So, you may think the World Race is an 11 month mission trip to 11 different countries and yes, it is but you know what it really is? An 11- month training course in innovation and improvisation.
Sometimes you go to teach English and the school wants their students to have as much time with the native speakers as possible so they combine 8th and 11th grade into an awkward mega class of varying abilities and half of them have already done the lesson you had planned for the day. So then, you and your teammate make something up on the spot and play some sort of alphabet related game to try and engage everyone.
Sometimes (most of the time) you don’t speak the local language and many local people do not speak English. But, you can get lucky if you know a few words in the language of the bordering country (Ukrainian) and even though your country speaks a completely different language (Romanian), most of the people can at least understand a language very similar to the language from the bordering country (Russian) so you can use your extremely basic Ukrainian to decipher if that questionable block in the refrigerated section really is butter or cheese. And that is how we successfully avoided buying a fourth block of butter.
Sometimes you are teaching English and focusing on travel and packing. So, you take your packs and a few items and have the kids run all over the place and try packing and unpacking and re-packing multiple times. You get really great at coming up with games and activities as they are happening.
Sometimes you have about 30 seconds notice before you’re asked to speak or sing in church. You typically have a default song agreed upon with your team and someone else from your team could probably tell your testimony by month ten.
Sometimes you try to make cookies for a teammate’s birthday but you don’t have an oven and skillet cookies do in fact require an oven. So then you improvise and end up with pancake sort of things but hey, it’s the thought that counts right?
Sometimes a dog chews up part of your shoe month two and your teammate finds a way to sort of thread it back together to last to the end of the race.
Sometimes you eat an iced latte with a fork. A lot of the time you eat with your hands instead of plates and silverware because you don’t want to wash dishes. Sometimes you peel potatoes with a steak knife. Hey, you make do with what you’ve got.
Needless to say, the term “World Racer” is truly synonamous to problem-solver, creative thinker, innovator, and improviser. We’ve become so prepared to be surprised or to have plans change that if things all go smoothly, it’s almost boring. Returning to the world of academia and syllabi that plan out every detail of the entire semester is going to be quite an interesting experience come August but I’m sure I’ll be up for the challenge!
