The morning started off with prayer and worship at 6am, which was really enjoyable and put all of us in the right mindset to do the many, MANY physically strenuous activities we did today. Morning prayer ended at 7am, and we were all sent outside to immediately start a timed mile run, so that the leaders could record our time and compare it to the times in the following months. We also were instructed to do as many push-ups as possible in two minutes, then as many sit-ups as possible in two minutes. Our numbers were recorded, and apparently, these tests will be done the first of every month to see how we improve throughout the duration of the program.
After our so-called "warmup" we did a three mile run around the church (6 laps around the entire church) as a group while doing "indian sprints". For those of you who are like me and don't know what indian sprints are, they are when the group runs in a single file line and the person in the very back sprints as fast as they can to the front of the line and the cycle continues for the entire three miles. It was KILLER, and several of us struggled pretty bad, but we all completed the run, so that's something!
Then we were given one hour to go shower and come back to the church dressed in quality but casual attire for a "class", which was basically a Q&A with Justin about anything we didn't understand in the handbook. Later, we were given another hour to get lunch and come back to the church dressed in our team sports uniforms. Little did I know that we would be doing more strenuous activities for twice as long as we just did this morning.
We did several team building exercises, some as a large group, some in our individual teams. The exercises focused on communication, though during most of our activities we weren't allowed to talk, and five push-ups were the consequence for each peep from us. (Thanks to an extremely opinionated and slightly oblivious girl in my group, the whole group did around 50 pushups in addition to the ones we did earlier this morning.) The activities also focused on strategy, teamwork, patience, careful observation, leadership and submission to leaders. But the activities we did in our individual groups were by far the best!
Each team had to complete four different exercises, each timed, and the group with the best combined time would be given some sort of advantage for an event we're doing next week. One activity was the seven of us pushing the 24/7 van a half-mile, and another was a slightly more difficult version of the "the floor is lava" game we all played when we were kids. Another one we did involved jumping, riding piggyback on a teammate, or walking on thin boards to get to checkpoints. The checkpoints were either picnic tables where all of us had to fit on half of one bench (nearly impossible!), or tiny pieces of carpet that all seven of us had to be standing on in order to move on. We did a lot of "snuggling" as we called it, which was extremely close contact and some required groping and pulling on your teammates to stay upright.
But the most amazing activity was our next-to-last one which was four tall, skinny poles arranged to make a square, with a rope tied round it about five feet off the ground. The exercise was for all seven of us to make it out of the square by exiting OVER the rope. This meant that we did a lot of throwing our teammates into the air, jumping or climbing on each other, and three-tiered piggybacks. Somehow we all did it but when there was one teammate left alone inside the square, we all wondered how he would get out. My teammate (who is about my height) literally high-jumped horizontally over the five foot above ground rope and into our arms, making us the fastest team to complete the challenge.
Our combined time was 43 minutes for all four activities, while the other teams finished in 52 and 53 minutes, meaning my team WON and gets the advantage next week!
So, now that I'm basically dead as you could imagine from what I've been through today, I'm studying up on my scripture and 24/7 Code memorization for my test tomorrow, then PASSING OUT. No idea how I'll get out of bed tomorrow when every muscle in my body aches.
And today was only the first day.
Thanks for the update.
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