It’s that time again – my monthly recap of all of the hilarity that happens on the race. All-squad month provided a lot of great memories, and as usual, I hope they bring you as much laughter as they did us.
-As usual, I’ll kick off this post with a story about me being a klutz. One morning, I was standing on the big rock outside our living areas eating oatmeal and talking to a squadmate. It had rained the night before and was a little slippery, and naturally I lost my footing. I slipped sideways down the side of the rock without making a sound, and somehow managed to keep my bowl of oatmeal upright the whole time. Priorities.
-On our last Saturday at El Shaddai, I left the mountain for the first time. Four other girls from the squad and I headed for the city of Manzini (about an hour away) in search of internet and a few things we needed for the next month. On the way there, our driver had to stop to let about a dozen cows run across the road. One of the cows literally face-planted on the grass when it reached the other side. We couldn’t stop laughing for the longest time.
-We would trade off morning ministry assignments each week. During the third week I didn’t sign up in time and ended up with what was left: cleaning out pigpens. I was directing the children’s choir most of the time, so thankfully I was only with the pigs three times. It wasn’t really too bad – we would scoop poop, spray down the stalls, and sweep the water down a makeshift drain. The more amusing part came when the pigs would try to bust through the gate while we were cleaning. We would have to run around chasing them out and make sure they didn’t some back. Somehow they must have known when we weren’t looking.
-We had a variety of sleeping situations throughout the squads. Two teams had their own cabins, 28 girls slept in one building, and all of the guys plus the four girls on my team shared a three-bedroom dormitory building. The walls didn’t come up to the ceiling, and the girls’ room shared a wall with the bathroom. You could hear and smell everything that happened in there. Everything.
-One day I had done laundry and didn’t have any clothespins, so I decided to hang up my underwear on a makeshift line we had rigged up in our room. It took a while to dry and was there for a few days. I didn’t really care, and nobody who came in commented, except for one. Jenny came into our room to get something from me, looked up, and remarked, “I like your underwear chandelier.”
-The guys chopped wood for a bonfire one night, and then the axe broke. They were left with a tiny hatchet to split the logs with – six-foot-something Eric might as well have been Paul Bunyan.
-During the last few days we played a squad-wide game of Assassins. In this game, you have a person assigned to you as a target. You eliminate your target by getting them wet somehow (our water bottles were the most common weapon, although a few people got creative). When you got your target, whoever they were after was your new target. Things got intense. Racquel faked her own “death” to outsmart Jace; Sarah Hawkins threw her entire water bottle at Allison and hit me instead; and Anna Olsen stalked Danny for hours until she finally took him out.
Stay tuned for the next installment of the World Race blooper reel, which will come to you at the end of Month 3!
