All right, so I have no experience in setting up group events and yet I've volunteered to do just that, find fun group outings for 30 or 40 college students, mostly foreign exchange students so there may be a bit of a language barrier, and for preference find something that lets me break them into small groups to encourage meeting people outside their comfort zone.
Right now, I've got, uh, a bowling night as the first and pretty much only idea, and that is good enough for a start, but I need to do six of these total over the school year.
Hence I'm in dire need of suggestions and advice on crowd wrangling.
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Some kind of touristy thing, if they're foreign students. The museum idea isn't half bad, most of them give free admission to students.
Bowling, as has been mentioned.
Some kind of day hike trip?
A city tour, architectural, historical etc, if you live in a city that does something like that, obviously.
Scavenger hunt maybe?
Sporting event?
Movie night? Find something that's almost out of theaters. Maybe see if you can get a group rate?
3DS FC: 4699-5714-8940 Playing Pokemon, add me! Ho, SATAN!
About half the group is Japanese, the other half is English speakers from Australia and various places around the US. Very few of them are local, so the town is more-or-less new to all and a scavenger hunt would be a good way to teach them about the campus and area.
How about a team-based scavenger hunt? Go throughout the city and hide caches with a code word on it around the city/campus/whatever. Write down the GPS coords of each one, and put those GPS coords on a list for the teams.
Kind of like competitive, team-based geo-caching. There are mobile phone apps to help with this process where you enter the longitude/latitude and it points the way. Car GPSs may work too, if they have the feature.
karting
indoor/outdoor climbing
sailing (small boats)
hiking/biking
swimming
May be a bit far away/higher budget than other ideas though, but it'd be a good 'grand finale', or it'd be good to use to break the ice initially and then let them get closer through other events.
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Are there any famous landmarks near where you are? Might make for a fun day out, with a singalong on the bus ride there.
Thanks, everyone, for the advice.
Isn't there that one place, Enchanted Forest or something, just south of Salem? Not that I know if it's any good or if it actually has any rides but it's there. I think. I drive by it occasionally.
Also: Malls!
3DS FC: 4699-5714-8940 Playing Pokemon, add me! Ho, SATAN!
Holy cow, I forgot about that place. I don't remember whether it's any GOOD or not but it would definitely be a piece of Americana.
Turns out it's closed until March, but now you've given me drive to go and find out if we have any other tourist trap kinds of places I've forgotten.
Scavenger hunt/geocaching is a good idea.
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Oregon Caves, but that's Southern Oregon and I think tours are limited to 20 at a time. Still fun though. But the cave tours are smaller this time of year I think ... or longer. Whenever the damn bats are hibernating.
There's also the Oregon coast. Coos Bay, Bandon, Brookings. Bandon's got a cool wild animal park just south of it, Brookings has an awesome campground. Weather should still be good enough this time of year.
3DS FC: 4699-5714-8940 Playing Pokemon, add me! Ho, SATAN!