What I've Been Up To: Weekend #1

Hello again! Sorry its been a while since my last post, but I've been a busy little bee. I haven't slept in my own bed on a Saturday night for three weeks now. What have I been up to? Well, I'm glad you asked, because I'll tell ya! Let's start 3 weekends ago...

January 31st-February 1st:

I got to go on my first Redeemer Youth Leader Retreat, and incidentally my first excursion outside of The City as well. We stayed at Skytop Lodge in the Poconos Mountains in Pennsylvania. It’s a very old “family friendly” resort, that sits on top of a hill (I was slightly disappointed,though, because I didn’t see any mountains). The hotel reminded me of a strange cross between the hotel in Dirty Dancing and the hotel in The Shining. I kept thinking as I walked the halls that if I looked closely at one of the ancient pictures on the wall, I would see a crazed Jack Nicholson.

Unfortunately, we didn’t actually stay in the main building, but behind it in smaller bungalow-type rooms. Not much time was spent in our rooms, because we were only at the resort about 24 hours total and most of it was spent in meetings. So calling this trip a “retreat” is a bit of a stretch if you ask me, but it was still fun to get away from the city, ride in a car, and get out into some open land.

We did get some free time to play, and I got to try snow-shoeing for the first time. SO FUN! I like to equate it to feeling like a little kid wearing gigantic shoes. I’m not sure I got the full experience of it, because while there was plenty of snow on the ground, the top 2 inches was solid ice. When we would take a step, the Snice (as I like to call it) would crack into large pieces, and the snow-shoe would sink in a bit. It made walking a bit precarious, but the broken pieces of Snice were great for throwing (not a people, you would cause some serious damage). I came up with the idea skipping the Snice—I think I got two bounces a couple of times. We also got to venture out onto the frozen lake!

The food there was pretty good too. All the meals were provided, and served buffet style—with the exception of dinner, which was a 5 course seated meal. I sat next to another youth leader who happens to be a Pastry Chef. We struck up a friendship pretty quickly because of our professions—and don’t get any ideas friends, he’s happily married. Anyway, we had fun ordering a bunch of stuff to try instead of “sticking to the rules” and only getting one item for each course. We went nuts during the dessert, though. I think we ordered 5 between us. Thankfully, our waitress was very patient with us, and even brought out stuff we might like to try.

I wish that we would have had more time there, but apparently this resort is the place that all the Youth Leader’s retreats are held, and the next one is in the summer. I’m excited to see the landscape in full bloom, but hopefully I’ll be able to venture outside of the city again before then.

Tune in tomorrow for "What I've Been Up To: Weekend #2"!