7:00am – Get woken up by Team Zion running into our room and proceeding to jump on top of us to give us hugs
7:10am – I debate weather or not of going back to sleep for breakfast isn’t for another two hours
7:20am – Decide to get up and finish packing for our travels to the Ukraine
9:00am – Devotions done, showered, working on packing and roaming around on the internet
9:45am – Team is deciding to go on a last minute shopping trip for shoes.
10:30am – in a taxi with my
team mates going shopping.
12:45pm – in a taxi on our way home, ended up buying one pair of shoes and had good team bonding.
1pm – other teams have arrived at our house, we greet everyone and I begin to pack for real.
2pm – lunch time
2:45pm – continue packing
3:30pm – attempt to take a
nap because I’m exhausted, fail! the Romanian boys that help out at the
house are coming up the stairs yelling for our attention, I can’t ignore
them its our last day with them, they have yet another chocolate bar
for each of us.
4pm – Lacey and I go to the kitchen to pack food for our journey. Our contact did not want us to go hungry and we ended up with more food then we ever imangined.
5pm – the taxis are here to
take us to the train station. I get one of
the boys to help carry my outrageously heavy bag down the 3 flights of
stairs, say goodbye to the other teams, give hugs to all our Romanian
friends and take some last min photos.
train station and here we are 4 girls with a lot of luggage, including a
huge grocery bag of food each from our contact, traveling on our own
for the first time and already we have drunks trying to offer to help. I
begin praying.
6pm – we make our way with
multiple trips to our train lane after inquiring from a number of people
if we have the right spot because nothing is in English. We say a prayer
for safe travels.
she has forgotten her phone charger and the phone is dead. Leyna and I take off to find a place to buy a new one and possible charge the
phone. Lace and Shannon are left with the bags and while sitting there realize
that they both forgot to grab our laundry and are now down to half the
amount of underwear they had.
6:37pm – our train arrives, Leyna, Lacey and I take some of the bags and go to find our car while Shannon is left with the rest of the bags and it takes us forever.
6:50pm – Leyna and I return, out of breath, we are like the furthest wagon away and we
still have 3 big bags and 5 min before the train leaves
moving and with much difficulty we have managed to organize our bags and
are now desperately trying to open our window, only to find out ours is
the only one on the whole wagon that doesn’t open. We make our way to
another one to cool off and try stop sweating.
8:30pm – we meet our
neighbors, they are a youth group from Ireland heading to Moldova on a
mission trip, their leader is actually Canadian but lives in Ireland
with his family, what a lovely surprise.
10pm – Eaten a supper of
yogurt, cheese, fruit, and crackers from our over sized food bags.
Somewhat cooled off and we decide to put on a movie. I fell asleep
before it even started.
25 June 2011
3:30am – The Irish/Canadian
youth pastor is standing at our door with a man in uniform translating
that they are asking for our passports. We all groggly search for them
and give them to him, he checks them and hands them back.
3:45am – The pastor comes
back and says he’s not sure if he got his translation right, but either
we are going to be stopped for 3hrs or we need to show our passports 3
times. we thank him.
4am– Leyna tells Lacey that
Michael had called and the Romanian boys had put a salamander in her
purse, Lacey hears wrong, and says in shock – “there’s a sound chip in
my purse? They’re recording everything I say? Why would anyone do that?”
Leyna says “No, a salamander” Lacey calms down and
says “oh” as she continues to eat her crackers (I don’t even know what a
salamander is but I’m to tired to ask)
8:30am – my alarm goes off,
its time to get ready to get off the train, we struggle to get all the
bags in a place where we can grab them and wait.
Moldova, and its freezing, we thank the youth group from Ireland for
their help carrying our bags off the train and dig for our fleece
jackets in our pile of bags.
9:30am – Leyna and Shannon leave
Lacey and I with the bags as they go try to figure out our next train.
We arrive at the information desk, where we are pretty much rudely
informed that the lady only speaks Romanian, Russian and French and
there is no one who speaks English so no she cannot help us. So we leave
to get our pad of paper with what we thought our train schedule was. We
find a girl that speaks English and Romanian, she agrees to help us.
painful process including withdrawing Moldovian Lei to pay for tickets
that we had already paid for, and a lot of eye rolling by the information
lady we finally have it all figured out.
