If you were confused by the sight of students chugging soda outside Judd Hall or throwing Oreos around German House this Saturday, you weren’t alone; not even those of us who participated in The Amazing Race: Wesleyan Edition are entirely sure what happened. Thirteen teams of four competed in the race in pursuit of glory and a $100 cash prize. The event, which was organized by the Wesleyan Student Assembly Spirit and Events Committee, sent students across campus as they participated in various challenges.

This is the story of my Amazing Race experience, which started with optimism and ended in tears, bruises, and broken friendships. Well, not really—but I did get stabbed in the face with a toothpick.

The event began when the teams congregated in front of Usdan to hear the directions. Though our team was sporting the Saturday morning “just woke up” look, other teams got very into their group costumes. Some people had paint on their faces, and one group even featured a student in a dinosaur costume—on a skateboard, no less.

We sprinted to the middle of Andrus Field to get our instructions envelope, and then we had to blow up two balloons that would stay with us for the remainder of the race. Our first clue led us to German House, where we competed in our first challenge. Two of our team members had to get an Oreo from their forehead to their mouths without using their hands. Sound easy? It wasn’t.

I first tried bouncing the Oreo up in the air, but that didn’t work. Then I tried letting it slide down my face, but the Oreo just kept falling to the floor. After I got Oreo crumbs in my hair, eyes, and jacket, a crafty student from another team showed us a method that proved more successful. This technique involved putting my face up against the wall so that the Oreo was sandwiched between said wall and my face. Then I just moved my face around on the wall so that it looked like I was having some strange make-out session with the wall and an Oreo. I’m sure we’ve all been there before.

Cookie make-outs complete, we headed off to our next challenge. We ended up in the University Organizing Center basement—which, by the way, has some awesome graffiti that everyone should go check out—and we took part in a challenge involving plastic eggs, streamers, and a really dark room. It sounds a lot sketchier than it was, but we got through this challenge pretty quickly and went on our way to the Davison Health Center (DHC) for our next event.

The DHC challenge, much like the inner pages of The Argus, was filled with clever sexual innuendos and puns. At this stop you had a choice between the suck-and-blow challenge, which involved sucking and blowing on an index card as you passed it between all your group members, or the toothpick-in-a-Lifesaver challenge, which required the transportation of a Lifesaver between group members with only a toothpick in your mouth.

We chose the Lifesaver challenge, and I once again proved how bad I am at doing anything with food other than eating it. Once we’d all experienced a few uncoordinated toothpick jabs to the mouth, we completed the challenge and got our next clue.

This clue instructed us to go to the place where the calorie was discovered; we deduced that this must be Judd Hall. On the steps of Judd we competed in another food challenge. Two team members had to guzzle soda and burp while two other team members had to eat Saltines and then whistle.

I chose to do the cracker challenge, mostly because I’m obsessed with Saltines and will often leave Usdan looking like a hoarder with my pockets overfilled with cracker packets. For the first time during the race, I excelled at an activity; I had no trouble eating the crackers and then whistling.

Yet one of my teammates did have some problems with this challenge. She downed an entire can of soda but was still unable to burp. She tried every technique we suggested to no avail, so after 10 minutes of failed attempts the judges allowed us to move on to the next challenge. As we were leaving for our next destination, she finally let out a burp loud enough to be heard down College Row. (Every piece of serious journalism should really have one mention of a loud burp—it totally wins over those Pulitzer judges.)

I don’t want to read too much into the burp, but it was after that triumphant moment that things really started to go downhill. The next clue instructed us to go to the place on campus that is “two inches longer than at Amherst.” (Yes, the WSA really loves those penis puns.) We all decided it had to be either the pool or the track, so we headed to Freeman. After half an hour of wandering around Freeman—which totally counted as my exercise for the day—we decided we must have been in the wrong place. One of my teammates called a friend for help, and we realized the clue had been referring to the telescope at the observatory.

Dejected but not ready to give up just yet, we headed to the observatory for our challenge. By the time we got there the judges had already left, so we decided to go to Usdan to catch the final challenge. When we arrived, the judges were cleaning up and informed us that we came in tenth out of 13 teams. Then we were told that three teams had dropped out during the race, so we had actually come in last place.

Despite our disappointing finish, we still had a good time. The organizers of The Amazing Race did a great job planning everything, and all of the challenges were bizarrely fun. Plus, we got free Saltines and Oreos. What more could you want?