(This blog was written on August 19, 2009 inside a tent with the rain pitter-pattering overhead.)
Sorry I haven’t been able to write. We went on a 48 hour screen fast (no ipods, computers, etc…) a few days after we arrived in Ireland just so that we could focus on everything we were learning at Launch training camp in Dublin and then we were up at a family camp in the Wicklow Mountains with no internet access. I’ve realized that I won’t always be in locations with the opportunity to update you guys as often as I’d like. So I ask that you’d give me grace as I go along this year and I promise to update as often as I can when its available. I love you all and appreciate that you take the time to read about this brilliant, beautiful and challenging adventure that God has me on. It means more to me than you know. Thank you for your love and support!
Ok, now let me really start this blog off.
On August 11th, 2009 after a five or six hour flight from New York City, the August 2009 World Race arrived in Dublin. We got on the plane at 6pm New York time and landed at 6am Ireland time. What followed was quite literally the longest day of my life. I was awake for around 40 hours before I got to sleep. You see, there’s this thing called jet lag that likes to hit with a vengeance but we needed to get acclimated to our new time zone, so the worst thing we could have done was go to bed at the “beginning” of the day. So we headed off to our campsite, were joyously reunited with our leaders and after many hugs and how-are-yous, we pitched our tents, then got into our teams and headed off on a treasure hunt/amazing race sort of daytrip. The best thing to do was stay awake so we could sleep at the end of the Irish day, so off we went with a list of places to go to in Dublin and specific tasks to do at each place and we could only use 17 Euros per person to do it all. It was a great way to get familiar with the city and beat jet lag (although sometimes I’m not sure who was winning, us or the jet lag?).
It was our first test as a team to see how we’d work together. There was so much potential for chaos and bad attitudes to surface with everyone being tired, jet lagged and in an unfamiliar country, but my team is so incredible and really pulled through despite it all! We had a fantastic day! Maybe we weren’t as enthusiastic as we would have been if we had been better rested, but I was just really impressed at how well we worked together despite it all. We were the only team to get everything on our list, even the bonus task! So that was really cool too.
