I am sitting here trying to come up with something to blog about.
And I really can’t come up with anything.
Really, for a verbal processor like me, it’s strange that I am having the hardest time thinking of anything worth talking about in a blog post.
Because each day, I don’t wake up and think “Wow, I am on the greatest adventure of my life right now! I should document every moment, big and small, and write it in a blog for all the world to see!”
This is just my life.
When you wake up each morning, and do the things you always do, the (seemingly) insignificant habitual life things, you don’t think of it as the greatest adventure of your life. It’s just your life.
This is my life: each day, I wake up around 5:45am to the sound of a motorbike engine starting. I unzip my tent, roll off my sleeping pad and go take cold shower. I make myself a cup of Nescafe 3-in-1 coffee while enjoying the smell of breakfast cooking.
For the most part, it sounds like a pretty normal daily routine.
You see, to me, the life I am living has become my new normal.
I brush my teeth, habitually avoiding using the tap water because it’s not clean.
Then I go on a ride around the streets of Battambang, Cambodia in a white truck to pick up half-clothed, sleepy-eyed kids who sleep and live on the streets.
We feed them, we clean them, we dress them, we walk them to school.
We paint walls, we clean rooms, we sweep the floor. We hang out with the staff.
And then we eat frog for lunch. Or snails. Or fish. And rice (always rice). And some vegetables that don’t have English names.
Don’t get me wrong, I never forget that the life I am living this year is unlike anything I have ever or will ever experience.
Because it is.
But this year, those things have become my life. My new normal.
It’s not that I don’t remember that this is an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime, experience.
It’s that I remember it less in the big, Instagram-worthy, bucket-list moments, and more in the smallest, insignificant moments.
Like riding in the back of a truck listening to Beyonce.
Eating a bowl of instant noodles for breakfast.
Sitting in my hammock and taking an accidental nap.
Playing Uno with a bunch of kids.
Laughing with my team at a silly YouTube video.
Watching for a shooting star.
Cleaning the bathroom.
Those are the moments when I think to myself, Woah. This is my life. I get to do this thing – this small, insignificant thing – in CAMBODIA.
What if we thought that each day of our lives, our ordinary normal lives?
On the Race, I don’t live for the moments of thrill – sure, I’ve seen the biggest waterfall in the world, eaten a bug, visited the largest religious monument in the world, watched people get healed, rode on countless buses, planes and trains. And yeah, I could write a blog about all those things, and you would probably enjoy it.
But I want to write a blog about washing dishes every day with the cook who doesn’t speak any English. Or walking the kids to school each morning. Or playing a game of Uno with the kids. Or how great baby powder is. Or how I love exploring the town with my team. Or the joy a fresh, home-cooked meal.
That’s the blog I want to write.
So I did.
I hope you liked it.
