Every February on President's weekend my family and friends from Pennsylvania go on a small three day vacation to a big retreat house in Pennsylvania. The house is huge; it has a giant patio that connects to a wraparound porch, there are about 15 bedrooms, 2 kitchens, a game room downstairs, and 2 common areas on the middle floor. On the property of the house is a gymnasium with a full length basketball court. There are even volleyball nets that can be set up. The property by itself is enormous. The yard next to the house immediately slopes into a giant hill before slowly planing off into an empty field that stretches to about 2 acres of land. The house is pretty secluded so there aren’t any main roads or other people nearby. All of the kids always eat out in the garage because the space is so big. We play games in the gym, hang out in our rooms, watch movies in the common areas, and play games in the game room. The game room has a pool table, a ping pong table, a shuffleboard table, and air hockey. There is even a full size shuffleboard set on the patio area. The patio area consists of an outdoor fireplace, a grill, and basically a full size eating area.

The trip is always very exciting for me because I get to see my friends from Pennsylvania that I hardly ever get to see. All together four families stay there. We have so much fun together because we don’t have to worry about school and the parents don’t have to worry about work; we can just hang out and have fun all weekend. I always brought my Wii and my friend Brandon would bring his TV. We would stay up til 12 almost every night playing Mario Strikers Charged in our room. One time, we managed to fit all the kids in our room so we could watch the Martian together. We play games like basketball, barrel ball, dodge ball, capture the flag, and volleyball in the gym. It’s the most fun when everyone decides to join for the game. The time I spend on this trip with my friends is something I will never forget. These trips are probably some of my favorite memories I will ever have. We are just so close even though we rarely see each other twice a year. I always look forward to this trip because of how much of an amazing time it is and because I get to see my favorite people in the world.

One specific memory I have of going on this trip is one time we all went bowling together. I remember it so vividly because it was the first time I had gone bowling without bumpers. The place did not have bumpers installed, so we had to just bowl regularly. We were so bad. We could barely get the ball down the lane to hit the pins. For whatever reason, it was so hard for us to keep the ball on the lane long enough to hit the pins. By the end we finally figured out that if you threw it fast enough it would hit the pins before going into the gutter. We all ended up getting a score of around 50 but we didn’t care at the time. We were just having fun and that was all that mattered.

Unfortunately I’m not sure we are ever going to be able to go back to this house again. This past year they had a problem with the sewage so the house was in need of repair. Also it’s fairly expensive to stay in there so if one of the four families can’t make it, it costs a lot more to stay. Last year we almost ended up not going because one of the families we go with couldn’t afford it so it made the trip a lot more expensive. Hopefully, we will find a new place to go to or maybe this place will get fixed. I really enjoy going on this trip with all my friends and it would be terrible if we weren’t able to have this experience again.