It’s crazy to think that I’ve been on the race for 4.5 months! Sometimes I think that if I was teleported home and someone told me that it was September still I would believe them. This past week everyday I’ve wrote the date as December 1,2,3-7 instead of January 1st, 2nd, 7th. These last 4.5 months have been such change of life style and not at all what I thought living in the mission field would look like. As a mid point blog I thought I would write about my expectations going into the race and what it’s actually like.
W H A T I T H O U G H T I T W O U L D B E L I K E :
For starters I had a picture of us in isolated villages with no running water and had to eat off the land. Now thinking back to that I realize how crazy that seemed and that I signed up for the World race not survivor!
I thought I would be using my tent and all my sleeping gear a lot more and would be sleeping outside for the majority of the race.
With the no running water image, I prepared myself for bucket showers and cold water the whole time.
I accepted that I was just going to look ratchet all 9 months… No make up – no days I would want to dress up. I would only wear my own clothes that I brought from home and there would be no place to buy anything.
You hear everyone on the race saying that it was hot and sweaty all the time. So naturally I didn’t look into my locations and only assumed that they would all be the same.
I thought we would eat rice breakfast, lunch and dinner and would not get a lot of food in general
I made a plan to work out everyday and do push-ups everyday so when my dad came down I could beat him in a push-up contest.
I pushed it out of my mind that there would be be hard times. And convinced myself that in a span of 9 nine months it would go as smooth as creamy peanut butter.
That I would be on a Jesus high for all of it because when I’d gone on mission trips in the past for 10 days I was.
People would speak a lot more English than what they do. And that I would pick up Spanish really easy
I assumed that we would have a lot of free time during the day.
Travel days would be fun.
W H A T I T’ S A C T U A L L Y L I K E :
Well for starters the first 2 months on the race in Ecuador we were in the capital, Quito. So that is far from a village. Where we have stayed is in compounds in houses or shed-ish things with bunk beds and hot running water so far.
I have also ate more food in these last 4.5 months than I think I have in the past year. All of the traditional food and our cooks have all been amazing.
We ate rice a lot in Peru and that’s about it.
You will actually want to look put together someday…! I know shocker. Here in Guatemala people never go out with out looking put together.
It gets really cold at night and the weather hasn’t been the warmest. It reminds me of winter at home which for people who live in hot places in the states it is a little bit of a shock.
I don’t know why I would have thought that there wouldn’t be any hard times in 9 months I don’t know what I was thinking. But I have definitely experienced the ups and downs.
(Especially living with 40+ people)
I am actually scrambling for Spanish aka can’t speak a sentence. But I am picking up on words.
We had a lot of free time in Peru , but it was good for thinking and processing lots.
Travel days are fun.. but can also be really long. And can start at 3 am and last for 45 hours
the race has for sure blown my expectations
