theadvance Retreat: A Post-Mortem

Well, the retreat is officially over and I can now look back on it fondly and remember all the wonderful ups and downs that made it such a great weekend.  Things that made it enjoyable:

1. The weather
2. The amount of time (4 days instead of 3)
3. The leadership team
4. The students that came
5. The venue (Camp IAWAH)

Now, it was a great retreat but like all events of this nature, had its ups and downs.  We decided to do a survivor theme, thinking that it had reinvented itself and found a way to be relevant again after 10 years of shows (thanks Russell).  What we didn’t anticipate was that our group would get so into it that every detail would be scrutinized.  It made the weekend interesting as games were either ‘fair’ or ‘unfair’ and man, the chirping by one team toward the other!  Wow.  I am all for competition but this one got crazy, so after 2 full days of Survivor, we ended it with the Yellow Tribe winning and enjoyed the final evening and morning, sans competition.  That was also a good decision.  It gave us time to just be together and relax.

Overall I thought the experience was great and it was awesome to be able to hang out with people that I knew well and get to know people I didn’t know quite as well.  Loads of learning for the next time but the consensus, at least on facebook and in person, seems to be that most people really enjoyed themselves.  I’ll take the win and ride it through the end of theadvance’s regular Sunday nights until the summer.

Here are some photos to fill you in on what happened.