Weekend on Thin Ice

Last weekend was the International House Community Weekend, yet another example of why its worth living in a shoebox to be here. The community weekend is an overnight trip to the countryside so you can get to know others in IHouse. This time it was to Cold Spring, which is in upstate New York about two hours from the city, and the same place I was hiking last year. We went there and back in a yellow New York school bus which you see everywhere on the streets in the mornings here, so everyone who is over a meter and a half tall has their knees crammed up against the seat in front and survives the trip on pure good spirits.







There are a couple of organized activities to get to know each other, on the lines of: give us your most embarassing story - I told about my tenth most embarrassing. And there were some outdoors adventure-type activities like figure out a way of getting the group across this pit of stinking mud using only these two planks.

But most of the time there was free time. I went with a flashlight onto the frozen lake at night with Alyssa and James and won the night ice-sliding contest. We built a huge bonfire and sat around it until late at night in a snowstorm with several bottles of wine (this is a great combination). On Sunday we went on a hike into the winter-brown woods and played snowfights and frizbee on the ice, which was creaking and snapping around us.