A few months ago I posted a blog about all the weird, random, funny stuff that happens on the race that likely would never happen at home. Here are just a few of the things that have happened since then that were worth sharing. And there are pictures!
- A man at church sees that you don’t have socks on when it’s cold and rainy outside so he gets his wife to go buy your team a whole bag of socks.
- Your squad worships on the roof of a hostel and the police come and make you get down.
- Your teammate asks if there is any more toilet paper and you pull a whole new roll out of your backpack.
- Your teammate says “If I’m not back in 30 minutes call 911” and you ask where she’s going and she says “the shower.” (Cicily Muchison)
- A man with a speaker follows your team onto the subway and begins to sing opera for everyone on board.
- Your team contemplates what they are willing to barter from their packs because you’re out of money and the nearest ATM is 13 hours away.
- During a 50 hour bus ride over half your squad gets altitude sickness and you have to start using chip bags as puke bags.
- You take a bus down a road called “Death Road” in Bolivia.
- You find a slug in your head of lettuce.
- You go to the market looking for avocado and end up following a lady 20 minutes to her house because she says she has some.
- You cross a river in a car by driving onto a “ferry” made by two boats and a couple pieces of wood.
- You eat eggs and bread every day for a month because that’s all Bolivian villages have.
- You help your teammate count her bug bites and she has over 130.
- You see the bug in your drink and then keep drinking anyway.
- You fit 10 people and all your packs into a land cruiser and drive on bumpy dirt roads for 7 hours (with a pee break on the side of a mountain).
- You have to put your tent (with rainfly) up inside of a house because dust comes through the windows.
- You and your teammate have a full-on war with cockroaches and she pukes.
- After travelling for 5 months, the man at the airport asks what country you came from and you can’t remember.
- You get to Europe and keep speaking Spanish to everyone.
- You get locked inside your 3-story house/church so you take to climbing down the balcony and scaling a fence to get out.
- When buying groceries for the whole squad, you empty out your big packs to carry back vegetables.
- Your all girls team cleans a mission house and gets told “You work like men…Actually I’ve never seen men work this hard.”
- You ask your teammate if she has paint on her pants and she replies “No, it’s probably chocolate.” (Sarah Brooks)
- You miss home so all the southern people on your squad make mac and cheese, fried okra, fried squash, fried apples, and sweet tea for supper.
- You jump into a fountain in the middle of a park in Bulgaria.
- Your teammate sees a piece of popcorn on the table and says “oh that looks like a good snack” while picking it up and putting it in her mouth. (Holley Roberson)
- You squat to pee at the entrance to a refugee camp with military guards around.
- You get put on the Bulgarian news for helping clean the streets – “American’s help clean Bulgaria.”
- You forget the names of things in English (like when you go home for a week and call a dishwasher a “food washer”).
- You end up matching with your squad leader because when you only have a few outfits it’s bound to happen.
I’ll be posting the last and final “Only on the World Race” blog after our three months in Africa. Stay tuned!
