(Disclaimer #1: This blog is not for the faint of heart or easily queasy).
(Disclaimer #2: Mom and Dad, after reading this, you may be tempted to worry even more about me, but just keep trusting that God has me in His precious hands, spills and all. I’m fine. Really.)
It’s no secret that I’m accident prone. I have scars all over my arms and legs from perpetual falls throughout my childhood (and adulthood). One of my most embarrassing moments was the time I fell on all fours at a televised Board of Education meeting when I was trying oh-so-carefully to sneak out quietly. I won’t even mention the time a teeter-totter fell on my leg, the fingers full of paper cut scars, or the bruises I discover daily on different parts of my body.
The interesting thing is that most of my mishaps are reflective of my global exploits. I still have a burn scar on my ankle from a motorcycle tailpipe the last time I was in Cambodia; I have gravel in my knee from our church parking lot in Tokyo; and, I have scars on my other knee from slipping off of a bus in Malawi. Clearly, the World Race would then be a perfect venue for more of my scar-filled adventures.
Therefore, this post is dedicated entirely to the Misadventures and Mishaps of Emily Chan.
It all started in Uganda (Month 2). I had actually made it all the way through Month 1 in Kenya without any memorable falls or spills. But on one particular night in Rukungiri, Uganda, it had been raining particularly heavily. As I stepped out onto our back porch to deliver a piece of carrot cake to our neighbor, I slipped across the slick tile and slammed down hard on my knee. Fortunately, the carrot cake remained intact, but I haven’t been able to kneel without feeling zings up and down my leg since then.
In Rwanda, I was borrowing Sabrina’s mirror and had placed it on a cabinet when it suddenly came crashing down and shattered into a thousand pieces. Drew and Scott were in the other room and had actually taken bets as to who had just broken something. Scott said Kayla, but Drew knew it was me. He hasn’t let me forget it since then, either. While we were in Rwanda, I also contracted a rather nasty case of ring worm, probably from hugging some of the village children. Despite daily applications of anti-fungal crème, I’m still waiting for the last little bit to disappear. Mind you, it’s been three months since the first outbreak.
The Philippines seemed to be an especially painful month for my body. I started the month literally covered in painful bed bug bites that itched with a vengeance for over a week. I also ended up at the doctor’s office with a breathing problem and was diagnosed with chronic lung infections. While playing soccer with the kids in Malaybalay, I tripped over the ball and ripped a pretty big hole in my knee. The scab alone had the kids mesmerized for the next few weeks, and I had to keep reassuring everyone that it was “just a scratch,” even though it looked far worse. While climbing up and down Mt. Kitanglad, I stopped counting the number of falls after eight, but if the scratches on my arms and legs are any indication, it was probably at least a couple of dozen times.
As if that wasn’t enough, when we returned to Manila, I fell off of a chair after fourteen hours of painting one day. I’m blaming it on the paint fumes, but everyone else has pinned it to my inability to defy gravity. Fortunately, a large tarp helped cushion the fall, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Three days later, we were walking to Shayna’s baptism at a nearby swimming pool when I fell down… twice… in less than three minutes. I scraped my knees on the first fall, but my toenail took the brunt of the second fall, and I had quite the bloody, nail-less toe afterwards.
While we were in Thailand, Sarah and I alternated days of driving to our ministry site, so I was often in the driver’s seat. However, one weekend, I ended up riding in the truck bed while Sarah drove. When we arrived back at our ministry house, everyone else piled out. I was the last one out, and I completely misjudged how far down the ground was. I had been so used to using the stairs out of the truck cab that I hadn’t realized quite how tall the truck bed was. Oops.
We are presently staying in a stilted wooden hut in the middle of a rice paddy in Cambodia. The stairs up to our room are quite steep and narrow, making it sometimes difficult to navigate up and down them in the dark, electricity-less nights. However, a few days ago, in broad daylight, I lost my balance while walking down the stairs and ended up scraping and bruising my knee yet again. Seriously, my knees have received the worst beating of any part of my body over the past few months, but I’m grateful I can still get down on my knees and thank God for a relatively healthy, intact body, despite all of the falls.
If I were superstitious, I might attribute my growing list of mishaps to that unfortunate mirror shattering incident in Rwanda (you know, seven years of bad luck, and all that jazz). The truth, however, is that I’m just downright clumsy and I will surely have many more battle scars to share from my global travels by the end of the World Race.
