(Again, sorry this blog is way passed due. Better late than never, right?)
Christmas on the World Race looks a little bit different than Christmas in the States. First of all, I was in flip flops, a bathing suit and 90 degree weather in a beach town. While I usually don’t have a winter wonderland type Christmas, it just didn’t feel like the holidays when it’s so stinkin hot outside. Christmas day was quickly approaching and Christy and I were determined to make it feel like it.
Christmas Eve we went to Mas X Menos (the local grocery store) and found stuff to make cookies and collected stocking stuffer items. We had limited resources, so the stocking stuffers consisted of food, stickers, coca cola’s, and random things that caught our eyes. We also decided to do a secret santa among our team so we even had presents to open!
Christmas Eve night consisted of Christy and I eating every single cookie we made for “Santa,” finding various kitchen appliances such as coffee pots as our “stockings,” and a bad tummy ache waking me up in the middle of the night due to sugar overload.
I woke everybody up early on Christmas morning as you can see in the video below 🙂 Pardon the bed head and sleepy eyes, I forgot to look in the mirror (typical world race habbit these days). Amanda bought us a ton of fattening baked goods from the bakery for breakfast. We opened “stockings” and moved on to presents. Jake had me for secret santa and he got me a cute t-shirt and EIGHT BOTTLES OF HOT SAUCE! He knows me too well 🙂 You better believe I got rid of clothes so I could bring all of those bottles with me to Asia to make the weight limit on the flights.
Anyways, it was a great day celebrating the birth of our Savior with people that I love. Friends and family, yall were very missed!
New Years was another not so typical “celebration”. We had the lovely opportunity to travel that day. We flew from San Jose to San Salvador to LAX just in time to count down the new year with S-squad. We stayed up all night in the LAX airport, took a long adventure to find an I-Hop, drank endless cups of complimentary coffee in the airport gift shops, and boarded our next plane to Hong Kong at 11 am on New Years Day. Our 15 hour flight was filled with lots of movies, yummy meals, free wine, giving Rebecca a makeover and attempted head-bobbing sleep. Fun stuff.
A three hour layover in Hong Kong was spent talking to my parents… in a daze, getting starbucks and walking around the airport…in a daze, and trying to figure out if I should eat breakfast, lunch or dinner because I had no idea what day or time it was…in a daze.
From Hong Kong, we flew into Manila, Philippines. YAY! Finally! Psyche…my team and the four other teams we’re spending the month with had to board ANOTHER plane to fly to the island where we’re staying. YAY! Two hours later we’re here! Psyche again…we had a two hour bus ride to Kid’s International Ministry where we’re staying for the month. YAY!
Yea. So that was a quick recap on travel day(s). Traveling through time is weird and I was confused the whole time pretty much. But we made it safe and sound and fought through jetlag!
So belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I hope all of yall had great holidays 🙂 Thanks again for your continued prayers, love and support!
