Saturday, October 9, 2010

Leadership Retreat 10-1-10

Today, we had our first leadership retreat. A leadership retreat is a special day at Merryhill when advisory groups learn teamwork. Today was the first for this year. I was in the purple advisory group. Purple, the color of the void, evil, and gigantic floating eyes with tentacles. Marvelous, isn’t it. Also, NUCLEAR SOAP!

This morning we walked *cough* ran against the rules *cough* to Cardoza Park. The place was quite entertaining, really. We waited for some 15 minutes and then started the day. We had 5 activities, which will be described in the next paragraphs.

The first activity we did had to do with concentration and memorization. Well, actually, with our strategy, it was just remembering a number and touching 1 to that number. We had to run around as fast as possible and touch a number stuck to the ground. The next person had to touch that number and touch another number. It wasn’t really difficult, just time-consuming, but maybe that’s just because we were a good team.

The second was slightly more difficult. By that, I mean THE MOST DIFFICULT THING EVER! We had to toss a balloon between one another, tell the person we’re throwing it to’s name and the body part they must hit it with. The problem: the balloon is full of air, it’s windy, and hitting a balloon doesn’t send it very far. We failed this challenge because we didn’t finish in less than 10 minutes, the limit.

The third was the most entertaining and delicious thing I’ve ever done. You placed an Oreo on your forehead and had to move it into to your mouth without your hands. If you wanted to, you could eat it. But drop it too many times in the grass we were doing the challenge in, and was the last person, dropped it tens of times. The whole team was giving him advice, but he kept dropping it. Finally, he got it into his mouth. Then he spit it out. What a horrible waste of an Oreo. Well, it did look disgusting at that point, so I guess it was okay.

The next event was uncomfortable. We had to move a banana across a line with only our feet. The uncomfortable part? The grass was very, very, wet. We had a lot of exasperation, but it was done fairly quickly.

The last challenge was kind of like that “minefield” challenge from TV. We had a blindfolded partner and guided them through an obstacle course. It took quite a long time to do.

Next was lunch. We had pizza, chips, and bad tasting juice juice.

Afterwards, we had a tug-of-war. Three people from each team played. We lost in both our games.

After returning to school, we ate ice cream and watched the movie The Blind Side until school was over. It was a really great day.