a journey to the well

una viaje a la malinche (a trip to malinche)

This past weekend was the fall retreat for El Pozo, and it was SO fun. (And completely exhausting.) For the second year in a row, the retreat was at Malinche, a dead volcano about two hours northeast of Cholula. The facilities were great, and we had a blast. It was definitely different than what I am used to with a CCF retreat, but it had the same great feel of community, and it was a wonderful experience.

We got to the camp where we were staying (in cabins, thankfully) on Friday evening. Friday was a time to just hang out and play games - I got into a pretty heated set of games of Uno, and we had a blast. There were about 40-45 of us on the trip, and it was cool to see all of us in one cabin, laughing and talking in Spanish. Angie told us on Thursday that we needed to avoid speaking in English, and all of the exchange students did a really good job at it.

Saturday we had a few hours of free time, but the majority of the day was focused on activities in "families." Each "family" had a color, and we al received bandanas of our color. We met the first time and made team names, flags, and cheers. My "family" was the Aqua Amigos (aqua friends). We played some fun, competitive games: human twister - person 3's elbow touching person 6's shoulder, for example; and a cardboard car race were two of my favorites. We also had some serious stuff on Saturday. The theme of the weekend was "wrestling with God," and focused on the scripture from Genesis 32 about Jacob wrestling with God. In the evening, all of the student leaders attending the retreat got up and shared a time that they had wrestled with God, or a current struggle they were having. Afterwards, our families got back together and talked about a time we had wrestled with God. It was good practice for me, to try to talk about something serious in Spanish. It ended up being an incredible experience... a girl who has been a language partner to Angie and various exchange students (including me) for a couple years, but never really has gotten TOO into El Pozo, ended up sharing her biggest "lucha" (fight), and ended up opening up emotionally, too. I couldn't help but smile when one of the student leaders in our "family" moved across the circle and put his arms around her. I knew she was equally amazed by this - at the end of the session, she thanked all of us for being a REAL family for her that weekend. How amazing.

Sunday was a physically exhausting day. 15 of us decided to attempt to climb to the summit of Malinche. This is a challenge unlike a lot of hikes for a couple of reasons... you begin at a fairly high altitude, and 3/4 of the hike is a steep hike UP. I think it was, physically, the most challenging thing I have ever done. Kassie, an experienced climber, gave us tips about how to make it up the really steep parts and was a faithful cheerleader as we went. Eventually, the weather turned bad (we were essentially IN a raincloud - the temperature dropped about 25 degrees and the wind started blowing hard, and this all happened in about 10 minutes), and we decided to head down. Two of the 15 made it to the summit, but the rest of us decided that our 80-90% completion of the hike was a huge accomplishment in itself.

I ended up riding back in a car with Sarah, Elsa, and a new Mexican student. We were following the Bocho (VW Beetle) that Nathan was driving. Somewhere along the way, we missed the turn for Puebla. So, a three hour car ride turned into a seven hour ordeal. We eventually ended up in Texcoco, a city about 3 hours NORTHWEST of Puebla. We were all exhausted by the time we arrived, but we had a blast.

Here are some pictures... I will have one of me and Elsa in the rain cloud on Malinche in a few days, but I have to steal them from Sarah. Until then:


Angie (my language partner, not the exchange coordinator), me, and Megan playing Rummikub in the cabin on Saturday.


Joel and Joel (two of the guys on my exchange team) reading a poem about wrestling. These guys are HILARIOUS... the masks they're wearing are from Lucha Libre, Mexico's famous version of pro wrestling.


Cody and Wess (two of the interns) and me taking a break during our hike up Malinche.


There were little canyons running all the way down Malinche. This is one of them. The path was basically just as straight down - one of the staff members described the path as seeming to be the creation of someone taking a machete and just walking up the mountain. Definitely no curves to make it less steep.

posted by Audrey @ 5:39 PM