TeamKenya2008’s Weblog

A-B: From the Patrick Henry office, six of us (Terrence, Jessica, Paul, Grace Liang, Grace Kim and me) squeezed into my Camry Hybrid and sped off to our first stop, Kifer (our first semi-permanent GrX home), where we had to cross a couple parking spaces using five magazines without touching the ground.  Slow and steady wins the race; all six of us crossed with no incident.  The I/O Team was faster, but they only had four people.  

C: We received our next clue and drove off towards Sunnyvale Community Center, where we had to run around the lake 3 times without spilling the open bottle of water we had to carry.  Jessica, Grace L and I did a semi-relay around the lake, burning the East Asia Team, while Terrence, Paul and Grace K (sick, sick, wearing heels) cheered us on.

D: Next stop: the Orchard on Manet St., which turned out to be on the Michealangelo side and not on Manet.  It was kind of like a scene out of the Blair Witch Project, complete with “No Trespassing” sign, creepy old tractors and menacing gardening tools. 

E: We arrived at In-N-Out next, where we each had to take part in chugging down some Korean hot sauce with jalapeno peppers, carrots, sardines.  The juice at the very end was nasty, but we managed to chug it down with some ice water.

F-H: We went on to complete the photo section, stopping by Weinershnitzel to take a picture with a “dog” (yay for creativity!), the Starbucks at Mercado, Yahoo!, and Safeway.

I: We arrived back at the GrX Office at 9:55 pm, where we had to put together a contraption to ensure that a raw egg would not break.  We were given 5 straws, 3 paper towels, scotch tape, string, a spoon, a paper plate, and 5 paper clips.  The I/O Team arrived four minutes earlier, but the other three teams didn’t stand a chance. 

The results:  Team Kenya tied with the I/O Team for first place.  Each team got a $25 gift card to Starbucks. 

Amazing Race Debrief:

We shared our personal motives/goals for the race, our greatest challenges of the night, and what kind of personalities we exhibited in the situation.  As a team, our greatest challenge was fitting into the car, but we all felt unified and we all had fun!

Photos and video at http://picasaweb.google.com/dorothyewu/GrXMissionsRetreat2008.