We hiked the side of a mockup of the real Mount Olympus. We stood in a long line for the opportunity to push a foam boulder up a tall hill like the punishment of Sisyphus. We ran around a gym passing a flaming torch back and forth. So stupid. And the muscles in my ass were on fire after that boulder thing. It was heavier than it looked. At least they gave us gym clothes and access to showers. Sensible or not, my heels were not built for extreme sports. No matter how difficult it was, I kept my thoughts focused on the task, not on my aching muscles and pounding heart rate. Mrs. Moros was our testing instructor for the day, and I didn’t want her yelling at me for thinking about how much it hurt. As Moros said several time to other students who weren’t nearly as focused as I was trying to be, control your thoughts, control your life. I was learning something, at least. At lunch, my three new friends and I gathered in the cafeteria over tiny Styrofoam bowls of thin vegetable soup, shoe-leather roast beef drowning in lumpy gravy, mushy Brussels sprouts, and some sort of burned rice casserole.
