I looked down at some point on Saturday afternoon and this is what I saw:
- Evidence of Breakfast
That would be a splatter of my ‘breakfast’. Turns out I ran all over Abbotsford that day with vomit on my pants! At least it was my own – and barely any, really. I got off pretty easy in the vomit department, to be honest, as well as a few other areas of life that day.
It was an intense day:
We wandered the woods before dawn, wiped pudding out of nostrils, spent 90 confused and discouraging minutes in a parking lot, searched for a needle in a haystack, and had lunch at a Sikh temple and an impromptu train-watching session. We ran, swam, and gave directions in a van. Lego, ice cubes, flint & steel, sidewalks, parks, paperwork and puke (breakfast was a special time..) A corn maze, a library, a sunrise, a sunset. Communication. Memory. Morale. Encouragement. Frustration. Selflessness. Surprises. My team and I hauled our four bodies, a backpack, and a raw egg all around Abbotsford yesterday with the goal of completing
THE AMAZING TREK!
And we did! We participated in 15 hours of challenges designed to cause stress and push limits so that we could see how we reacted individually and as a team to a very different environment than our usual happy days of training at the centre.
Our team officially placed fourth of four, but we experienced a victory of a different sort. We held together. Early on we decided not to push for first, for combination of reasons. Our focus that day was to discover how we worked together and have some fun doing so. And we did! It was a really fun and crazy day that started at 3:30 am and went until we hit the sack at 11:00 that night and was chock-full of memories and moments that will stick with us in memory and lessons for a long time.
Aren’t we cute?
Some highlights?
-having a teammate totally sacrifice his comfort, stomach and so much more to chomp and chuff down some “balut” – fertilized and partiall developed duck eggs. Embryo, feathers and beaks were in there and he faithfully shoved it in his mouth, swallowed and promptly threw up for a steady 20 minutes. What a trooper!
-Sharing the Doxology with a teammember who didn’t know about it during a late-night van ride.
-Witnessing a stunned member of the Portugal team hold up an actual needle found in a haystack!
-Laughing over our ‘guardian angel’ as he mysteriously and unexpectedly appeared through the mist to watch us run to and from various destination points before dawn.
-Getting to know my team members with random questions like “favourite memory?” as we headed between events.
-Racing through a corn maze in the dark, counting off in Mongolian to keep track of each other.
-Spending time with Brain and Gay as they drove us all over – the lovliest couple who cook for us, love us, and pour out wise words and encouragement to us each day
-Leaving the Sikh temple! I’m sorry to say the food is not high on my list of delicacies. That was a true challenge because it was in a real setting where I didn’t want to offend anyone else.
-Sinking into bed at 11:00 knowing that I could sleep as long as I wanted the next day. Best sleep I’ve had in a long time!!
We spent an hour and a half combing the parking lot for this one.
“but we experienced a victory of a different sort. We held together.” As a younger brother, I feel compelled to remark upon this remarkably cheezy statement. It’s like eating a Cheez Whiz sandwich in a Switzerland cheese factory. Not the greatest simile considering just how much there would seem to be in Cheez Whiz.
Ouch.
Just ouch.
And ouch again.
So true.
You’re right. But it’s kind of true. At least, it’s the biggest thing that our team took away from the event so it seemed an accurate portrayal of the team’s take on the whole thing. The cynic inside of me still resisted writing that line but I braced myself and wrote it anyways. It shows that I’m trying.
Ha – I was going to point out the cheez whiz fact but you’re so smart you caught yourself already 😛 haha. Did you know our Other Brother made a cheez whiz comment to me this week too? Downright eery. We think of cheez whiz so rarely in this society now…