Hello from Odessa, Ukraine!
I left Washington the night of Tuesday the 15th and somehow after about 48 hours of traveling I made it to Ukraine Friday morning the 18th. I flew from Seattle to New York, New York to Paris, Paris to Kiev, took a bus to the train station, and then took a train to Odessa. My flight from Washington was a red eye and it took a little over 5 hours to get to New York. Then I had about a 10 hour layover in the airport where I met up with everyone else from my squad. We took an 8 hour red eye flight to Paris and had a layover there for a few hours. Then we had a 3 hour flight to Kiev. Afterwards we hopped on a bus to go to the train station where we took a 9 hour overnight ride to Odessa. It was a sleeper train and Ashley and I shared a room with an older man and lady, who didn’t speak any English.
Breakfast in the Paris airport
Odessa train station-my train is on the right
My team is staying in a “resort” about a 5 minute walk from the Black Sea. It definitely doesn’t seem like a resort by American standards, but we do have beds, hot showers, a toilet and a little kitchen.
So far since we’ve been here we’ve gone to the grocery store to get food for the week, to the mall to use the internet, watched a fireworks show last night and we went swimming in the Black Sea!
The Black Sea
For the rest of our 22 days here my team will be working with a church here in Odessa teaching English, helping out with a Bible study, doing street evangelism, painting and probably some other little projects to help out the church and Olga, the lady that owns our “resort.” A couple of the people at the church are missionaries from America. It’s so awesome to have them here, because no one else speaks English.
