For the first time on this Race, I am not outnumbered by women.
In fact, there isn't an American woman in this city.
The 16 men of our Squad separated from the 31 women and split into two teams. On my team are my Somewhere Beautiful teammates, Nate and Mickey; our Squad Leaders, Thomas and Ryan; and the three men from Refreshe, Brandon, Jordan and Jake. We live in a small, spare hostel — we have one cabinet for our food and one table on which to eat it. We sleep in two rooms floored with concrete and furnished with nothing. In our town, Gua Musang, there isn't a shop open before 10 a.m.
For our work, we've taught English to children who run from the table every two minutes and teenagers who don't talk, either in English or Malay. We have painted the four rooms of the Center where we teach, and we have moved bookshelves back and forth. For our food, we toast bread, stick cheese between it and then turn on the toaster again and hold the bread and cheese over the toaster like a marshmallow to melt the cheese inside. (We only have a toaster and an electric kettle.) For our free time, we climb into caves with limited headlamps and feel are way around the darkness and feel our skin turn red as we play nine holes of golf with one set of clubs (more on that later).
For our ministry, we have each other.
We have talked about our failures and our families, and our failures with our families. We've talked about our struggles with faith and pride and selfishness.
We're learning to be brothers, not the kind that are bound by blood, but something stronger — the kind that are bound by nothing.
