…seeing giant Furby statues on the side of the highway and elephants walking around the market would not have been considered a normal thing.
…I thought I needed water to start brushing my teeth.
…a 6 hour bus ride would have seemed like a long road trip. (Longest bus ride to-date: 22 hours)
…taking more than a day to get to a location would almost not be worth it. (It took 5 planes, traveling between 6 different cities, spread out over 2 states and 5 countries, for a total of 4 days to get from Costa Rica to Thailand.)
…I thought tissues were just for blowing your nose and didn’t considered them a viable substitute for napkins or toilet paper.
…asking if there was a bathroom wasn’t automatically followed by the questions “is there toilet paper?” and/or “is there a toilet?”
…when I thought the miracles they wrote about in the Bible stopped happening 2000 years ago.
…11 months seemed like it would actually feel like a long time to be away.
…men wearing skirts wasn’t exactly the cultural norm.
…I thought if I couldn’t speak a person’s language, then I couldn’t communicate with them.
…I thought shower curtains/doors and hot water were staples in bathrooms.
…it was actually an option be dry at some point and not constantly wet from torrential downpours and/or sweat.
…16 girls sleeping in one room was considered a weekend slumber party and not just another night of sleep.
…a cup/glass was the main container for drinking liquids, not a bag.
…a chicken crossing the road was just the main subject of a joke and not something I saw on my walks around town.
…factors for choosing what cafe to go to didn’t include the question “does it have front doors?” (Tip: we have found “front doors” typically mean the establishment has AC.)
…the word “blog” wasn’t said multiple times a day. (Ex: “That’s so cool! You should write a blog about that!” and “I don’t know what to blog about…” and “Did you read her blog?”)
…it didn’t take me several seconds to find the correct currency in my wallet to use to purchase my meal. (That’s not including the solid minute it takes me to remember which currency to look for.)
…weekend planning didn’t include options like going to bat caves, volcano boarding, taking a bath with an elephant, hanging my roommates’ tents from the ceiling, and petting a tiger.
…I would determine the cost of something by converting it back to US Dollars and not the currency of the previous country. (Cambodia uses USD…I currently convert it to Thai Baht to determine how expensive my coffee is.)
…I thought you couldn’t participate in something unless you were formally invited. (This includes private parties on yachts, spending the afternoons in strangers’ homes, and walking around giant mansions.)
…the list of roommates didn’t include geckos, mice, and a colony of mosquitoes.
…people that lived on the streets were just nameless faces.
…the phrase “so when I ate that tarantula… (or cricket…or maggot)” was not a typical conversation starter.
…the words “bed” and “hammock” were not exact synonyms.
…someone said “I picked up some grilled rats on the side of the road today. Do you want some?” was a joke, meaning they weren’t serious.
…there were 50 strangers, spread out all over the United States, who had no idea each other existed, and didn’t know they would one day be family.
