Picture this: you wake up at 5:45 in the morning, it’s still dark outside and the sound of rain pouring on your tent has kept you up all night. The last thing you want to do is get out of your warm sleeping bag, change clothes in a cold tent, and step outside into the REALLY cold air to pack up your soaking wet tent. Finally, you muster up the motivation and make the move- quick change, roll up your bag, leave your squadmates tent to get both of your packs out of your tent, where you stored them. Now imagine the feeling when you get to your tent to get your packs, and find them sitting in 2 inches of dirty water, soaking the bag and its contents. Not a great feeling y’all. Not. Great.
How did I get to that point, you ask? Lend me your ear…
It all started on the morning of October 16th. I had just landed in Atlanta, Georgia, and grabbed my haphazardly stuffed pack from the baggage claim. As I awkwardly hauled 47 pounds of everything I thought I would need for two weeks, I started to feel the butterflies in my stomach. I was about to meet the people I would be spending an entire year of my life with, and I had no idea what to expect. After giving a rough description of where I was to one of the aforementioned squadmates, I lingered by the baggage claim and waited to be found. Within a few minutes, I saw a bright, blonde, curly haired girl doing the walk around that said “I’m looking for someone”, and I gave her the “hey I might be the person you’re looking for” half-wave. Little did I know this girl would end up being one of my best friends and teammate for next year! (but I’ll get to that in another post).
A group of about 15 other racers and I had about 5 hours of bonding time as we waited for the shuttle to take us an hour outside of Atlanta to Gainesville- where came was located. In that time I repacked my bag about three times, and with the help of the other racers, finally got it to something that didn’t look like Russell’s backpack from “Up”.
Arriving to camp was a mixed bag of emotions. Never in my life have I felt so overwhelmed by the shear number of people that I had to talk to. I didn’t expect to have all of our comforts stripped away so fast (sleeping in tent every night, no indoor toilets, bucket showers only, eating with our hands and no plates for almost every meal, basically living as woodland creatures for the next 10 days). I was excited to meet everyone, but that first day all I could think was “there is no chance I’ll be able to do this for a year,” I really just wanted to go home.
Once check in was finished, the next few days were a blur of soul-bearing “sessions,” in which we delved into the fun topics of what we would be leaving behind next year, being comfortable with discomfort, shame and guilt, forgiveness, vulnerability, testimony, more vulnerability, spiritual warfare, even more vulnerability. I have never felt more emotionally exposed in my life, and with people I had only known a few days.
But little by little, I allowed my walls to come down. I opened up to my squad and felt the wonderful relief that comes with being fully known and fully loved. I let myself freely worship. I talked with Jesus like I never have, like having a conversation with a best friend. I somehow grew comfortable in the discomfort, I learned to lean on Jesus rather than the comforts of home in those moments. I stopped caring about the fact that I had to wear clothes I don’t normally wear, and it was actually great. We didn’t have mirrors, except for the warped ones in the port potties, but no one could actually stay in those long enough to get more than a glance (especially after India food day). We were allowed to have our phones more than I expected, but most days we all just left them put away because we really enjoyed just being present with each other.
Now I’m going to tell you about arguably the hardest part of training camp: bucket showers. I think I could write an entire blog post on this topic, but I’ll limit myself to a few sentences. Description: fill a bucket with cold water from a spicket, carry said bucked into a 2×2 wooden stall and use a measuring cup type thing so pour cold water over body, attempt to bathe normally with limited space and zero warmth, rinse by pouring cold water over body again, dry as fast as possible and put semi wet clothes on semi dry body, and pretend you feel clean. I took a total of two bucket showers at camp- one was on day three, which was the only “warm” (70 degree) day of camp, the second was when we were all forced to take showers after doing our fitness test (7am, 40 degrees. NOT warm). I remember finishing the test, and looking around at everyone literally steaming because it was so cold outside. Needless to say over half of my squad was sick the next day, myself included.
***GROSS FOOD PART OF THE BLOG***
If this is all you were reading the blog for I’m fine with that and I understand tbh so here you go:
Food: Crickets
Description: expected it to be crunchier, mine was a little ~juicy~ which was unpleasant. It tasted like pepper. Legs got stuck in my throat. But overall not as bad as expected.
Rating: 6/10. Not terrible but wouldn’t bring them as a movie snack
Food: Puffy Malaysian snack???
Description: sweet, crunchy, air. That’s honestly the best I can do with these, I still don’t actually know what they were.
Rating: 10/10, I ended up taking the entire family size bag with me for the rest of the day.
Food: Century Egg
Description: I’m sorry for this. It’s a fermented duck egg, it’s black/green with gelatinous texture. It has the distinct smell and taste of a slightly molded, wet, dirty sock. So just go ahead and imagine that for a minute. I gagged, but I did NOT throw it up or spit it out.
Rating: solid -10/10. Never again.
***Gross food part over***
*mic drop*
The rest of training camp was a series of highs and lows, it went something like this:
High: we get to leave campus for a day!
Low: we have to do door to door street evangelism!
High: that actually got me out of my head, got me over myself, and ended up being awesome and a lot of fun!
Low: gotta wake up at 5:45 for the fitness test
High: finished the fitness test (full pack aka 47lbs for me, 2.2 miles, 36 minutes) with over 10 min to spare! (This included me running with said hella heavy pack for portions of the trail).
Low: bucket shower after fitness test- getting sick
High: sabbath rest day!
Low: realizing that we only had one full day left and I didn’t want to leave
High: squad wars! My squad (blue), took second place after battling 3 other squads in a dance off, dodgeball, mario cart balloon pop game, and egg smashing game.
Low: squad wars over
High: got rebaptized! Check my Facebook/instagram for a post about this!
Low: lost the pole to my rainfly (Ahhh see? it’s coming back to that first story)
High: last night of worship was next level
Low: pouring rain that night, flooded tent, you already know the story
High/Low: saying goodbye to my new best friends, but also being really excited to have a whole year with them to look forward to.
High: getting a REAL shower at my squadmates house
Low: having to spend 15 hours at the airport waiting for my flight home
High: getting to meet and have an awesome conversation with a guy named Jeffery (If you’re reading this Jeffery, hey! Also I hope I spelled your name right!)
Low: thinking I was going to die on the plane ride back, like it was really spooky guys.
High: getting home, having one of my best friends pick me up and get me chick fil a, taking another shower and napping.
Training camp was something else y’all. It was everything and nothing that I expected. Those 11 days changed me more than I could have ever imagined, and I am equally excited and terrified to see the effect that 11 months of living in this community have on me. All I know is that I can say with assurance that I am ready to embrace never being the same.
LETS GO R SQUAD 2019!!!!
