Each fall, all board members of Latinas Unidas de Harvard College, a student organization that was created to celebrate and empower latina women at Harvard, get to go on a one day retreat somewhere off of Harvard's campus.
Since I’m co-Vice President of the organization this year, I got to help plan the retreat, which means that I got to help decide the place that we went to and the activities we would do during the retreat! For the first retreat I went on, we went to Plymouth, Massachusetts and stayed in a beautiful house on the beach. Last year, we went to New York City and stayed in a home in Brooklyn. This year, we decided to travel to New Hampshire and stay in a cabin by the mountains!
To this day, I still hold my first Latinas Unidas retreat as one of my favorite Harvard memories. As a first-year, that first month was really difficult for me as I adjusted to a completely different life. Going on the LU retreat and getting to talk about everything I was feeling really made me feel better and helped me realize that I wasn’t the only one who thought the first month had been difficult. The retreat helped me realize that I had a community on campus that really cared about me, and I was able to get close to many of the other board members. Because the retreat was so meaningful for me during my first-year, I was super excited that I would be able to help plan it this year. I wanted to make sure that all of the new members who got to go on this retreat had just as meaningful of an experience as I had during my first retreat.
All of the Latinas Unidas board members in 2016 pile on top of one another for a picture.
We took this picture at the end of the LU retreat during my first year at Harvard. I really felt so close to everyone after the retreat and this picture shows how much we bonded.
Since we had already been to a beach and a big city the years before, we decided to go to the mountains 3 hours north in New Hampshire. I was super excited to be one of the people who got to drive since it’s something I really miss while I’m at Harvard (I’m from Texas, so you can’t get anywhere without a car). We picked a house that had a ton of rooms and beds, so once we arrived, it felt like one big sleepover. After settling in and picking our rooms, we decided to cook our own dinner, and everyone helped with the process. After dinner, we decided to do self-care activities which involved facemasks (and feetmasks, which are just as weird as they sound), baking brownies, and playing games. One of the most important parts of the retreat is making sure that everyone on board gets to know one another, so we went around and let everyone share how they were feeling. After that night, it felt like we all knew a little bit more about one another and that we were closer as a board.
This is one of the cabins in the neighborhood that we stayed in!
The next day, we all cooked breakfast together to get ready for our journey back to Harvard. Before starting our trip, we decided to go “hiking” on a trail that was nearby. It was pretty muddy and we didn’t exactly have hiking gear, so we really just walked around the head of the trail and took lots of pictures together. After that, we headed back to campus feeling refreshed and ready to take on the rest of the semester. Since this is the last Latinas Unidas retreat I’ll be able to go on, the feeling was almost bittersweet, but knowing that I had been able to be a part of such an amazing tradition for three years made me super happy. I can’t wait for more and more members to experience the greatness that is LU retreat.
I took this picture once we got to the trailhead. I absolutely loved the way the creek looked between all of the trees. I really love hiking and the outdoors, so this was super refreshing for me.
Since the trail was too muddy to actually hike, we decided to walk around near the creek and take pictures together.
