The Amazing... Trek?

Today was the longest day of my life. Not literally. But I'm fairly certain I did more physical exercise today than any other. And it was stressful. None of this sissy walking here and there stuff. How about, let's run across Abbotsford for half an hour. Racing two other groups of people. It was... The Amazing Trek. Think Amazing Race, Abbotsford style. Our team was made up of the three Global Servants here at training, Jon, Heidi, and myself. We raced against the two teams of TREKkers that are also here, Portugal and Thailand.
Some highlights of today for me were... winning! That was pretty sweet. Or waking up at 4 in the morning because the card said to be ready sometime between 4 and 6, and having the people show up at 5:45. Bushwhacking and getting stinging nettle all over my legs. Cutting through someone's yard at 6 in the morning, climbing a fence, and appearing on the side of the main road, right in front of the Portugal team (not planned, but funny). Doing a blindfolded activity and walking into a ledge, falling over and cutting up my knee but good. The best part of that one was that I was following Jon, who was not blindfolded, and he forgot to tell me there was a ledge there. But the second activity with the blindfolds, in the afternoon, we aced. Well, we aced the first one too, but there was more pain involved. Eating a lot of gross foods, including a half-developed baby duck still inside the egg. Apparently it's a delicacy somewhere. (We did not consume the egg shells.) Getting a clue on a flash drive that contained the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" for 250 pages, and finding the clue in there. No joke. Two hundred and fifty pages. Eating lunch at the Sikh temple. Running around Abbotsford looking generally dirty and ragamuffinish, like we were lost hitchhikers or vandals all day. Catching a trout in a fish farm pond, and later building a fire and frying it. (This was a very hurried and slightly gross frying. Do not picture delicious fish. I had to fillet it. Guess how well that went...) Putting on a fireman's coat and pants, and doing various activities while wearing them. Literally looking for a needle in a haystack. Doing a corn maze. And many other things.
We learned a lot today, about strengths, weaknesses, leadership, having a good attitude, and teamwork. We also learned that some things are "hotter than fire", including fire, stinging nettle, and jalapeno peppers; that running most of the day is hard work; that there are no guarantees in life, or races; that it pays to think ahead and listen to your friends; and that finding a needle in a haystack is actually next to impossible, except apparently for Jacob, who found it in 10 minutes. We ate a lot of mostly unpleasant food, got some weird stares, and bonded as a team... not team?... group of Global Servants.
I think I'm going to go to bed now...