Start your day by waking up to the sound of singing, very loud singing, that echo’s throughout every hall inside the very echo-y building you’re living in. Though it’s not coming from a racer, you come to find it’s one of the students in one of the other halls that’s actually pretty far away, but it sounds like it’s right outside your door. Now that you’re awake at 6:30am, might as well get up and get ready for the day. The only issue, you are just SO warm under your blankets, and peeling them off yourself means an instant chilly wave is about to visit you due to the fact that it’s about 40 degrees in your bedroom. But, might as well get going.
Head into your bathroom shared by 40 girls, which even though it was just cleaned the night before, has miraculously become dirty overnight and looks like someone dumped a pile of dirt on the ground and swept it into every crack and crevasse in the floor (which you almost slip on because for some reason it’s always, always wet). Take a visit to one of 4 (again, shared) squatty potties and figure out how on earth you’re supposed to stack your toilet paper on the already towering stack of toilet paper in the trash can without knocking it over and having to be the one to take out the trash. Head on over to the mirror above the sinks and contemplate if this is a morning you’ll look slightly less like the hobo you looked like yesterday, but ultimately decide that no, it’s not, and this is about as good as you’re going to get.
Find a buddy who’s ready at the same time as you are, to walk your 10 minute walk up to the meal tent (if you get there early enough, you’ll score a roll of Happy Happys, the best chocolate chip cookies EVER). Spend some time alone in your devos, though with 50 people are you really ever alone? (No).
After breakfast, it’s time for ministry! Ministry in India looks different all the time. One day you could be passing bricks for 3 hours to help with church construction, the next you could be corralling screaming children at their first day of Kindergarten. No one ever really knows, but as long as it’s for the Kingdom, it’s all good (throw lunch in there somewhere at some point).
After ministry, it’s time to conquer your greatest fear: showering. It’s the afternoon now, so not as cold, but still only about 50 degrees outside, which means still cold. Grab yourself a bucket, a scoop, and brace yourself for the ever dreaded ‘back dump’ of water as well as the ‘stomach dump’ (the top two worst moments). After you’re done, you have a few hours to kill before dinner, which can be spent in multiple ways. Some people play soccer or volleyball, some people nap, while personally I either work on blogs (like this one) or watch the office (per highly recommended by my older sister).
After dinner, it’s team time, then bed. Though, depending on the day and what we have to do, sometimes you’ll find yourself already tucked into your bunk by 6pm (my earliest record is 5:15pm…#introvert). Now, once you’ve realized how incredibly early it still is in the evening, you sit in bed and wonder if it’s actually too early to call it a night and have alone time. However, once the rest of your roommates come into the room and hop into bed as well, you feel less self conscious and chat a bit with them before popping in your hard drive and picking one of the 208 movies you’ve downloaded on it (because one of the pros of living with 50 people means more than plenty of movies to transfer around). Around 8:30pm you’ve finished watching Crazy Rich Asians for the 67th time (it’s just so darn PERFECT), and decide to call it a night. Because face it: you’ve turned into an early nightery due to your early riser routine, plus from the occasional strange howling sounds that might wake you up at 2am, in which you can’t decide if it’s an animal or coming from a human, to which you’ll need extra time in the morning to process and tell everyone about.
And that’s the day! In all honesty, not every single day is like this. The Race has had some super crazy and wild moments (which sometimes can go like this day) though most of the time it’s super chill. Hopefully it made you laugh and get excited for the all the stories I have to share when I get home!
