The Race!!! -Elena

Greetings from England! Elena here! Today I will be taking about something VERY special. It is called The Race, and it is a HUGE deal here at RAF Mildenhall and Lakenheth. It is not what you probably think it is. This is not a normal race. This is The Race. Not a foot race. Not something to see who is the fastest, or who comes first. This is a competition between four teams made up of the high school  Youth Group, and the middle school Youth Group. Team Green, Team Yellow, Team Blue, and Team Red. All made up of a mix of Highschoolers and Middleschoolers.

I'm on the red team. :)

They all compete with each other in various games, this is my first year and I'm not exactly sure on what all they do, but it looks very interesting. Last night we did the Race Lottery, which is when you find out what team you're on. We (my brother and I), got there late so there wasn't any seating room for us, so we just stood there. we had to turn in our Race registration forms, but because we were new they had to go to a different pile.

this is what the forms look like

Because we were new, could chose what team we were on, but first they drew the names of people who had done the Race before. They started with the team that came last, last year. The Youth Group people had four bins on a table that was sitting on the stage. They were, of course, blue, red, yellow, and green. Not sure which held which, but one was high school girls, one was middle school girls, one was high school boys, and one was middle school boys. They drew one of each for each team, then redid it over and over again until the buckets were empty, then they went to the newbies (like me). they started with the high school new people, and when they called you (this applied to the people who had done this before too) you went up, and picked up a t-shirt from the team you were on. When they read my name off the list, the guy said "Elliana Melendez" and he said it with a weird Hispanic accent. As you can probably imagine, I was a little frustrated that he called me Elliana, because that's not my name, and I'm pretty sure I put ELENA on there, and the most Hispanic I am is the quarter Puerto Rican part of me (and my very curly brown hair). I'm very proud of my Puerto Rican heritage, just so you know.
Anyways, I chose Red team because my friend is on there, and before I left the stage I corrected Mr. Dale on how my name was pronounced. Also, the teams win by points, and each time a team gets a new person, they get points. So every time a new person goes up after their name is called, all the people on the teams start going wild and promising them pizza, and other stuff. I already knew I was on Red team, so I just ignored them all.  so that's how it went, and I'm a little excited about the rest of the Race season. I don't have many pictures, but you will be bombarded in the future with all the Race advents going on. It starts on the last day of July, and in ends on the first day of September. Expect many posts with lots of pictures of craziness.  That's all for now!  Bye!