GO Retreat: You MIGHT BE...the Weakest Link.

As I look back on memories of Albania and get ready to begin my series of writing on that trip, how can I forget the first crazy weekend we all spent together? ;) Here's a post from that weekend.

awesome weather :)

Friday was the much-anticipated Global Outreach class/team retreat.

(Side note:There are about 60 of us, separated into 8 teams with different destinations: Albania, Samoa, Uganda, New York, Latvia, Dominican Republic, India, Phillippines. http://www.masters.edu/DeptPageNew.asp?PageID=785)

Year after year the retreat is infamous for unusual and uncomfortable situations and challenges, bringing out character and possible tensions—as indeed it is designed by Lisa (our teacher) to do.

As time drew closer to leave, I found my head filled with imagined worst-case scenarios of the things she might make us do. “Will this be like survivor?” I asked a team leader in jest. “Will we sleep in the dirt and live on rice and eat bugs, have back-stabbing competition and in the end vote someone off the team?” But, after all the outrageous scenarios I had imagined in my head (some strange mix between Survivor, Fear Factor or Amazing Race, and maybe the Apprentice—you’re fired!), it was not too bad at all. Not EASY, per se, but not awful either(except perhaps for those who despise sleeping on hard ground, eating sub-par food and sharing a bathroom). I really enjoyed it.

My Team, minus me.

I love my team so far. We’ve had fun together.
Friday night was entertaining. Once we completed our en-route tasks (pictures with a full outfit from goodwill, pictures at Vazquez rocks and with a camel and cow statue) and made it to our unknown destination (a church in the hills off the freeway) via a virtually unmarked and text-free map with nothing but a star and a street address to lead us to our destination, we set up, waited for other teams, and had a tasty dinner of chicken, corn tortillas, rice, and beans from the Vallarta Mexican market!

After strange Indian drinks (including yummy Chai) and a few meetings and singing, we were sent to our room (laughing and setting up a folding table as a barrier between the guys and girls)… It was like a sleepover with a strange twist; we told stories & talked & laughed a lot. Thankfully, no one sleepwalked, or accidentally cuddled up with anyone else in their sleep (even Laura, who laughed awkwardly, apologized, and warned me ahead of time after an accidental almost-groping)… Except perhaps for Mitchell, who was without a sleeping bag due to “lost” luggage as Lisa had prescribed. …to be fair, he hadn’t been all that well-packed anyway, and had worn as many articles of clothing on his person as was practical and possible in anticipation of something like this. :)

In the morning we woke and sang with the group, & for breakfast we had delicious tangerine oranges, and some tasteless dry rice (probably cooked a day or two before, and from the same communal serving dish, with only 3 plates and no utensils between eight of us) with pickled mango canned chutney from India (perhaps because it was jarred, one of the more repulsive things I’ve tried in my life—sorry to its fans). But at least there was coffee and some more yummy Chai.

After a few more meetings and team discussions, we were sent out on another set of tasks… Drive out to the eclectically strange area of pearblossom highway, to browse through Charlie Brown’s farms (seller of date-flavored shakes and many others, local honey, good food, hippie accessories like special rocks and incense, and basically all things odd and interesting in this slightly podunk corner of America). For lunch, Lisa tossed our team a grocery bag, containing a loaf of nutty wheat bread, mustard, pepperjack cheese, a little bag of pickles, and about a dozen and a half hard boiled eggs. Yum. We made our best renditions of sandwiches and what not and drank our bottles of tapwater. :)

A bit down the street, we were to search “Orbit” antique shop, to find a cheap item or two that we could sell online to make some extra money for our team. Really, I think Lisa just wanted us to experience this place (and its people). This “store” was unbelievable!! The barn-front entrance to the store was interesting enough with its piles of dusty knickknacks and antiques of every possible type (from license plates to china to jewelry to old lanterns and tools and books and bottles and appliances)—but then we continued into the backyard. If you’ve ever driven through Mojave or Rosamond, perhaps you can get a good mental picture of this desert yard, piled with ….old things. I’ve seen lots of yards with piles of junk, but this one was as if every yard from a full Rosamond block had been emptied into it! It was all mostly organized, or at least categorized, but far from clean and elegant. There were piles of old glass bottles and containers of every shape and color (I wanted to take so many!). Windows and mirrors and dozens of sinks and countertops and toilets, a wooden keyboard organ on its side. Bike parts, car parts, tractor parts, barn parts, and an old wooden rowboat—ironically set on dry desert sand, but filled nearly to the brim with brown rainwater. Just when you thought you’d seen it all, you’d step around or through another pile to find that the lot kept going, and going, and going. “Antique Store” didn’t nearly do it justice.








We ended up with two sets of salt and pepper shakers, one of which matched a dusty set of two cookie-type jars, and one of which looked to be hand-painted from Japan. We noted that this one and another set (also Japanese, we presumed) both had holes shaped into a “P,” on BOTH shakers. We still have no idea why.