It’s officially my 300th day on the race. Whoa…seriously? How the heck did all that time pass so quickly? I mean, wasn’t it just last week that I was at the ferry in Bulgaria waiting for my first ministry contact to come pick us up? And now I sit here, ten months later, less than a week away from entering into my 11th and final country: the Philippines.
As I sit and reflect upon this journey, I’m starting to realize that going home might not be such a smooth transition. Why, you ask? Well, let me just give you a peek into all the ways this crazy thing called The World Race has thrown my “normal” all out of whack.
To me, it’s normal that…
- At dinner time, I have a duck biting my toes, a dog running between my legs, or a chicken pecking at the ground around me.
- If one of my dinner plates has a dead fly or some ants in it, I just pick them out and continue to enjoy.
- I eat rice. Every. Single. Day.
- Eating with my hands is no big deal, even if I’ve got three days of dirt under my nails.
- If I want a snack, my best (and sometimes only) option is to go pick some fruit off of a tree.
- When me and my team go to a restaurant and we pass by an empty table with food still on the plate, you can bet that when no one is looking, one of us is going to grab it and deposit the goods into our purse for a snack later.
- Peanut butter and oatmeal are my bread and butter. They’re the staples all racers try and stock up on.
- I carry a bottle of water with me everywhere I go.
- Crystal Light to go packets are currently one of my most treasured possessions that must be rationed out with extreme self-control.
- If I need to wash my clothes, I go find a bucket, some dirty water, a bag of detergent with instructions written in words I can’t read, and a line to hang it all up to dry.
- If I don’t feel like all that effort, a couple of squirts of febreeze makes something magically “clean.”
- It’s not really a big deal if I only wash my hair once a week. In fact, the number of days you’ve gone without bathing becomes somewhat of a bragging right.
- When I do bath, it most likely involves a bucket and already dirty water.
- My squadmates went into a restaurant bathroom and used the bidet to wash off (yes, you read that right), and we all complimented them on how smart of an idea that was.
- I use a hand towel to dry off.
- I think dirt makes for a good tan.
- When it comes time to brush my teeth, I gotta find my water bottle and a good patch of grass outside to spit on.
- Lice checks have become a common routine.
- I no longer think typhoid fever or other travelers’ illnesses are that big of a deal. Besides, cipro cures everything and I’ve got about 100 pills left in my pack.
- At the end of each month I get rid of more stuff. I’m down to 8 shirts, a couple tank tops, 3 pairs of pants, 3 basketball shorts, and 3 skirts. It feels a bit excessive.
- Getting “new” clothes means someone else on the race wanted to get rid of some stuff and I grabbed it out of the free pile. Half of the clothes I now have at one point belonged to another racer.
- Adding a belt to an outfit means that you’re stylish.
- A dress is not just a dress. A dress is a skirt, a cover up, a nightgown, a night time eye cover, a pillow case, a…
- I take my shoes off before entering into a building.
- Five dollars has become my new expensive, and most times is just WAY too much to pay for anything.
- My watch is a part of me – I never take it off.
- I don’t need an alarm clock. I’ve got cows, roosters, chickens, dogs, goats, falling mangos on tin roofs, etc. to wake me up.
- At all times, I must know where my headlamp is, just in case the power goes out.
- I don’t have a cell phone, so if you want to reach me, you can’t call me or beep me. [Sidenote: please tell me one of you out there gets that reference.]
- A night of mindless entertainment means popping open my 10-inch computer screen and watching a movie from a squadmate’s external hard drive.
- When talking about a-con, I’m more likely to think of the rapper than that one thing…air conditioning, is it?
- Killing bugs is a sport.
- Working out typically draws a big crowd of spectators.
- If I wake up breathing, then I’m most likely going to be singing a children’s song that day.
- Kids who I’ve never seen before will typically come up and hug me or tickle me like we’ve been friends forever.
- If I don’t know someone, I automatically begin speaking slow, broken English to them.
- I’m not sure I remember how to drive. And after all this switching back and forth from country to country, I often find myself in a state of confusion as towhich side of the road and which side of the car I’m supposed to be driving on when I eventually get back to the States.
- Talking with the family requires lengthy e-mails, the occasional g-chat text, or, when internet is good and we’re really lucky, a jumbled up Skype call.
- I haven’t been completely alone in 300 days. Yes, this introvert is surrounded 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by my teammates. We work together, pray together, play together, study together, talk together, eat every meal together, sleep side by side together…EVERYTHING together.
Sooooooo yeeeeeeeah, America is pretty much like that…right?
Ha ha….ha.
37 days and counting until the culture shock awkwardness begins. As one of my teammates often says,
“Just love me for it, will ya?”
