I haven’t written or really shared about travel days with ya’ll yet so let me bring you into the world of traveling a bit before the tale.
K Squad travels every month. We travel as 50 people every time the calendar rounds out a month. Then once we’ve traveled with all 50 to a new country all the teams (6-7 people) travel to their location within the country for the month. Some different forms of transportation have included planes, private and public buses, taxis, family vans, trains, walking, and ferries.
Each month this consists of about 4 days of traveling a month. It’s so normal that doesn’t seem like a lot to me, but let’s be real, imagine traveling with your own family for 4 days every month somewhere. Those travel days also consist of anywhere between 3hrs to 24hrs. I’ll leave you to ponder that.
Not to mention we have all of this to carry for 11 months.
So my tale begins in Skopje, Macedonia and ends in Budapest, Hungary. This took us an 11hr train ride to Belgrade, Serbia and then a 9hr train ride to Budapest. Altogether we were traveling for about 24hrs.
So the tale begins:
My team hops on a train that is about an hour late at 11pm in Skopje, Macedonia. We are so excited that, even though it isn’t a sleeper train (no beds), we get cabins to ourselves. We all split up and there are three girls, including myself, in a cabin with 6 seats.
“We get to lay out to sleep tonight!!”
So we get settled in and I’m trying to fall asleep; I succeed for about an hour and then they pound on the door to stamp our tickets. Another hour of sleep goes by and now they are pounding on the door to get our passports. While we are sleeping these train workers are yelling at us in Serbian, which I 100% don’t understand. We sleep for another hour and the train is getting full; people are talking, laughing and just altogether pretending like it’s not 2am.
At one point someone was running down the hall and police men were chasing and yelling at him. In my sleepy state I said aloud “I think we are in Nazi Germany;” not sensitive, I know, but I’m tired and have no idea what’s going on.
At this point I’m praying so hard for protection and for no one to come into our cozy cabin. Well the Lord had other plans.
At around 3am two men from Kosovo, one of the men’s mom, and a Serbian come and settle in with us. Remember I said there are 6 seats inside? Well now there are 7 people in the cabin 
This is a common occurrence around the world by the way; no matter the circumstance you can always fit more.
We talked with these men from about 3 to 7am. That sounds ridiculous; but we had so many laughs and conversations. They shared food with us, stories about their lives, and what they love about Serbia. Even when we all decided to take a nap the Serbian put his personal sheets in the window because there was no curtain. At the end of our ride they gave us Serbian money “for memory,” as they said. One of us used it to buy coffee but I really am saving mine as a memento. My other friend turns around and gives them each a US dollar, for memory. That exchange rate isn’t quite the same but hey who cares for memories. They also proceeded to carry our 40 plus pound packs to our next train, how nice right?!
Then two polish boys we met at the station in Macedonia, who helped one of my teammates carry her bag, gave us all kisses on the cheek goodbye. That made me smile as well.
No matter my prayers the Lord always takes care of me in his own way; that day it was, conversations, kisses, and carrying my load; showing me the best in humanity.
Somehow I manage to sleep through this selfie. PS his guy has Megan’s sunglasses on…
We get on the next train to Budapest and we meet a Russian who’s been on holiday for a couple of weeks. We were explaining the Race and just what 8 girls are doing on a random train going to Budapest.
Not only did the Lord have blessings to give me this travel day but he had a lesson for me.
The Russian man worked as an economist and told us how special it is what we are doing; he can never even express emotions at work.
It clicked. I never want to work at a place like that. I want to be real and honest at my job, my career, an extension of my life and my testimony.
After this tiny revelation we arrive in Budapest about 8pm and go to take a few taxis to our Hostel for the night. Another act of kindness occurs that just proves the Lord is always looking after me. I sneezed in the taxi. The driver immediately pulls out a tissue from the glove box and hands it to me, how sweet.
So this is the end of our tale. If there is one thing to take away from this it’s to never write people off. There are so many random, interesting people to meet out there that Jesus has set in our path. All those random acts of people being kind to me made a 24hr travel day one of my favorites from the year.
Think about the smiles, laughs and lessons to be learned that you could give to people just by opening up for a few minutes. The world is too full of beautiful and kind people to let them pass by. All you have to do is sincerely say hello.
