shirenomad | Got back from the retreat a few hours ago.

Our little group consisted of fourteen people, four of them leaders (though Diana is actually younger than me; she just happens to be a church employee). Destination was Shepherd's Hill, a small countryside retreat center in Tuolumne, CA (about 140 miles away). Long drive; didn't get arrive until 10-ish or get settled until nearly 11. I crashed pretty fast, despite the continued activity of those downstairs. Saturday was a lot busier.

My brother, Andrew, is in the Naval Academy (in case you missed the Friends Test), and somehow conned Diana into letting him run a voluntary Physical Training session Saturday morning. Which translated into him pulling the same routine he pulls on the squad under him at the Academy: charging into the bunk area shouting "Reverie!" and "PT!" while kicking beds. I ignored him; probably best not to encourage such behavior. -_-;

Someone brought not one but two copies of Lord of the Rings Risk. We had one game going on downstairs constantly during the free time, and another attempted upstairs that didn't get too far due to a late start. Also the random card game, and a viewing of The Truman Show on an aging VCR. And some time in the pool.

Food was great. Cooked up by the center owners personally. Yay for country cooking.

Spiritual matters included passing out names of fellow retreaters on our arrival. We were told to pray for the person over the weekend and generally try to be kind and helpful to them. (I drew Andrew, so I didn't kill him for the reverie business. :P) Also the usual bible studies: one Saturday morning and one Saturday night.

Late Saturday was the "Most Extreme Challenge", where we divided into teams of five each (not counting the leaders), and attempted to complete ten team-building exercises (not in the same order). The idea was that we would keep going until one of the two teams finished everything, but it quickly became clear that the leaders hadn't given all of the tasks thorough testing, because some of them either took a lot longer than anyone was expecting or were downright impossible. Still, a few memorable ones:

The car course. Two drivers, one for each team, were designated and given the two cars used to get up here. We were also given a set of "directions" through town and told to follow them to a destination and back. The directions included things such as "turn left on to all of me" ("turn left on Tuolumne Ave.") or "turn right on to Meat St." ("turn right on Carne St.") or "if Dashboard Confessional's hit from Spider-Man 2 was titled 'Vaccinated', turn left at the dead-end, otherwise turn right" (we turned right). The goal point was the "gated community" on "Via del Muerto" (a cemetery on, of all things, "Cemetery Rd.") where we copied down the date of its founding and headed back to the base.

Also direction-based: take a compass and a yardstick and travel from the starting point to "buried treasure" (turned out to be a flag under the garbage can on the far side of the center). We weren't the smoothest at it, and it didn't help that we got close enough to a van to throw off the compass, but we stumbled across it in the end.

The "lava river": Get everyone across the pool, high and dry, using a three-inch-thick pole that had been laid across and a rope that had been tied to the far end. No one was allowed to stand on the far end until they had crossed, nor was anyone allowed to go back around once they had made it to the far side. So much as touch the water and you're incinerated; start over. Most of us did a lot more than touch it; I in particular proved my lack of poise by taking a dive four times before crossing. But we quickly figured out that those on both ends should brace the rope to be a firm "railing", and late in the task we also realized we could tie the rope to the near end of the river (which we wouldn't have gotten the last guy across without doing).

"Don't puke": The team is asked five questions about the local area, multiple choice, three answers each. We are not expected to get them except by lucky guesses (though Tim did remember seeing the local zip code somewhere). That's not the point. The point is that for each one we guess wrong, one of five substances is added to a larger concoction. When all five are answered, right or wrong, the team has to drink the result. Our result had three out of five substances and its taste was dominated by the watered down ketchup; I think there was also pickle juice in there and I have no clue what the third was. We all had to take a drink, but there was no rule as to how much, and Tim proved heroic once again by declaring he could, and then proceeding to, down the whole glass. Go Tim.

Unfortunately, someone on the other team, after falling in the water five times, riding around town with a maniac driver, choking down a drink of largely pureed hot dog, and finally taking a water balloon direct to the throat, puked on the front lawn and broke down. The leaders declared the event officially over at that point. -_-

Left Sunday about 11am, returned more or less intact, showers, did laundry, and slacked off for the rest of the day. ...That's about it.