4 Minutes Read
On October 20th, I went on a retreat with the Hmong Student Association to Sycamore Groove in Red Bluff. I joined the Hmong Student Association club at CSU, Chico at the beginning of the semester. For this blog, I wanted to write about a place where I felt most comfortable. You may be wondering, why are you writing about your retreat or Sycamore Groove when it’s not even a place you frequently visit? I’m writing about my experience of the retreat because it was a place where I felt most comfortable so far in my college experience. When the idea of going to the HSA retreat was brought up in the first general meeting in HSA, I signed up to go without hesitation. I didn’t know it at the time but would become one of the best experiences of my life. It’s my first time going camping in Sycamore Groove and it was like nothing I ever expected. When I thought about going camping, I imagined being out in the wild but that wasn’t the case when I arrived at the campsite. This was also my first time going camping, so I had no idea what it was going to be like. But as the days became closer to the day of the retreat, I began to feel less comfortable going because the week of the retreat, it was an extremely busy week for me. I had to go to a mandatory job fair held for EOP students, studying for midterm and other school-related things. Plus, I also had homework that was due for my class over the weekend. I still ended up going because I just said, “fuck it” and I’ll take the L for the assignment (I still managed to finish the assignment on Sunday night when we returned from the retreat).
The HSA retreat members and I went camping in Sycamore Groove for three days (October twentieth – twentieth second). At the beginning of the retreat, I only knew a couple of people who went to the retreat. We arrived at the campsite around six pm and everyone was tasked with different jobs. The men began setting up the three tents and the women began cooking dinner. After setting up the tents, half of the HSA officers took over cooking dinner and the other half led the retreat members in icebreaker activities to have everyone more comfortable with each other. It was a lot quicker than I imagined for everyone to be comfortable and social with each other. After the icebreaker activities, it got dark super quick and it was beginning to be cold, very cold (I hate the cold and rain… a lot, fortunately, it didn’t rain). For some reason seeing the night being pitch black, reminded me somewhat of the walking dead, like how a zombie could just pop out of nowhere and the difficulty of seeing in the dark.
After eating Hmong soup for dinner and socializing for three to four hours. We gathered into the men’s tent and roasted each other for two hours and by the time we finished, it was around one in the morning. We said good night to each other and went to sleep. The next morning, I volunteered to be part of the breakfast crew and we were supposed to wake up at seven and have breakfast prepared by eight-thirty. That didn’t happen, sleep was more important for the breakfast crew. I woke up around six and Kenji and I went to the men’s bathroom to wash up and get ready for the day. The showers in Sycamore Groove were neat and the hot water was heaven. Once my body contacted the hot water, I did not want to get out of the shower at all. That took me thirty to forty minutes to get ready in the morning. After getting dressed, Kenji and I went back to the campsite to help prep breakfast. Cleaning and cutting potatoes was what I was mostly doing in the morning. Around eight when everyone started getting up. We ate and then continued with the planned activities the HSA officers had planned.
My favorite individual part of the retreat was the free time we had before lunch when we could rest or explore the area. I explored the area by the river only. It was very calm and peaceful there. I took that opportunity to sing, I haven’t really had the chance to just sing and not care about anything else in the world. I sang for about thirty to forty minutes and it was very relaxing. I sang songs from high school and other hit songs. The rest of the retreat went by in a blur and I couldn’t believe how fast it went by. But every moment was worth it, I made new friends and I’m very grateful for the experience I had in that short time. (820)
MX Creations Blog 
Leave a comment