After nearly 30 hours of traveling, my team arrived safely in Arad, Romania. The journey was long, unorthodox, sweaty, claustrophobic, long, sketchy, tiring, and long, but we’re here, and this is how it went down.
Tuesday, September 1, Galway, Ireland
4:47 a.m. – Anthony and I wake up at the Galway residence of Alan Duigan (our contact at Abundant Life Christian Centre), and Alan drives us to the coach (bus) station where we meet the rest of our team. After spending two-plus weeks with our team, Alan is now almost certifiably American after Anthony taught him such phrases as “straight-up legit” and “it is what it is, man.”
5:34 a.m. – Our coach pulls out of Galway just as it begins to rain … a fitting end to our water-logged time in Ireland.
8:30 a.m. – Our coach arrives at Dublin Airport, where we meet up with our teammate Shannon, who returned to us after spending the last 10 days in Mississippi. I mail a postcard to my parents (don’t blame me if you don’t get it. They were out of this one sticker I was supposed to put on the back. But the effort was there.)
12:15 p.m. – While checking my luggage, an Irish airport attendant delivers a damaging blow to my psyche by informing me that I must deflate my football (actually a mini-rugby ball, so no laces) or else it will explode during our flight. It is currently still deflated.
3:30 p.m. – We board our flight to Bucharest, Romania.
9:30 p.m.ish – Our plane touches down in Bucharest after a three-and-a-half hour flight that crossed two time zones.
10:30 p.m. – My seven-person team (Proclaim I61) is whisked away into the parking lot by three Romanians (only one of which spoke a little bit of English), and we cram ourselves and our bags into two taxis. The feeling that the World Race is beginning, sinks in as the majority of signs we pass are in a different language.
11 p.m. – We arrive at the train station in Bucharest. Kendra pays the taxi drivers, and the man who speaks some English escorts us to the ticket window, the foreign exchange window (their currency is lei; about three lei equal one dollar), and KFC for a late dinner.
11:15 p.m. – I venture out into the station to get a Romanian cheeseburger. The guy in the stand asks me if I want egg on my cheeseburger. I politely decline.
11:25 p.m. – My team ventures back out into the station to buy some snacks for our 10-hour train ride. We all buy funky-looking, one-liter bottles of water to keep hydrated. Yeah, we’re smart like that.
11:35 p.m. – Our guide takes us to our train. We go to the wrong cabin and have to walk backwards through the narrow aisle with 40-pound bags on our back into the next car. When we arrive at our cabin, another group is sitting there, and our guide speaks to them in Romanian. He explains to us that they are in the wrong cabin, but they’re not budging.
11:40 p.m. – A train attendant arrives at our cabin and sets the record straight. So the seven of us jam our bags into the eight-person cabin (there is already a girl sitting there legally). Our packs fill the racks above us and completely cover the floor of the small cabin.
11:50 p.m. – We drink from our 1-liter bottles of water and immediately want to throw up. Apparently, we were supposed to ask for water with no gas (carbonation). So we choose dehydration.
1 a.m. – It’s nearly impossible to sleep with no room to move and our legs bent in awkward positions. But we try anyway and pretty much just sit motionless for the next seven hours.
8 a.m. – I move my legs.
8:15 a.m. – Cheese chips: Breakfast of Champions. The cabin next to us has been vacated, so me, Anthony, Kendra, and Brandy move over to stretch out.
10:00 a.m. – Our train is running about an hour behind, so I pass the time by sewing my Ireland patch on my daypack. Not bad for my first time sewing, but I guess I’ll have to see if it holds up for the next 10 months.
11:00 a.m. – Our train finally arrives in Arad, Romania, where we are welcomed by our contacts, Scott and Spencer, as well as beautiful 80-degree weather. They take us to the group home where we will be staying. This place is a paradise. We have beds, free showers, multiple toilets, amazing food, and even an American football in the backyard. These may sound like standard amenities back in the states, but after camping out in monsoon-like conditions in Ireland, this is outstanding.
We will be working at this group home for the next three weeks, and my team is very excited about what God has in store. After arriving at the house yesterday, we met the kids at a mineral pool in Lipova, about 30 minutes outside Arad, and spent the afternoon getting to know them by swimming, playing soccer, and talking about John Cena. They are camping out right now, so we ate dinner at their site, then played some Uno and more soccer before we left for home. Today, we painted part of the house, and on Friday, the kids will return home.
These kids are amazing. They range from ages 7 to 18, and we are all pretty much in love with them after just one day. All of them speak fluent English, so communication is very easy. They had a lot of fun trying to teach us Romanian words and phrases. So this month, we will be working with the kids as well as doing any construction or painting projects they have planned at the house. It’s awesome how we are learning different types of ministry in each country, and how God is blessing us through each ministry differently.
In the next few weeks, I’ll be posting some photos of our ministry here and some of the kids we will be working with, so stay tuned.
