Those of you who know me, know that I have a tendency to embarrass myself pretty often (most of the time on a daily basis). As I’ve traveled the world, cultural differences have come into play, causing me to have even more painfully embarrassing moments. So for your entertainment, I decided to write this blog to share some of the embarrassing and funny moments from the race. I’ve learned how to laugh at myself and all the awkward things that I do because it makes life more fun. The ability to laugh at yourself also just comes with freedom to not care and live life to the fullest. So without further udo, here we go:
#1. Our very first month in Uganda, safety was stressed a lot. We were told to always be aware of our surroundings and make sure we didn’t make it obvious if we were carrying valuables. One day, my teammate Andrea and I made a stop at the ATM so I could take out a large sum of logistics money to pay the bus company. I had to take out A LOT of money because I was paying for our entire squad to ride a private bus into Rwanda. Unfortunately, they don’t accept credit cards pretty much anywhere in Uganda so it made my logistical life much more difficult. After we stopped at the ATM, we made a stop at the currency exchange office so Andrea could exchange her USD. She asked me if I had change, so I opened my wallet to check and ALL the money in my wallet fell out and dispersed all over the floor. It was about 2 million shillings (which is about $1,000) to be exact. We were both frantically picking it up as fast as we could as every African within sight stared at us. So… I was not the best at being discreet in month one, but I think I’ve grown in that area since then.
#2. In Rwanda, we hung out on our hammocks a lot. One day, my good friend Mardie decided to set up her hammock directly underneath mine. After she was set up, I kept telling her to stop touching my butt because I thought she was doing it on purpose, but it turns out she just kept hitting her head on my butt because her face was so close to the bottom of my hammock. That day I just so happened to be practicing the song “Ever Be.” I wrote out the lyrics and was singing the words to myself in my hammock. I got lost in worship and forgot she was even there. I sang the words with all my heart “you Father the orphan,” and then I paused and ripped a really loud, obnoxious fart. I honestly forgot that Mardie was directly beneath me until I saw her get up in complete disgust and dismay, yelling “Oh my gosh!” LOL let’s just say she was pretty traumatized after that and never set up her hammock underneath mine again.
#3. In Ethiopia, one of the main forms of public transportation is a “bajaj,” or a small little vehicle with three wheels. One day, I was riding in a bajaj by myself. My driver was doing his best to speak English to me and make conversation. He was so into our conversation, that he forgot to look at the road, and instead he was looking back at me. All of the sudden, I looked up and saw us rapidly approaching another vehicle and I screamed really loud. The driver slammed on the brakes, but couldn’t stop in time, so we crashed into the car in front of us, skidded off the road, and flipped over to the right side. I landed on my butt and I was fine. The driver was okay too, but as I got up out of the bajaj, there were people surrounding us and yelling at me in a different language that I didn’t understand. It was quite the experience. See the picture below to get more of a visual of how the accident occurred:
#4. In Nepal, they use what we call “squatty potties.” If you don’t know what that is, I recommend you google it. For story telling purposes, it’s basically what it sounds like – a potty hole that you squat over to use the bathroom. The one we used in Nepal was nicer than most because it flushed. So one day I really had to go. After I finished, I stood up and my team phone fell from my pocket directly into the squatty potty. I freaked out and didn’t know what to do, so in a panic I stuck my hand in and pulled it out. I couldn’t just leave it in there and flush it into oblivion! I cleaned it off and prayed it would still work. Later that day, I opened the charger port to plug it in, and found a crappy surprise inside the charger port hole. Long story short, after all that effort, it still didn’t work.
#5. In Rwanda, I woke up early one morning to take a shower. It’s common in other countries to see random wires sticking out of the walls inside showers. As I was taking a nice, cold bucket shower that morning, I really needed a place to hang my loofa. It was not an option to put it on the dirty cement floor. So in a desperate moment, I reached out to hang it on the metal wire sticking out of the wall. I suddenly felt an electric shock go through my entire body and I uncontrollably let out a loud, terrifying scream, waking up most of the people in the house. I then heard several people yell out in a concerned voice, “Jocelyn! Are you okay?!” I shamefully responded “Yeah, I’m fine. I just tried to hang my loofa on an electric wire and shocked myself.” The lesson you should take away from this story: never try to touch a metal wire when you are soaking wet.
