Arrival Day 2022

Cherish every moment. Take pictures of everything. Don't blink. Bring your camera EVERYWHERE.
These are the mantras previous alumni have told us year after year. They tell us retrospectively; they wish they'd been able to take in EVERY MOMENT before their time as Romrec slipped away, before "16 springs and 16 summers gone now", before writing letters home from Romaca turned to writing applications to college, turned to writing notes for summer internship interviews, turned to signing contracts for full time jobs, and before what you considered "family" turned from your "24 sisters" to your spouses and kids.
But the more we've thought about this advice, the more we've come to realize that some of these mantras contradict one another - how can you possibly live in the moment AND photograph everything? And even if you can, how can that photograph authentically capture the smile on your face and the happy tears in your eyes as you return home to the sense of confidence and belonging, or warmth and love, that Arrival Day at Romaca brings? How can a picture even encapsulate the "Romaca feeling" to begin with?
Then it dawned on us; maybe photographs aren't the answer. There has to be something more real, more raw, more candid, more genuine to capture Romaca's magic.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must be worth a million. Welcome home, Romaca - here's to living in our Romaca moments and, thanks to videos, reliving these Romaca moments for years and years to come. Happy Arrival Day 2022!