(Kari, Hondo, Nate, and Me)So, I don't know how many of you have seen the TV show "The Amazing Race." I personally, have not. However, for the beginning of the intern training, JV has their own amazing race in order for us to see right away different team dynamics, to learn more about interacting with the culture, and to get us out of our comfort zones. I promised you in my last post that I'd explain more about this when I had time, so here's what you need to know about my last last three days here on the Amazing Race.
Day One (Wednesday):
I arrived at the airport in Vienna, Austria and had some down time to get to know other interns before we started. Once everyone arrived (safely and without too much delay, thank God!), we broke up into our teams (13 altogether) based on what country we were going to be serving in. My teammates are Kari (pronounced Car-ee) and Nate at the moment, but two more girls are joining us in the middle of June. Hondo, a JV missionary in Slovenia, also did the amazing race with us. He's great, though he still won't tell us the real story about how he got his name ;) The competition started with a scavenger hunt around the airport and then we were handed 6 clues to different spots in Vienna where we'd have to go to do different things. The stations each had a task/game to complete before we could go on. These varied from logic games to eating challenges to everything in between. My highlight of the day was the station set up in a square where we had to put on a performance and get someone to give us money without asking for it :) It was funny and we ended up forming an alliance with another team so that we'd have enough people to really cause a scene! We got to our ending spot in first place and felt good about the day!
Day Two (Thursday):
After a short six hours of sleep at a youth hostel we were back in action. Kari was feeling sick so we lost a member of our team for a while. The rest of us left at 7 in the morning with a clue that told us to find the oldest dry bobsled course on Kobala hill, which happens to be in Bratislava, Slovakia. We got there and were tested on the JV core values and got to slide down the course. After that we had to find a UFO (we met up with Kari here) and then were off to a huge mall in the city to find 5 JV missionaries stationed there with small tasks for us to do. After that we ended in Brno trying to eat as much cow stomache soup as we could in this sketchy little Czech restaurant. Because of a few wrong turns and missing a train, we ended in 12th place.
Day Three (Yesterday):
Yesterday was the most physically challenging of the race! The first challenge in Brno was to find an English school and take an English grammar test (since we will be teaching English all summer). You'd think this would have been easy for me as a writing major and everything, but it most definitely was not! I got 40%. Do I even know how to speak English?! For every question we got wrong we had to wait more time at the school before we were allowed to continue. This was the only down time we had besides traveling, because basically the rest of the time we were running. The next challenge in the main square in Brno was gross! We had to get 2 pounds of gummy bears out of a bowl one at a time with our mouths and run to bowls a little ways away and put them in the bowl they belonged in based on color. It was a lot of running! And slobber! After that we headed to Malenovice, raced out of the train filled with at least four other teams to get the first taxi to the JV training building. Our final task was to make ten goals on the soccer field before running up a the huge hill the building is on. We made it in fifth place overall and were proud of our efforts!
So, those are the basics of the Amazing Race. It was great for team building, getting over jet-lag, and seeing some of Europe before some more low-key stuff around here. This is a long post, so I'll stop now, but thanks to everyone tracking with me. I'm so looking forward to getting to know the interns and missionaries even better and diving into camp stuff once in Slovenia (we get there on Wednesday).
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