New Year’s Eve is supposed to be a night where you get all dressed up and go to a fancy party. You fantasize about maybe having someone to kiss when it hits midnight and you say goodbye to yet another year. This is not how mine went. Instead of getting dressed in an outfit that resembles a disco ball like everyone does now a days, I was wearing the same outfit I’d worn for two days. Throughout the day I was not looking forward to the big countdown, or fantasizing about that kiss. Instead I spent the whole day riding in a van across the entire country of Thailand. I walked across the border from Cambodia to Thailand with all of my gear and was dripping sweat. All I could fantasize about was getting into a bed that night.
We pulled into the hostel parking lot at around 11:45pm and hauled all our luggage into our rooms. We had to be at the Thailand/Myanmar border when it opened at 5:30am, so we were all just ready to get a little sleep before we started another day of travel. My team and I sat in the room and waited for the new year to come. As we sat, we went around and said things that we’ve learned this past year.
Here is a list of what we came up with:
1. Learned how to use a squatty (without peeing all over my pants)
2. How to live my life out of a backpack
3. How to sleep anywhere and everywhere
4. That there is no escaping rice (no matter how hard you try)
5. That there will be coke wherever you go (hallelujah)
6. That the Lord will always provide
7. You can make friends everywhere you go, without even speaking the same language
8. That you’ll always leave feeling like you received more than you gave
9. That social media is not as important as I thought it was, but technology really is
10. You can create a normal routine really quickly
11. That living on $5 a day is hard, but not impossible
12. That goodbyes will never get any easier
13. Hard-drives with movies are gifts from God
14. The race might/will end but our relationship with the Lord will not
15. Growing in your relationship with the Lord will never cease
16. God can talk to people in many different ways, and you shouldn’t compare the way He communicates
17. The body of Christ is thriving all over the world
18. That we need alone time to live (introverts), and on the World Race you are never alone…
19. People on the Race eat Cipro like M&Ms
20. There are so many different ways to Worship
21. Random dance parties are always a good idea
22. 11 months is a long time…
These are just a few things that we thought of that night. I know that the amount of things we have learned so far this Race is endless. We are all being sculpted this year. By every country we travel through. We are being sculpted by the people we meet, by the cultures we experience, and by the struggles we endure.
I am excited to see this list grow over the next 6 months, because as crazy as it sounds we are only halfway done.
