The Retreat

So all new I-House residents get a chance to go on a retreat to Sanoma County for some good old bonding and all that kumbaya shit. It was actually pretty fun, and that's where I met most of the people that I hang out with. Again I didn't get that many photos myself but there are quite a few on facebook.

We stayed overnight at a campsite on native American Indian land called the Valley of the Moon. Usual hiking, rope courses, swimming pool and night time group activities. Most controversial thing that happened was at about 2am some dudes were in the recreation hall and allegedly a 'hand' came out from a hole in the floorboards and was reaching around and trying to get out. A few hypothesis as to what/who it was:

1. The secret inbred child of the operators of the campsite who had been locked under the rec room was trying to get out.
2. It was a raccoon.
3. The guys were hallucinating.

We had the option of sleeping under the stars, which I took along with a few others. Unfortunately I didn't have a sleeping bag so I lasted 'til maybe 5am before I couldn't take it anymore. Plus the Korean guy next to me kept talking in his sleep which was a little bit disturbing. As you can tell from the 2nd picture the sleep outside was not very comfortable.

On the way back from the retreat we stopped in the actual township of Sanoma County, which is where I met those infamous cheerleaders. Here are various humorous soundbites from that conversation. There were maybe 7-8 of us international students plus one OG Berkeley guy talking to a carfull of cheerleaders from Sanoma High:

"Singapore? What's that? Is that a country somewhere?" "Yeah, its in Africa" "Oh, yeah I know that place"
"OMG I so don't believe you guys are international students. None of you have accents!" (This was despite the fact that we were speaking in different LANGUAGES)
"I swear you have cheerleaders in Hong Kong too!" "No we don't!" "But I've seen them on Youtube! Wait a second. You guys do know what Youtube is right?"

And so on. They invited us to their BBQ and told us they loved us, which completely made up for their ignorance. We ended up getting ice-cream instead - oh also there was a shitload of ice-cream cake at the retreat, and there was so much leftover. The whole time I was thinking shit if only Ben was here.