32 international students in one waffle house

Facilitator Chung shares his experience at the FIUTS Global Getaway to Leavenworth last weekend.

Chung Han, FIUTS Facilitator, gives an adventure-filled overview of last weekend's FIUTS Global Getaway to Leavenworth:

Trip kicked off with my usual FIUTS getaway routine. Picked up my SUV from the E-2 parking lot on a cold, rainy Saturday morning. First thing I always do when I get in the UCAR is presetting my party bus tunes before heading up to the Burke where I meet the students. Check-in went all easy and smooth. We departed on time, I think.

We had an interesting mix of people in my car, as always, from Brunei, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Korea, and Taiwan, in order of uniqueness. Brunei -- never even heard of this country before. She was my co-pilot. We had a nice chat throughout the long drive and shared a great deal of each of our backgrounds. After years of facilitating, I still get to learn about new cultures through FIUTS. How cool is that?

Maybe a little over two hours into the drive, one of our passengers expressed a strong urge to pee. Gas stations or bathrooms nowhere to be found in the land of central Washington. The sign says 30 miles to Leavenworth. That's half an hour. Couldn't hold any longer and pulled over to the side of the road. 3 UCARs ended up pulling over with us. While this guy from Australia and I (confession--that passenger was me) were taking care of business in the snow, behind trees, everyone had a good time lying on giant piles of snow making some kinda of angelic sculptures. Something like that. It was Jeremy's idea. This was probably the best part of the trip, as far as I'm concerned.

Willkommen, Leavenworth. We finally arrived in the Bavaria of Washington. I've personally been to Bavaria in Germany. It's nothing like this. Anyway, this was my third time visiting this town with FIUTS. We first checked in at the hotel. The staff was exceptionally competent and welcoming. Then we headed over to a waffle house across the street for lunch. We managed to fit all 32 of us in the restaurant. With about 10-15 minutes left before we gathered up back at the hotel after lunch, everybody marched into Starbucks with zero hesitation. This tends to happen in FIUTS.

In the afternoon, some chose to do wine tasting and save snow tubing for the next day, led by Jeremy and Charlie, and the rest of us directly went snow tubing. The evening activities consisted of beer sampling, Bavarian dinner (giant Schweinshaxen), hot tubbing, and card games. The hot tub was broken, apparently just minutes before we jumped in.

The only thing Eugene and I came for and looked forward to, GONE. Just kidding, but yes, we were heartbroken. We sat in the cold tub, with those manly enough to stay in until our bodies could no longer handle it. Seven dudes in a tub, enough said. Then we were literally heartbroken. It was so cold. We jumped out and ran into our own showers as fast as humanly possible. Guess what, no hot water. All we got was cold showers. This sounds like a military training, but oh well, we had fun in our own way.

Next morning, we enjoyed complimentary breakfast at the hotel, and sent those who didn't make it up to the slopes yet off to the hill. The rest of us spent the afternoon enjoying the town scenery, eating big German pretzel/bratwurst, drinking coffee, getting gelato and chocolates, and visiting shops selling random things.

There were some snow alerts on the road on our way back, but we returned safely to Seattle. All of us facilitators were excellent and experienced drivers.

FIUTS is going on another ski/snowboarding trip to this area in a couple of weeks. Who's going back? This guy!