Breathing in a new mentality.

OOOOOOOHHHH MAN, WHAT a WEEKEND!!

Friday-Sunday was the first (of 2) weekends for the Sophomore Leadership Retreat. I expected it to be pretty cool, but I NEVER thought it would be as wonderful as it turned out to be.

On Friday we left on the first bus around 1:40 pm. The entire way to Lake Geneva we watched V for Vendetta. It's the first time I ever saw it, and it was REALLY awesome.

Once we got to Lake Geneva, we dropped our stuff off in our rooms and headed out to have some student/faculty competitions. There were heats for tether ball, horseshoe, badminton, shuffleboard, and volleyball. I was on Sarah's team, and we gradually worked our way up. EventuallyNikhail and I decided to team up for the championship round against 2 other students (to determine who would play Bruce [director of the Leadership Academy] and John Anderson [president ofIIT]). Nikhail and I prevailed, but unfortunately, we lost against Bruce and President Anderson 10-7. It's ok , though, because we were able to get to know the two of them fairly well, which was really awesome! I mean, these are two powerful guys atIIT, and they sat there and talked with us AND played horseshoes with us! Awesome.

After competitions, we headed to dinner. After dinner, we played this version of dodgeball called "star wars", and it was SO fun (basically dodgeball but with stuffed animals, etc.) After that, the 2nd bus arrived. We were divided into "teams" and did a bunch of extremely fun (and silly) team building games until about 10. Then we had free time, and a lot of us went to bed.

On Saturday morning, we had breakfast, then we had Team Olympics. We had to come up with a team name/cheer, and our team was team 'Bumblebee Tuna'. Our cheer was basically us in the formation of what we assumed a bumblebee tuna would look like, and it was a LOT of fun. The events were basically a bunch of team building/problem solving exercises, and I don't think our group stopped laughing once.

After Team Olympics, we had lunch. Post lunch, we had our first activity. Our team canoed first, and it was really fun. We canoed all over the lake, and learned how to right a tipped canoe in the middle of the water. We got to a spot where a bunch of us jumped out of our canoes and swam around. It was just a really interesting experience.

After canoeing, we got to go sailing. I have never sailed before, and I was pretty freaked out about doing it in a really deep lake (we had life jackets but I was convinced there was a lake monster that would eat me). The person I was with wanted to tip the sunfish (keep in mind a sunfish is a 1 to 2 person mini sailboat). When the big sailboat came by I discovered there was a ladder that went down the back of the boat to the water, so I bailed out of the sunfish and swam over to the big boat. :)

After sailing I took a quick shower and headed over to dinner. After dinner we had a brief speaker and then we had free time. During free time, a big group of us went to the Observatory. We got a tour AND we got to look through the huge telescopes to see a bunch of really cool astronomy stuff.

I left the observatory and went to bed. On Sunday morning we had breakfast and then our 3rd activity. Our group had low ropes, and it was WAY cooler than the name lets on. We had record time for this one challenge (6.5 seconds baby!), and it was cool to work together on all the others.

After that we had lunch and a leadership seminar to follow. Although, during the seminar, we discussed how it shouldn't be called that, because the term seminar implies boring, long, monotone speech. And oh no, this was definitely not a seminar. It was a hands-on, interactive, ridiculously entertaining activity. I loved it.

Right from the seminar we got on the buses and headed back to campus. We watched The Devil Wears Prada on the bus on the way back, and it was pretty cool. Once back, I did laundry, showered, cuddled with Marsala, and went to sleep.

It was a ridiculously awesome weekend, and I met a bunch of kids I had never really talked to prior to going on the retreat. We had a blast, and I expect the fun to continue through this school year. I HIGHLY recommend the retreat to any sophomore at IIT. You really can't understand how fun that weekend truly is!