A lot of times on the Race, random, strange, and hilarious things happen. I felt that in Malaysia there were many instances where we just had to stop and ask ourselves, “what is our lives right now?” So I compiled the stories into this blog simply for your enjoyment:
FISH PEDICURE: When people first told me about this, I imagined a few tiny fish that would calmly swim about and give you little kisses on your feet to eat off the dead skin. I was wrong. Instead there was a vicious swarm of huge fish awaiting to attack. It tickled terribly and it was really hard to get over the fact that a bunch of fish, so many that I couldn’t even see my feet any more, were literally eating my feet. It was not the fun and relaxing experience I had envisioned, but it made for an interesting story.
CHRISTMAS CAROLING: This month, we performed at various places singing Christmas Carols and a dress code was required. A red top and white bottoms. We spent an entire ministry day wondering around a shopping mall looking for white skirts that fit into our limited budget. Shopping for skirts in a mall was the last thing I thought I would be doing onthe World Race.
EAR CANDELS: We found some cheap ear candels and thought it would be a fun team bonding experience. It was. Also, there is now a small portion of the carpet where we were staying that is now melted and my teammate Lauren got a few singed hairs…I’ll leave it at that.
MAKEUP: The church we were with had a big fundraising dinner where we sang our Christmas carols, did a sign language dance, and worked at booths in the back. Needless to say, we needed to dress up and look good for this event. Our pastor was nice enough to get us a professional makeup artist. Unfortunately, Malaysians tend to wear less natural-looking makeup, are not used to working with caucasion skin, and thought we needed stage makeup as we would be singing and dancing…The result for some of us was electric blue eye shadow (Lauren), caterpillar eyebrows (me), and extended red lips (Shannon). We washed off the majority of it as we did not want to look like drag queens for our church’s big event. The picture doesn’t even quite do it justice, but here you go:
CHRISTMAS MORNING: We woke up Christmas morning to a fireplace, stokings, a snowman, snow flakes, and christmas lights…all made out of paper thanks to our teammate, Meagan. We did a secret santa for each other with a $10 limit, ate donuts, and our team leader Adrienne surprised us all with presents from our parents. We also went and saw the new “Night at the Museum” movie and ate at Hard Rock Cafe. Our team chose to make the most of Christmas with the little resources we had and it ended up being one of our favorite Christmas’.
SHANNY PANTS: Shannon’s pants ripped so naturally she wore it as a shirt.
KARAOKE: Our new friend, Clament, took us to do karaoke one night. We are all terrible singers, he’s basically a Malaysian Adam Levine…So there’s that.
GRAND OPENING PARTY: We worked at a home this month with orphan children and special needs adults. It just opened recenlty, so we attended their big grand opening party on our last day in Melaka. They asked us to go up and perform a dance in front of everyone with the kids, so for a whole song we kind of did some awkward yet fancy flailing of our arms and legs and just smiled until it was over…I’m sure the financial supporters watching were impressed. Then they didn’t want us to leave, so as we were leaving, they asked us to dance with them for one more song. We decided to stay one more song. Then after that, one of the men who worked there told us he was going to do a special dance just for us. So we waited another song as one man danced for us. He is actually a very good dancer, so we were ok with it.
SO THAT’S WHY EVERYONE WAS CONCERNED: Our bus leaving Melaka was scheduled for 5:30 AM and the party at the orphange got over at 10 PM so we figured we would just spend the night at the bus station. When we told people from the church this, they were all very concerned and thought that was a bit dangerous. We told them we have spent the night in many bus stations before and it was no big deal. Our friends, Clament and Prakash, took us to the bus station and said they would stay with us for a while. As it turns out, Malaysia’s bus stations are different from those we were in during South America in that they close during the night…so we were going to be spending the night OUTSIDE the bus station. It made everyone’s concern for us much more valid. Clament and Prakash were so selfless and sweet and ended up staying with us the whole time. They said if they went home they wouldn’t sleep because they would be worrying about us, so they figured staying with us was the better option. I would appreciate if you sent up a prayer for those two guys, they were awesome.
So there you go, the lives of team Kairos in Malaysia in a nutshell. Hope you enjoyed hearing about it, because we sure enjoyed living it.
