Camping

Friday, November 18, 2010, 08:11am local time – Minsk, Belarus

Part of the thrill of travel is trying new things.  Always one for a travel adventure, I had a brand new experience here in Belarus last night.  I went camping for the first time.  After so many hours of travel and activities our first afternoon here, my team and I were ready to turn in for some sleep before starting the heavy lifting of teaching this weekend.  Things were to be a little different this trip, though.  My bed was a hammock last night.  With enough blankets, I figured I wouldn’t be too cold, and I was sleepy enough that any old bed would have been sufficient.  So, I folded myself in thirds, tucked the blankets up under my chin to keep out the Minsk late November cold, selected a position that in which I thought I could be comfortably locked for about seven hours—I certainly wasn’t going to be turning from side to side in a hammock—and slipped quietly off into the land of hazy dreams and magical refreshment as crickets chirped happily outside.

My alarm chirped at 7:00 this morning, and I awoke to realize that I was in fact in a hotel room and my hammock was in fact a cot.  You see, when we checked into the hotel yesterday afternoon our reservation had been messed up.  Instead of a double room and two singles, they had listed us as needing two doubles…and no other rooms were available.  When you have three guys and a single women on the team, that obviously isn’t going work out comfortably for everyone in any combination.  It ended up with we three guys bunking up in one room with an extra cot for the lucky third occupant.  In reality, the cot was plenty comfortable, a little saggy perhaps, but comfortable.  I slept solidly all night and awoke with my back intact and functioning fully this morning.

 

Even getting back to the hotel from the prayer meeting last night was an adventure as our car battery died while on the main ring road (like our interstates).  We waited for a while in the dark and cold for another ride but everyone was comfortable and the conversation was wonderful.  Really, any journey is bound to turn into an adventure when you’re going where the Lord sends you, especially when it’s eastern Europe!  (The prayer meeting was absolutely wonderful, and I have much to share about it.)  More to come…