Things that have become normal after 11 months of being on the race:
- A daily discussion about everyone’s bowel movements over dinner
- Being sick in bed and having teammates come anoint you with oil while speaking in tongues and praying over you
- A continual day-dream state of food that we cannot have
- Going to the bathroom literally anywhere…especially when you hit stage 3
- Finding out how to say “where is the bathroom” in the local language and knowing where each one is every place we go
- Walking for miles to an unknown destination
- Being stared at everywhere you go
- Being called “white person” in every local language
- Packing and unpacking everything I own over and over again
- Sharing a room with 2-45 people
- Being crammed on a bus that is 5x over the capacity limit
- Having a travel day(s) that usually last at least twice as long as they should
- Picking up random children everywhere you go
- Giving a word of an encouragement to a random stranger on demand
- Wearing the same set of clothes for a year that you can pin point anyone on your team in the distance and not just because they are the only white person 😉
- Meeting every night with your team to give feedback to one another
- Eating whatever local food that is served to you, no matter the quantity or quality
- Cutting/shaving your hair or growing out your ‘castaway’ beard
- Having limited to no internet access along with not having a cell phone
- Not knowing what day it is or the time of the day
- Receiving/giving visions/prophecies to your teammates
- Chocolate becomes a life-saver…more so for the females and the men when they need to make the ladies on their team happy
- Watching a movie on a 9-inch screen netbook seems like your living it up and is a glimpse of home
- Sleeping on/in: the ground/tent/dirt house/hut/church
- Getting woken up at 6am to go help “prepare” dinner
- Going to church where they do not speak English and even if they do have a translator, still only understanding about half of it
- Having so many inside jokes amongst your team that you realize outsiders probably think you’re crazy
- Talking in simple language (similar to talking to a child) all the time that when you do run into another white person you forget how to speak correctly/normally to them
- Coming up with a 5 minute to 2 hour message with no heads up…5 minutes warning if lucky
