April Fools Day

I went to bed fairly early last night because I knew we had a service day the next day and I wanted to be well rested for a hard day's work. I snuggled up in my bed, read some of my book and fell into a deep sleep.

Lauren bursts through our door frantically, which is not unusual because she often serves as a late wake-up call to Lacey and I when we oversleep. "Lacey! Ashton! Ya'll overslept! Everyone's waiting downstairs for ya'll for the Sunrise Devo! Get ready!" Lacey quickly sits up, stressing out. She looks at her phone for the time. "I can't believe we overslept. Crap! Crap! Man. I set the alarm!" I am in a daze-- nothing about this situation makes sense to me.

"I have no idea what you are talking about!" I sleepily grumble, not moving. Lauren explains to me that Captain announced it on the bus on the way back from Athens. They always have a sunrise devo at the beach on the day before the day of service. (Such a Harding-esque activity..it sort of made sense to my tired brain.) My lethargic brain thinks back to me cutting up on the bus while he was at the microphone. The one time I don't pay attention I miss something important. Not making very much sense in the morning, I exclaim, "I have never heard about this in my life!" "Captain is so mad right now. He is yelling. Ya'll better get downstairs!" Lauren urges. "This is the most retarded thing I have ever heard of!" I exclaim as I attempt to put shoes on and a jacket. I look for my lipgloss, but I can't find it anywhere which makes me even more distraught.

"Are you bringing your Bible?" Lacey asks. "You can't stinkin' read in the dark anyway!" I snap. I mumble some more under my breath as I make my exit out the door. I take a few steps and I see the faces of about 6 girls. "April Fools!" they shout in unison as I see the sly grin on Lauren's face. Turns out, Lacey was in on it too and had only been pretending to be asleep as to make it more realistic. Turns out it was 2:30 a.m.! No wonder I was so out of it. This account is based on the fact that Alana was recording it. I take no responsibility for the grouchy grumblings of my 2:30 a.m. wake-up call. I think anyone would do the same. I couldn't be mad though because I have to give credit where its due. Haha. I had a hard time falling back asleep though because apparently the dogs were laughing at their cruel joke as well because they howled all night long as if to say, "Sunrise devotional. Haha! They sure got you!"

We had a service day from 10:00-4:00 with a break for lunch. The first half of the day I picked up trash along the street and near the school. While picking up trash, some of the kids were at recess and called us over to talk to them. They tried out their English and asked us what we were doing. We said that we were picking up all their trash and they thanked us. Before we left them, I said, "No more trash, right?" They shook their heads enthusiastically. "No more trash!" Maybe I made a difference.

The second half of the day I planted flowers. I mixed new soil in with the old and loosened up the dirt with a shovel. We put in some pretty flowers-- I can't remember the name-- but they spread like ivy except in colorful blooms. We were pretty dirty after it was all over.

I took a nap to recover from my sleep-depriving joke, woke up for supper and played some volleyball outside. Captain took us all out for icecream tonight for all our hard work today-- 2 scoops! It was fantastic! :-)

We worked on free travel tonight, which is quite daunting. I wish there were pretty little free travel packets you could pick up and everything was already laid out for you. People say that takes the fun out of it. Yeah, I just hate when people plan things for me, things that normally cause me to want to pull my hair out. Don't you just hate that? Haha. I know-- the adventure comes in the mishaps and independent feeling you get from picking 13 euro hostels that you share with a creeper and an old guy with body odor. Well, it's about curfew so I better leave you! I hope you weren't too fooled on this very special day and if you were-- be thankful that people love you enough to take the time to trick you. If pranks reveal love, I have felt more loved on this trip than I have in a long time. :-)