Marriage Enrichment Retreat

This weekend, after my weekly bible study on Friday, we went to stay over at my parent's place, including Vicky and Caleb.

It was quite nice and interesting to be back at my old house staying with my parents. Anyway, considering we reached my parents place ata bout 11 plus pm, we didnt spend much time talking.

The next morning, I woke up about 630am as I couldnt sleep anymore. Then, went to see Caleb and played with him as he is an early bird as well. My mum also came into the room to play with him.

At about 7am, we walked to the nearby coffeeshop that sells famous mee pok. However, I ordered vegetarian bee hoon but stole mouthfuls from CT who ordered the meepok. Its really nice as the noodles is nice and easy to eat-not overcooked.

After that, we went to the wet market just behind my parent's place as my mum bought her groceries. She was also proudly introducing Caleb to the stall mongers. Some were even trying to amuse Caleb and play with him.

CT and I left at about 8am to Changi Village Hotel for our Marriage Enrichment Retreat, organised by our church. So we left Vicky and Caleb with my parents for this weekend.

I have been to the hotel about 4 times in total -twice for my ex-school and Hai Sing's Staff Annual Dinner, the 3rd time was that we had our staff seminar there and lastly, had staff lunch there as well. I quite enjoy the hotel as its very modern looking and the food is decent.

In the morning, we had workshop sessions talking about God's way for wives, and God's mandate for Men, followed by group discussion and prayer. It was an interesting time as there were altogether about 45 couples. We had a good discussion about men vs women and how I suddenly realised that I am not alone...other women also think the same way that I do.

After lunch, the couples were split up into gender. So, all the women congregate in one room, while the men grouped together. We had invited speakers- Peter and Wendy who are from Australia. They have been married for 29 years and though they are coming to 50 years of age, they already have 6 grandchildren! So, with their wealth of experience, they led the women and men sessions.

After all the sessions which ended about 4pm, we checked into our rooms.


We were given rest time for couples to pray, reflect on day's lesson and refresh ourselves doing stuff together. CT took a nap while I was busy marking test papers. Haha..I cant imagine I actually brought work to do, but guess I didnt have much a choice since I needed to give back to them on Monday as their Common Tests start on Tuesday.


I was already down with flu and bad running nose. No amount of water that I gulped down helped in my killer sore throat.



This is the view from the toilet..(yup, took in between breaks from my marking to take pictures just to entertain myself)


After CT's nap, we changed and went swimming together in the pool. IT was a great view from the pool as we could see the sea.

We spent some time talking in the pool about our sessions and our reflections.

There were also aeroplanes flying pass..which we enjoyed


We also sat at this platform in the pool and enjoyed the view of the beach...



After our swim, we went back to our room to shower and after a nice warm bath, we were playing with the mist on the glass.

This is CT's art work..



After that, we took a nice stroll to the beach and talked even more. I do enjoy talking to CT and share our thoughts with each other. It was however quite strange because we also saw some other couples from our church who were at the beach as well. So, quite funny and awkward.



It was a nice and relaxing time.



After that, we walked over to the hawker centre at Changi Village for rojak and coconut juice. Yum yum.

Initially, it was drizzling and when that happened, we were wondering where would we have our dinner because for dinner, we were supposed to have pool side buffet- open air. But I told CT that the rain would stop and we were still be able to enjoy our buffet dinner.

After our pre-dinner at the hawker centre, we went to take a look at the other pool in the hotel at the ground floor. We didnt swim in this pool because it doesnt have a view of the beach since its on the ground floor and moreover, the public can see you since it is just next to the restaurant. So too embarrassing. Ha.


Thank God it was only a light drizzle and the rain did stop. So, we had dinner at 7pm at the poolside which overlooks the beach.

During the dinner, we sat with our church members and we had an interesting discussion. We didnt know one another before this retreat since there are 1000 over people in our church. So, it was a good time to get to know one another and one of the couple was sharing their struggles in marriage and how they came to know the Lord. It was a very encouraging time and fruitful discussion.



The food was very nice. I ate a lot of mussels! Haha..

As I was having our talk around the table, I noticed someone rather familiar. I actually saw my colleague, Huei Juin! She was having dinner with her husband at the Italian Restaurant on the same level. And so happen, her husband's colleague is from my church. So they were talking to each other when I noticed her.

During our dinner, we were made to renew our vows again by facing each other and re-committing our vows. It was rather touching and I noticed some who were tearing.

We ended dinner close to 11pm and I was exhausted from the day's affairs. CT stayed up to watch a bit of TV while I went straight into la-la land.

The next morning, we had buffet breakfast at 8am and our workshops started at 9am. The sessions talked about how to be better parents. And after that session, we watched a movie called "Though None Go with Me." I've got to give 10 stars for this movie! Its a movie that no married couple should miss! Everyone in the room was crying! (including the guys) and we didnt only cry once but numerous times. It is such a touching movie that even the one with the hardest of heart could be touched.

I cant wait to buy the DVD and watch it with my friends and family again! (By the way, I do not usually watch movies twice unless it is THAT good)

After the movie, we had lunch and over lunch, we were discussing about the movie. I was sitting in the same table as Wendy and Peter. So, it was nice to be able to get to know them and learn a thing or two from them.

After Lunch, we had two more sessions on parenting and how to make a great marriage better before we ended our retreat.

We ended the retreat by kneeling together as a couple and praying to God together. It was another touching time as tears just rolled down from my eyes.

What a wonderful session we had over these two days- learning so much more about this relationship and how to improve it even further.

Now, I cant wait to see Caleb as I miss him very much...