The Piece (and Peace) Of Training Trip I Love Most
Hello! It’s been a while! Hope you have been following along on all my food adventures on Instagram @notjustpaastha :)
For the past two years, I’ve gotten the honor of living with some of my favorite people during my swim team’s training trip to Key Largo, Florida every January. Training trips include swimming two workouts a day, lifting, spending time in the sun between practices, and cooking delicious breakfasts, lunches, and dinners in our condos. For the past two years, I’ve had the pleasure of living with my two friends, H and A, for these trips. Relaxing on the couch with no schoolwork to think about, watching The Watcher, Dr. Death, and True Detective every night with a quart of ice cream, laughing till I can’t breathe, waking up at 5 am to H’s Beyonce alarm, and merely just being in the presence of them brings me a sense of joy and peace that doesn’t come around too often. Yes, the swimming is hard, but H, A, and the rest of the team make it so fun and worth it.
On the training trip, we all pick a night to cook for the condo. This year, I made gnocchi with creamy pesto, chickpea salad, and some honey-baked brie. A made lasagna (and specially made me my own vegetarian-friendly version), and H spent 4 hours making the most delicious taco night with guac, tomato salad, fresh beans, seasoned chickpeas, and beef. We even had fresh noodles and focaccia during the trip with our new roommate this year :). These meals are everything to me. They taste delicious, but more so, they bring a sense of comfort that doesn’t come by often for me. There is something so special about sharing a meal with people you wholly, and fully love and also who treat you with that same love and value. A is graduating this year and H and I will not be able to fill the hole on the right side of our king-sized bed (yes all three of us share a king bed) or the hole in our hearts next year. Maybe we will pack A in our suitcase.
Moments like these on training trips remind me that life comes in pairs of two - something I once read in a Rupi Kaur poem. One moment you can be extremely stressed and worried about your Physics Final and your future, and another you can be with your friends, laughing and focusing on nothing but the conversation and the delicious food in front of you.
I leave you with that poem that I read a little bit after New Year this year:
“It has been one of the greatest and most difficult years of my life. I learned everything is temporary. Moments. Feelings. People. Flowers. I learned love is about giving. Everything. And letting it hurt. I learned vulnerability is always the right choice because it is so easy to be cold in a world that makes it so difficult to remain soft. I learned all things come in twos. Life and death. Pain and joy. Salt and sugar. Me and you. It is the balance of the universe. It has been the year of hurting so bad but living so good. Making friends out of strangers, making strangers out of friends. Learning mint chocolate chip ice cream will fix just about everything [true]. And for the pains it can’t there will always be my mother’s arms. We must learn to focus on warm energy. Always soak our limbs in it and become better lovers to the world. For if we can’t learn to be kind to each other how will we ever learn to be kind to the most desperate parts of ourselves” - Rupi Kaur
As we ring in this new year, I look forward to seeing life through this lens even in the crazy busyness of school, MCAT studying, and all the other responsibilities we have. To remain soft, and vulnerable, enjoy the meals with the people closest to me, find the little cracks of sunlight in everything, and project warm energy to those around me and myself.
To more moments of peace this year <3
Love,
NJP
