My time back in the States started on the East coast. I didn’t include many details in my Lisbon post but my final night before leaving, I was out on the veranda FaceTiming my friend when a random guy came outside and said “I hear there’s another Oregonian out here.” That guy was Sean, who I’m so happy to have met. Even though we hung out for only a few hours before parting ways, we followed each other on Instagram and stayed in touch. If you remember yet another earlier post, Sean was the reason I took my trip to Svalbard. It was during that trip that I first heard of the Friendly Reunion officially, getting my unofficial invite. Fast forward to the beginning of September and there I was, at a summer camp in West Virginia. We all arrived Thursday night, greeted by the camp with no power as a result of an earlier storm, and started the festivities by making name tags and gathering around a bonfire. The first night, I was coming off of my time in Copenhagen and only one night of rest on East coast time so I wasn’t strong enough to stay up with everyone.
Our first full-day of camp started with breakfast before we had three hours of group activities. For my activities, I played volleyball and participated in a coffee conversation regarding community (I also did something else but I honestly can’t remember what it was lol). After we finished our three hours of activities, we all had lunch and a bit of downtime before starting a group scavenger hunt. The scavenger hunt lasted for a few hours but was a bit overwhelming so at a certain point most teams lost their motivation and just chilled all together. After the scavenger hunt, we gathered for dinner, all of us wearing full black outfits in preparation for our next activity. Because our group was so large (60 people!!), we split into two groups for the activities. My group went outside first to play……LASER TAG. The game was intense, being played in the night-darkened forest and around cabins, and I’m pretty sure ended with my team losing both of the two games. In the first game, I was stuck behind a tree with only one person to back me up. He ended up getting eliminated before me so I was stuck alone by a tree and didn’t notice when the opposing team snuck up behind me and took the rest of my lives. For the second game, we started in a different place and I was able to make it behind a golf cart before being trapped by the opposing team. I lasted longer that time but, in the end, we only had success in having fun and not winning. With the conclusion of our second laser tag match, we had to return the guns to go inside and switch with the other group. Inside we played a variation of 100 Humans (I think that’s what it was?) called 60 Humans. Essentially, we had to complete tasks and answer questions so our leader could ‘collect data’ and compile a presentation to present the next day. We didn’t finish all the activities until around midnight but most everyone stayed up talking long after, eventually breaking off to get some more rest for our final full day.
I know, so soon we’re already at the final full day!! Time sure did fly by (I felt exactly this way during the reunion). After breakfast, we had a similar schedule to the previous day, but with different activities because the weather was better. I started off wanting to play volleyball but, unfortunately, only three other people wanted to play also so we decided to venture off on a nature walk instead. We walked the opposite way on the nature trail with the goal of scaring the official nature walkers but weren’t very successful because we prioritized walking and conversing so had to rush behind a tree to hide after they all saw us. It’s safe to say the element of surprise was not on our side. Because the weather was still good after our first hour, I went down to the pool and stayed there until lunch. After lunch, we all gathered for the main event, the Friendly Olympics. Our first event was to find puzzle pieces with our names and then find other people with matching puzzle pieces to find our teams. I ended up on the yellow team with 6 others. The highlights for the day were the ‘food fights’ (moving m&m’s from one bowl to another with a partner and only one pair of chopsticks; sliding an oreo down your face to eat it; eating a donut off a string), dodgeball (I verified that I still suck at it, but my other team members were amazing and def carried the team), and a performance of a song of our choice so represent the team (We chose Yellow Submarine, ofc). Our final event of the Olympics was a relay race that ended in my team being the champions of the night which was rad. After finishing, we had a small break to get ready for our next event, the Friendly High School Reunion. Everyone was separated into groups and given a year to base their outfit around. My group was the class of 2014 and chose Counting Stars as our theme. I know a picture of my group exists somewhere, but finding it on google photos is proving to be a challenge so I will potentially add it later. After finishing our high school event, we went to the bonfire where we sang a ton of songs a cappella before finally going to prom!!! Our prom was hosted in the art room/cabin/place and consisted of us blasting music while singing and hopping along. If you remember from my previous post, I did a lot of karaoke in Copenhagen so a while night of additional screaming was not my wisest decision and I lost my voice even more…. the fun outweighed the voice struggles though.
Finally we’ve arrived at our final morning at camp. I’m fairly positive everyone was woken by Sean ringing the bell telling us to get to breakfast. We all ate breakfast in waves and then broke off in smaller groups to clean the camp. After the cleaning was done, we said our final goodbyes and went our separate ways. I made my way back to DC with my carpool buddies and then took the rest of that Sunday to recover. The following day I (finally) applied to jobs in the states and then met up with some friendly reunion pals for a trivia night.
Tash the Traveler 