Ghost Ranch (Days 8, 9, and 10)

Wow! What an action-packed set of days! Today, I'll focus on my time at Ghost Ranch, and tomorrow, I'll post about my wilderness expedition.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Ghost Ranch is an enormous retreat located deep within New Mexico. It's located in between huge mesas (see below).

On top of a mesa...looking at another mesa...

So Beautiful.

 While we were there, we stayed in tents, and lived a fairly basic life! Everything that I took got covered in a reddish dust. On the first day we got there, we had a fairly relaxed schedule. The first activity that we did was called challenge course. It's part of CEC (Conflict Engagement Course) that the school runs. The object of CEC is to teach students how to handle difficult situations. Challenge course is the introduction that the school runs, and it's mandatory for all first years. It consisted of several challenges/games that were a lot of fun! One of the games that we had to do was the "spider web". Basically, it was two ropes tied to a tree with strings in between them, creating a "spider web" of sorts. Our job was to get each team member through a hole in the spider web...but each hole could only be used once. We ended up lifting team members to get through the higher holes (myself included). It was a TON of fun...definitely a highlight of the experience. Another game that we had to do involved everyone standing on a tarp; we then had to flip said tarp without anyone getting off. As you can see below, this involved some pretty funny positions.

Crazy....

 

UWC sandwich, anyone?

After the challenge course, we had a wonderful meal and watched a movie (The Inside Man). Unfortunately, once the movie was over, we had to walk back to the campground...a 15 minute walk in pitch-darkness. Getting ready for bed was an experience and a lesson in night vision skills. That night, instead of sleeping in our tent, Thomas, Josh and I decided to sleep outside, along with many of our co and second years. Sleeping under the stars was a wonderful experience. The beauty of the wilderness as the sun set and rose is something I will never forget.

The following morning, we had a brief breakfast and headed out on activities. By sheer luck, I had won a lottery to go canoeing. Taking off in a small minibus, we had a wonderful time paddling around Abiquiu Lake. The afternoon was fairly boring by comparison; all UWC students are required to do a workshop regarding the movement. While interesting, the workshop was held in a hot, stuffy room...a guaranteed sleeping pill. In the evening, we had something called café. At UWC, café is a place for students to perform their talents...a sort of pseudo-talent show. The amount of talent on show here is unbelievable...we had 22 different acts, all of whom were excellent, if not brilliant. Following the café, a quick dash to bed ensued; we were all exhausted.


Speaking of exhausted, that's an excellent term to describe my current state. This morning, I woke up at 4:30 in order to get down from where we were camping on our wilderness trip. We have our first day of classes tomorrow, so it's probably best to get some rest. Tomorrow, I'll write about our wilderness trip, and on Thursday, I'll blog about the welcoming ceremony.