“A Day in the Life” was released on June 1, 1967 and is the final song on the Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album.
Here’s the itinerary of “A day in the [Albanian] life”: our most manual-labor intensive month… BY FAR.
6:30-7:30am
People waking up and muddling about, or their alarms, wake me up. I lay in the fort I made (below), contemplating God and my day for ~30 min. Roll out of bed, give little regard to what I’m wearing (it was month 5, by this point “looking cute” equates to “having showered”), then head to breakfast.
7:30-8am
Breakfast time: boiled egg, bread slices, jam, butter or some daily-made salty goat cheese, and well water.
8:00-8:30am
Go over the daily chapter from Proverbs (31 days, 31 proverbs), and talk about what verses stuck out to us. Dave, the temporary (and AWESOME) host (below), then usually had a short message to share.
8:30-9:30am
Time to ourselves to work out a little and get ready for the work day, (or sometimes jump right into work). This is when I usually assessed my finger’s brokenness for the day and what assignments I could tackle.
9:30am-12:30pm
Morning work: white wash all the white walls, in the pig pens, bedrooms, bathrooms, and the fences. Then we painted the metal fences black and all the wood brown. We also shoveled out over-accumulated chicken and pig ‘waste’ to create a drainage system, fix piglets or tackle various gardening/weeding tasks. There were also random 1-person jobs like paper shredder, ‘dumpster-puppy’ resuscitation, office or tool organizer, gate guard, and, per my squad mates, “the huge blessing of Michelle Ford’s job of making sure everyone is hydrated (running around grabbing and filling up water bottles, listing out the pros of proper hydration, cutting up lemons and buying well-water flavor enhancers), singing made-up songs to boost morale, and also preparing the occasional afternoon snack for everyone.” I also did some of their laundry etc.
12:30-1pm
Clean off your stink, OR gain a new stink, like gasoline, when trying to clean off your paint hands etc.
1:00-1:30pm
Lunch: usually consists of bean or cabbage soup, more bread and a 2, maybe 3-ingredient salad of some sort. There was usually a chunk of random meat in your soup bowl as well. Plus more well water.
2:00-5:00pm
Afternoon work session- continuing on with our jobs from the morning.
5:00-6:00pm
clean up and get ready for dinner. Zumba or Insanity workouts/shower. Sometimes we’d take a walk to this randomly located, weird restaurant (decorated like a taxidermy showroom. Yikes.) and grab a Lemon Soda. Bomb.com right there. I miss that stuff.
6:00-6:45pm
Dinner: usually consists of noodles or rice and more of that goat cheese, or a little shared meat sauce to flavor it… oh, and unlimited quantities of that bread. Sometimes we also got a ‘dessert’, like a cube of banana bread, or some kind of loaf, or a couple slices of apples or oranges. And, you guessed it, more mineral-deposit well water.
7:00pm – on
Team time, Kim Kardashian squat challenge, then just relaxing personal time. Quiet hours started at 9:30pm… though many would be asleep as soon as their team time was over. Exhausted.
Oh, and then waking up every 3 hours to feed that puppy we found.
Or rather disgusting…
and sometimes we couldn’t see the Kingdom purpose behind doing the tasks we were given. The intention was to benefit this Christian camp, cleaning and making it look nice, organized and operate more efficiently, etc. Lightforce International gets around 1,500 kids throughout the summer. They run a tight ship, and it’s very noticeable in the standards George, the British director/host (below), keeps.
In exchange, we had this BEAUTIFUL place to live for a month, fresh foods, and learned various skills. Unfortunately I couldn’t capture the sheep, pigs and various gardens from these shots, but here’s a little picture of what it looked like.
(front yard)
(back yard)
I love doing manual labor jobs (thus frustrated in being limited by my broken finger). My squad mates made the repetitive schedule and work even more enjoyable, meal times to look forward too, and an overall wonderful WR month. The video at the top shows what working with C-Squad looks like. Enjoy.
Fundraising Update:
THE BIGGEST SQUARE HAS BEEN TAKEN !!! by my Biggest competitor in the “Biggest Loser” challenge from my old firm last year. Jordan Abrams has got a big heart! 🙂
You’ve helped me jump to 21% !! Thank you!!
I only have 134 squares to get rid of on my Fun[d] Board, so if you’d like to take a square or two and/or spread the word, visit my home page here to see instructions, or leave a comment w your email and I can let you know how 🙂 THANKS!
SCRATCH THAT.
Since posting moments ago, my support account showed another percent increase: 22% !!
3 more squares were taken, so only 131 squares are left! Join in!
