Integrity

On Friday, we started off the day talking about the importance of our core values. We began by talking about what our generation values: success, efficiency, education, social media, health, etc. We then were given 5 slips of paper and told to write down our top 5 values that we hold closest to our hearts. Integrity, joy/happiness, loyalty, respect, and relationships. Easy enough. Our TAs then walked around with trash bags. We had to throw away

3 of our slips of paper. This was no easy decision, but into the trash went my loyalty, respect and relationships and I was left with just integrity and joy. Awesome. Then we had to throw away another slip so we were left with our highest core value. None of us liked having to deliberately throw away something that just a mere two minutes before we were holding up to our hearts. I threw away my joy because I decided that if I have integrity in every aspect of my life, all of my other values will come into place. The point of the lesson is that it is hard to throw away our values when someone directly tells us to do it, but everyday we easily make decisions that contradict our values. How we spend our time and money should align with what our values are. Our values are our anchors, and without them we will drift.

We then embarked on the most challenging adventure I have ever faced. Table Mountain. On Wednesday we climbed Lion’s Head and that was hard, but it was nothing compared to Table Mountain. We started off all together, but it wasn’t very long until people started to fall behind. Friday was really hot and the sun was beating down on us the whole first half. We had to stop a lot because it was really hard to breathe at that high of an altitude. I was pretty much at the end of the first half of the group the whole time. It took us right around 2 hours to get to the top. It was like doing a very intense session on the stair master, except I’m pretty sure the stair master doesn’t have a “Table Mountain Setting.” It was literally the hardest thing I have ever done. I ran out of water about ¾ of the way up. I’m not sure what was worse: how sore my legs were, my inability to breathe, or how thirsty I was. When we finally got to the top it was breath taking (not that I had much breath to be taken.) You could see Cape Town from all angles. There was a restaurant on top and I had the best tasting PowerAde I have ever had. It changed my life (maybe an exaggeration). We then took a cable car down the mountain (some brave souls chose to hike back down but I was not having that). The ground spun around so you could see it from all angles which was pretty neat.

I can’t believe that a week has already flown by, and I hope everything is going well back in the States!

-Devon Pagoaga