"Alicia and Kenzie, you're team #1"

Dad always said that we should do the Amazing Race together - he'd eat all the weird things and I'd try to fit in all the small spaces, we'd both bungee jump.. we had quite the plan. Unfortunately, Dad wasn't around to participate in the Amazing Race that CISB held for the staff this weekend - I missed him, but I had fun anyway!

Alicia and I signed up as a pair - new teachers (in our case, interns!) got paired up with returning teachers to prevent total confusion. We were paired up with Katrina and Elliot, both in China for three years. They were awesome and extremely entertaining - they got us where we needed to go at the lowest price!

The Amazing Race was actually so well organized - very impressive and I'm extremely appreciative to those who organized it. Thanks, Jill! Some of the things we needed to do included:

Find a Beijing bikini (a guy with his shirt rolled up to expose his belly), ride a "tuk tuk" (rickshaw), climb an elephant statue outside the Flower Market, get inside a hotel room at the 21st Century hotel, do a handstand in a public place, eat street meat, give a local a piggy back ride, buy a cell phone, gangnam style in a public place, find an electronic that doesn't exist anywhere else, buy an "I <3 BJ" (Beijing) t-shirt.. the list goes on. My Detour was to "rock out" on stage at a local bar.. we had some tunes in the background and I put on a show. Gotta love a good dance party.

The Race ended with Alicia's Detour.. jumping into the CISB cloud fully clothed. We headed back to get changed out of our "I just ran around Beijing for 5 hours" sweaty clothes and went down to the all-staff BBQ put on by the school. Good eats! And nice chats with new people. The staff really is a community here, and it's great to be a part of it.

Lucky girls!

PS: We won ;)