#6. In Cambodia, we had a weekend off and we were able to go into the city to see Angkor Wat (one of the ancient wonders of the world) and we got to stay at a hotel for the weekend. While we were there, we rode tuk tuks to get around. We met a tuk tuk driver who gave us his number and told me to call him if we needed a ride. So I called him one morning and told him we needed a ride. He said he would meet us outside our hotel in 5 minutes. When we walked out to the front, a man approached us and said “Are you ready to go?” Keep in mind this is common question for any tuk tuk driver to ask tourists so they can get business, so I thought this man was just a random driver trying to get our business. I responded, “Yeah, just hold on one second. I need to call our driver.” I pulled out my phone and dialed our driver’s number. As it started ringing, the same man’s phone standing right in front of me started ringing. He reached into his pocket and grabbed his phone, and then looked up at me with a confused look on his face, and asked “Are you calling me?” I responded with an embarrassed look on my face “Oh yes, I’m so sorry!” I was too embarrassed to admit to him that I actually just forgot what he looked like.
#7. In Rwanda, one of the main forms of public transportation is to ride on the back of motorcycles (In Africa, they call them bodas.) That was the main way we got around in Rwanda when we explored the city. One night, my teammates and I got dropped off at the bus station after a long day in the city. We tried to find bodas, but there weren’t enough for all four of us, so Mardie took the only boda available, while the other three of us decided to take bicycles instead (this is another way people get around, but we had never tried it before.) We all hopped on the back of the bicycles and our drivers started pedaling. It hadn’t really dawned on us that they had to ride up a huge hill to get to our house. As they pedaled up the hill, our drivers were breathing hard and sweating profusely. About half way up, they all stopped and told us they were too tired to continue. They made us get off and left us on the side of the rode. It was a little scary, but funnier that our drivers couldn’t make it up the hill with us on the back of their bikes. We finally got home safely to find Mardie relaxing on her hammock waiting for us to get home.
#8. In Malaysia, we worked at a school. Most days we didn’t have a plan and didn’t know what we were going to do. One day we were asked to run an assembly for the older kids. I was in charge of the games, so I decided that Simon Says would be an easy, fun game that the kids could understand. So I started off by doing the usual stuff people do for Simon Says, and then I started running out of things to do. In the spur of the moment, I said “Simon says to say ‘I LOVE GREEN CHILE!’” In response, all the kids yelled “I LOVE GREEN CHILE” even though they had absolutely no idea what they were saying. I mean, a lot of American’s don’t know what green chile is, so I doubt any of these kids actually knew. I’ll always be a true New Mexican at heart.
#9. In Guatemala, we worked at a school and I taught P.E. that month. We arrived at school around 7:30 am every morning, and by about 9:30 am I was ravenously hungry from playing soccer all morning. Luckily, they had snack time at school around that time each morning. On some days, they would serve nachos, and they were some of the best nachos I’ve ever had. You can see my passion and savage-like determination to eat the nachos in the picture below (this is probably funnier to people who understand my love and passion for food). One day I hope to look at my husband the same way I look at those nachos.
#10. In Honduras, we lived in a small little house with two rooms and one bathroom. It was cozy for our team of five girls. We were blessed to have a well to drink from in Honduras, but sometimes the water would turn off unexpectedly. One morning I woke up and really had to go, so I took a huge dump in the toilet. To my horror, the water was off when I tried to flush the toilet. I also had no idea how to turn the well back on and everyone was still asleep. So one by one, my teammates started waking up to go to the bathroom, and each of them had to experience the nice surprise that awaited them in the toilet. In the words of my teammate Christina “Thank God for pooperie am I right?” (She still claims that’s the most important item she brought on the race. Take note future racers.)
#11. One of our last nights in Rwanda, we stayed in a house with two other teams. I woke up in the middle of the night and I really had to use the bathroom. Unfortunately, the squatty potty was outside about 15 yards away from our room. So I went outside and used the bathroom. When I came out, there was a wild dog glaring at me with determined eyes. I frantically ran back into the squatty potty and hid. Oh gosh, it smelled so bad in there! At that point, I couldn’t decide what was worse, being attacked by a wild dog or being trapped in the squatty potty all night. After I could hardly stand being in there any longer, I peeked my head out and didn’t see the dog, so I decided to make a run for it. With all the courage I could muster up, I made a run for it. As soon as I was out in the open, the dog started chasing me. My adrenaline kicked in and I ran as fast as I could, barely making it to the door in time. I urgently swung open the door right before the dog got to me, jumped into our room, landing on my sleeping teammate, and slammed the metal door on my shin in the process. My teammate woke up in a panic and said “Are you okay?!” Breathing hard, I responded in a frightened voice, “Yeah, I’m sorry, a wild dog was chasing me!” When we woke up the next morning, we found out that the “wild dog” was actually the host’s pet dog and he’s very friendly with floppy ears.
Well… thanks for reading all of my embarrassing stories! I hope you enjoyed them and got some good laughs out of them. It was hard to choose only 11 because I have so many, but you’ll have to wait to hear the rest in person. 😉 Can’t wait to see everyone soon!
