The Bath of my Pack - Explore Archived World Race Alumni Blogs

Each month our team lives on a very strict budget but last month we were blessed and had some money left over so we decided to splurge…we bought a LARGE bottle of team Pantene Pro-V, a definite luxury after using very questionable shampoo for 8-months.

I decided I would carry the massive bottle for our team since my pack has lost “some” weight in the past couple months. Thinking I was being smart, I put the bottle in a zip lock bag and then slipped it in a side pocket.

As I watched my pack, filled with my entire years belongings, disappear down that conveyer belt at the airport, I prayed that it would miraculously make it across the ocean and finally back to me after days of travel. While it did make it back to my side, I didn’t expect it to get a bath along the way….

After a bus to the Budapest Airport, a 2-hour flight to Warsaw, a 8.5-hour flight to JFK, a 12-hour layover and a long, very restful nap on the floor (after months of sleeping on the floor you learn the art form of being able to make a bedroom anywhere), a flight to Miami and then our FINAL flight to Guatemala City and a bus to Antigua we finally made it back to our side of the planet after literally flying around the world in a span of 8-months.

Typing all those flights and layovers I’m reminded how long our travel days tend to be. It is amazing to me that I don’t even notice anymore how ridiculous our travel really is, what am I going to do when I have my first direct flight or enough money to not spend an overnight layover on the floor?

So finally after a couple days of travel, I see my pack coming down that conveyer belt, thankful that for the last three months I will have everything I need. As I begin to look at my airporter (the big duffle bag that protects our packs for travel) I notice that a strange liquid is seeping through the seams. As I began to open my pack I noticed that the bottle of shampoo had exploded. I began to take my pack out of the airporter and realized it was a bad idea, shampoo poured out onto the floor and over everything. I quickly zipped it back up and decided I’d take care of it once I got to the hostel.

At the hostel I finally opened it up and couldn’t believe how much shampoo had gotten everywhere. The ENTIRE MASSIVE bottle of shampoo had someone managed to explode all over pack, I don’t think words or pictures give justice to the amount of shampoo that covered my bag and all my things.

A year ago, this may have seemed like a major bummer, one of those traveling mishaps that would not be fun. Today it simply was not a big deal. After a couple hours of rinsing and completely emerging my pack in a wash tub, it was finally clean and smelled delightful! Luckily, I had picked out my favorite scent of shampoo because now I get to smell it these next three months.

So after all that, we arrived in the beautiful city of Antigua! This month is women-ministry and man-istry month so all the men are heading out together and 20 of us women will be spending the month at International Hostel and teaching in a nearby school, helping in an orphanage and assiting at a nursing home.