We have finally arrived in Pleven, Bulgaria. After leaving our hostel at 2am on Monday morning March 31we traveled from San Salvador to Houston. We then flew from Houston to Washington D.C. where we had an 8 hour layover before boarding a plane at 11:45pm monday night headed for Istanbul, Turkey. Once arriving in Istanbul, we had a short layover, just enough to grab some food before we boarded our next flight at 6pm Tuesday night.
We then flew to Tirana, Albania. After clearing customs we went to find a bust take us to the city center, it was 9pm Tuesday night. We ended up staying the night in the airport sleeping on the floors and whatever benches were available to us. I was suffering for an extreme ear infection in both ears since our D.C. flight. I tried to sleep for a few hours and was then wide awake at 2am Wednesday morning. I walked to the bathroom, changed my clothes and decided to wash my hair in the bathroom sink and dry it with the hand dryers. Since the cafe was open in the airport, I decided to get a croissant and a hot chocolate. I was a little confused when my so called hot chocolate came out in a cup with a spoon. As soon as I lifted it to take a sip I realized I was getting a cup of chocolate that was hot. . . in pudding form. LIFE RUINED AT 2AM.
I tried to go back to sleepbut couldn't. In the past 3 days I had received maybe 7 hours of sleep and I was just too tired to sleep. So I read until 6am and then I walked to the pharmacy across the street to see if it was open so I could get some antibiotics for my ear. Unfortunately they didn’t open until 8am so I walked back and we boarded our bus to Tirana, Albania. Our 45 minute bus ride took us to the center of Tirana and left us on a street corner for hours while a few of our leaders walked to find a bus for charter that would take us across Macedonia and drop us off in Sofia, Bulgaria.
We spent all day carrying our packs (mine in total weighing just over 70lbs). We had pizza at a little restaurant and bought some groceries while trying to save our packs from being stolen and pick pocketed by 3 small beggar children outside of the market. Complete exhaustion was setting in, I felt drugged and almost unconscious as we walked back to the corner we had been dropped off on. We all fell asleep there in the sun clutching our packs . . . other teams were arriving and it was time to walk to where our bus would pick us up. It was 7pm Wednesday night. We loaded our packs onto the bus and took our seats, ate what dinner we had picked up at the market and eventually found “comfortable” positions to where we could try to sleep . . .until the bus driver put on some obnoxious techno music all night long. We drove and drove stopping what seemed like every hour for the bus driver to take a smoke and people to go to the bathroom (first squatty potties we would encounter). We crossed the Albania/Macedonian boarder around midnight and continued on to Skopje, Macedonia where we would drop off one of our teams at 3am. The rest of us continued on to Sofia, Bulgaria. We crossed our next boarder around 6:30am Thursday and arrived at the bus station around 10am that morning. We would then board a train for another 3 hours, take a trolley and a car ride before arriving at our final destination around 10pm Thursday night. I showered took the medicine I had found at a pharmacy in Tirana and went to sleep.
We are staying in a small simply furnished 1 bedroom apartment for my team of six. We sleep on the floors on our sleeping pads and sleeping bags. It is cold here it has been raining and overcast staying in the 40-50’s. I am freezing and we do not have heat in our apartment, but I am thankful for our bathroom/shower room that has hot water for showers. The town, Pleven, it beautiful the people are friendly and we have been truly welcomed by the church that is hosting us. I cannot wait to see what our ministry will look like this month. More to come . . . hopefully not 80+ hours again though 😉
