Skyland II

Just got back from a three-day vacation with friends at the Skyland Resort in Shenandoah National Park. This was the same group of friends we got together with last September. As we did last time, we went hiking, played games, ate good food, talked about books we had recently read, and just enjoyed catching up on each other's lives. Even the four toddlers in the group seemed to have a good time. It was a wonderful, if exhausting, weekend.

We're thinking of having another get-together next year at the same time and place, and maybe expanding the group a little. We also tossed around the idea of renting a group house in the fall somewhere in the Outer Banks. In the meantime, four of the five couples who went on this retreat will soon live in the same area, so hopefully we will be able to get together regularly.

Last night one of the games we played was called Apples to Apples. In this game, each player receives six cards with various events, phrases, or words on them. One player draws a target card, such as "adorable," for which the others try to find appropriate matches such as "puppies," "teddy bears," etc. The person who draws the target card decides which one is the best match; the game ends when one player has collected six target cards.

What makes the game very entertaining is that one must play a card every round except when judging, even though the cards in one's hand may have no obvious connection to the target word or phrase. This can lead to some hilarious pairings such as "Barney," "roller skates," or "my hair" for the target word "horrifying." At the same time, sometimes what seems to be a completely inappropriate word or phrase can have a special association for the judge and lead to a surprise winner. In last night's game, for example, the winning card for the word "adorable" was "duct tape"! This was a word I had selected for humorous effect since none of my cards seemed relevant. Unbeknownst to me, however, "duct tape" was a phrase that was associated with a very funny memory for the person judging, so she picked it as the most "adorable" word.

I ended up winning the game with the following six target words: "mischievous," "odd," "sappy," "tempermental," "courageous," and "adorable." At the end of the game, I commented that these six words seemed to describe me very well. Another friend looked at the three words he had won -- "masculine," "boring, and "idiotic" -- and said he hoped the latter two did NOT describe him!

Yvonne Yang's photos from the trip