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I went on a five day field trip last week, starting on Monday, ending on Friday. My whole class went to the "Ananda Meditation Retreat", a peaceful place up in the Sierras where people of the Ananda religion live.

For those who don't know, the Ananda religion was started by a Yogi (basically somebody who meditates and stuff) named Parahamsa Yogananda. It's focus is on the joy of life, loving everybody equally, enjoying yourself, being kind to others, and other things of that sort. I think those are all great things to strive for, and have nothing against it, I just don't follow it.

The community could almost be described as communist. Not in the sense that most people think of it, as in a communism gone wrong (Chairman Mao? Marx? Stalin?), but as in the original concept of communism. Everybody shared the workload of cooking, doing laundry, cleaning up, clearing trails, farming, and everybody shared what they had.

Some things that impressed me:

There is a small high school up there (maybe 50 or 75 people), also managed by Ananda, and some of the students live at the retreat. They studied and hung out in the community rooms together, even though most of them were taking different courses. This alone is nice, but not what really struck me.

What I noticed most is the trust and respect between all the kids. School supplies such as pencils, paper, calculators, even laptops, were all located on a center table. They were all shared by everybody for the purpose of learning, even though everything did actually belong to somebody. If somebody had forgotten their laptop, or for some reason couldn't use it, they could borrow somebody else's, no questions asked. This was only possible by everybody trusting everybody else, and knowing that they would respect their possessions.

Also, chores such as meal cleanup, cooking, and laundry were all shared by the residents. Nobody would complain when it was their turn, and they would do it all to the best of their ability, even if it meant taking time from something else they wanted to do.

I even witnessed a joke that one of the adults played on one of the high schoolers. The adult, who was one of the teachers at the school, was writing report cards (not grades really, more like a few paragraphs about that student), and was going to write a section on "responsiblity" for one of the students. Deciding to give the student a small test so as to write something more accurate, he erased all the names of people who were assigned to chores that day, and substituted the students name (which happened to be Matt) for all of them.

As I was drinking my morning coffee, wondering what was going to happen, Matt walked in. He looked at the board which told everybody who was doing which task that day, and walked on, knowing that it was not his day for breakfast prep, and not really reading the board, thinking he didn't have to because he already knew. The teacher, who was also watching, sighed and jotted down a little note.

All of a sudden, Matt stopped, turned around as if he had just realized something, and went back to the board. He examined it as if he hadn't seen it before, with a confused look on his face. After a minute he shrugged decisively, walked into the kitchen, and began to prepare breakfast. The teacher smiled. He made a large X over his note with an audible scratching sound, and wrote four large words I couldn't make out.

I will fill you in more later, but my fingers are getting very tired. I have so much to tell about this trip, but it will have to wait until tomorrow. Until then!