrine.

View from where Mary is, inside the shrine.

Pear tree!!! We also have peach trees. :D They're delicious.

The pool: We have a heated pool. Colleen and I have made a pact to go swimming every day. And she's gonna teach me water aerobics!

Colleen doin' some laps.

The only other things I haven't got pics of yet are the chapel and of Sr. Bridget's house, which is also on the grounds. But I'll get to them soon!

This weekend is going to be very busy for us. There's a new group of young adults coming in who pretty much only speak Spanish, so this is going to be a test for Colleen and I to see how much Spanish we can remember. Unfortunately, every sentence I make in my head is half Spanish and at least half French. ... but practice will make perfectly. Chrissy, one of our staff members, speaks Spanish fluently so she will be here tonight to help us with check in but for the rest of the weekend we're on our own! I'm pretty excited about it.

We've been up to quite a lot, mostly of an exploratory nature.Colleen and tried to get library cards at two different libraries but were rejected because we don't have a utility bill with our names on it. :'(. We went shopping for our uniform polos, went out to eat with the staff member, assembled my bike which came in the mail yesterday, moved a bunch of furniture around and we hosted "Taco Wednesday" for the Loyola students. Noreen had assigned Colleen and I a parish and a school to look after. I don't know what parish I have yet, but she decided that because I'm a Loyola grad I can take Loyola High School, which is the group of kids that comes most often to the Retreat Center. They've been coming for over 40 years and think they run the place, Noreen says. Ha ha. Typical, typical. Anyway, I'm excited to be working with their campus ministry department and just got awesome news from Gina Scarpello, the CMC Director- at the end of September Colleen and I will be going to represent the CMC at the University of Notre Dame AND DePaul! This means I am going to South Bend! I think I'll try to stop in and visit Dr. Pecknold! :D

Ah.. and that isn't even the half of it.

Colleen and I plan to join an adult group at Old St. Pat's in Chicago and we hope to go visit the other sisters in the area someday soon. We've met Sr. Bridget and Sr. Alfonsina, but we have still yet to meet Srs. Benigna, Joaquina, Joan McGlinchey and Joan Marie. Sr. Alfonsina and Benigna live in the Guadalupe Community of southwest Chicago and work at St. Anthony's Hospital and the other sisters live in Our Lady of Grace Community in north Chicago in Lincoln Park (a BEAUTIFUL area). I know a little less about them, but I believe they work at St. Joseph's hospital and work in immigration offices.

Also, turns out I have a long lost cousin who lives right across from Loyola University Chicago, not too far from Our Lady Peace community, so I hope to meet up with him and ... lots of catch up. I haven't seen him since I was 4.

Ok, that's plenty for now. More this weekend!

Love,
Gina