11am – the train arrives,
Shannon and I, tickets in hand and big bags on our shoulders go to find
our wagon because we cannot read the ticket. We get sent back and forth,
back and forth and finally someone decides on wagon 9, so Lacey and
Leyna make their way over. Only to have 3 or more people (including the
information lady) arguing over what we are actually supposed to be
doing, our English speaking friend has left and all we have is a girl
who just keeps saying our tickets are bus tickets.
11:35am – the train is about
to leave and we are still not on the train and they are still arguing,
we decide just to get on the train, we pile onto wagon 9 with no help
form the 10+ onlookers. Just in time! and as the train is pulling off we
find out we should be in wagon 25!!! We sigh and the we take all the
small bags and start walking to number 25 as Shannon stay with the big bags.
12pm – Leyna and I return to Shannon to say that we only made it to wagon number 16 and think we
should just take our stuff and pick an empty spot closer by then going
all the way to 25, so that’s what we do. Leyna stays with the stuff in
wagon 11 and Shannon and I walk to 16 to get Lacey and the small bags. To
find Lacey, talking to some guy who’s telling us to go with him to other
Americans. Shannon follows this guy all the way to wagon 25! We arrive and
there are two younger guys one is American, he can speak Russian really
well. We explain our situation for him to interpret and that we would
really rather just stay where we are because our bags are so big and
there is an empty spot. They kindly inform us that we absolutely have to
come all the way to wagon 25 as the train separates and if we are not on
the right wagon we will go to the wrong place. Only to later find out
the not so nice lady at the information booth in Moldova had sold us
tickets to POLAND! and it really probably didn’t matter which cart we
were in, regardless they insisted we had to move to wagon 25 The two English speaking guys kindly offer to help us with our bags, we readily
accept their offer.
settled in our compartment – we are all so tired! We take time to pray
and thank God that we have made it onto the train and for all the people
that helped us. We spend the rest of our afternoon reading, sleeping,
eating and just trying to relax. The train stops at the border crossing
we get another stamp in our passports as we enter Ukraine.
9pm – we begin to get ready to get off the train, dreading what this transfer will look like, its pouring rain and its dark outside
9:55pm – the conductor on
our wagon has been super nice and helpful, and he points us in the
right direction as we got off the train. We have managed to organize our
stuff now that we can carry it all in one heavy trip.
ourselves in the same dilemma as the last train station – no one speaks
any English at all and there is a crowd at the info/ticket window. But
thankfully the lady at the window is very sweet and really trying to
help us. Then a lady with very limited English appears next to us. With
a lot of hand and body motions we finally straighten out what we need.
Only to discover they need more money from us, there are no ATM’s or
exchange places in sight, we are stuck! The lady with the limited English kindly offers to exchange our USD from her own purse, wow what a
blessing. We think we are all set until we see that it doesn’t tell us
what lane the train is going to be on, they kindly inform us we just
have to listen, they will announce it over the PA 30min before it
leaves, this is a huge problem as we know no Russian or Ukranian, so our
kind limited English lady attempts to teach us #1-5 in both languages
to try help us.
10:40pm – we have found some
shelter from the rain right in front of the staff lounge as we pray we
will be able to understand when they call for our train.
haven’t heard them announce our train yet until a man in uniform
indicates for us to follow him, he helps us carry our bags and takes us
through an underground tunnel to a track that I am sure we wouldn’t have
found on our own. We wait for a couple min and the train arrives and
our helpful train worker takes us right to the wagon we need to be on.
11:47pm –The
train is leaving, and there is confusion as to where our beds are,
finally they put us in 3 different compartments with strangers and all
on top bunks that you can’t do anything but lay down in. A really kind
gentleman helps us all put our huge, heavy bags on the top shelves, and
then he made our beds.
26 June 2011
12:30am – I curled up on my bed in a compartment fill of strangers with my arms tightly secured around my back pack and fell asleep.
8am – woke up, ate a
breakfast of carrots, an apple and crackers (all that was left in my
food bag) while hunched over awkwardly in my top bunk.
finished, I’ve watched a movie and I have a huge kink in my neck I crawl
out of my bunk and go visit the girls and use the disgusting bathroom
that dumps all the sewage onto the tracks.
3:30pm – we anxiously get ready to get off of the train and to have this journey over with.
4:10pm – Lacey has some
random guy helping her with her bag and we are walking along the
platform looking for our contact. I over hear someone say “Americans?
English?” and turn to see the friendly face of the man who is our
contact for the month.
house that will be home for the next month and are greeted warmly by the
family and warm bowl of bourch (Ukrainian soup) and our travel days are finally over for the time being.
