Is This Real Life? (Ukraine)

Welcome to another segment of the “ Is This Real Life” series I’ve started to keep everyone at home involved in this crazy journey. Some of these stories are completely pointless and silly, but that’s life sometimes! Our month in Ukraine was an awesome time of growth for many of us spiritually, personally, and interpersonally. We grew so much closer to each other and to Jesus in this month. In this blog, I’m going to try to fill you in on the little moments that made Ukraine so special to us all.
 
1. It may surprise you to know that there are times when even the classiest ladies don’t necessarily act very ladylike. This is definitely true with our all-girls team. One night, we were sitting in our room and within about a 5-minute time period, someone had passed gas, someone had burped loudly, and someone was snoring loudly in their bed. In response to all of this, I yelled, “Is this MANistry?!?” This spurred us all into a discussion, which led us as a team to coming up with a ministry name for each person. The names were so perfect for the male alter-ego of each person. For example, we gave Mikala the name Bo Tiggs. She hated this name because she said it sounded too “hillbilly”. It wasn’t until later that we found out that when she was in middle school, she shot her front tooth out with a BB gun and went to school wearing overalls with a missing front tooth. Perfect, right? Others of us were given names that had to do with our personalities. Ashley is Bruce Bruiser because she is sporty and athletic. Hannah is Jeb Hosephat because she has the most Biblical knowledge. Lindsay is Junior Tenderfoot because she’s scared of everything (or at least, she used to be). I am Tre Jones because of my sweet rapping skills. Now, when someone acts particularly un-ladylike, we can call her by her manistry name, which makes the situation all the more appropriate and glorious.
 
2.  Ukraine was our first country where we were surrounded by people who spoke a language different from our own. We were quickly able to see who on our team were able to pick up on language quickly and communicate effectively. On the other hand, we were also able to see which of our teammates were just not gifted in the area of speaking other languages. Our team leader, Lindsay, has many gifts and talents. However, these gifts do not include language. She had us laughing every time she would unsuccessfully attempt to say a new word or phrase. Eventually, we realized that her struggles were similar to those of Joey on the episode of Friends when he tried to learn French. Now, every time Lindsay butchers a new word, we all say: “Toot de la fruit!” just like Joey did.
 
3. It’s safe to say that trying to wrangle and entertain rowdy children is difficult when they speak the same language as you do. Now, imagine trying to do this with a group of children who don’t know one word of English. Crazy! Julia and I planned and led a VBS this month for a bunch of little ones. We had some fabulous assistance and amazing translators, which helped things to run smoothly and the days to go well. One day, we decided to teach the kids how to play “Duck, Duck, Goose”. This was a great life choice because they loved it and could stay entertained by the game for at least 30 minute at a time (HUGE for children). We asked our translators how to say “Duck, Duck, Goose” in Ukrainian and they told us to say “Caj-ka (spelling is unimportant), Caj-ka, Hoose”. We didn’t find out until Moldova that “Caj-ka” was not the correct word for duck, but that it sounded very similar to the Ukrainian word for “cat”. So, it seems that we spent the entire VBS playing “Cat, Cat, Goose”. Cool.
 
4. Getting from Ireland to Ukraine was quite an adventure. First of all, we were told by the airport officials in Dublin that we would be able to split up and sleep in small groups throughout the night in the airport. Our flight was not until the next day, so at around midnight, we each found our corners, pulled out our sleeping pads, and hit the hay. We were roughly awoken at around 4 A.M. by an airport official telling us that we could not, in fact, sleep in the airport. We were asked to move to another area, so we packed up our things and moved. Julia and I found some secluded chairs and fell back asleep until around 6 A.M. when the restaurant that the chairs belonged to was opened and we were asked, yet again, to move. We moved with the rest of the squad just in time to find out that they had been asked to move, as well. We moved to a basement area of the airport where we gave up on the possibility of sleeping and drank coffee instead.
 
When the time finally came for us to be able to check our bags, the airport decided to tell us that our bags had to weigh 40 pounds! The whole time, we had thought that our limit was 50 pounds. People were panicking. People were crying. It was a mess. After much chaos and stress, the airport decided to let us keep our weight at 50 pounds since they had neglected to tell us that information earlier. After all of the craziness, we were finally able to board our planes and head to Istanbul, Turkey for our layover.
 
We arrived in Turkey late at night and our flight was to leave for Kiev, Ukraine early the next morning. Some of us found an empty terminal where we set up our beds and fell asleep. At around 3 A.M., we were awoken by a crowd of people yelling in a language that we could not understand. We looked up and saw chaos all around us because of what seemed to be a cancelled flight to Paris. This chaos continued for about 20 more minutes, but finally the terminal cleared and we were able to sleep again.
 
We arrived in Kiev, Ukraine with a whole day to kill before our overnight train ride to L’Viv. We walked a long distance through a crowded train station to shove our giant packs into the tiniest lockers you could ever find. Praise the Lord that they fit. We ate at a cafeteria-style restaurant with all kinds of Ukrainian foods, had our first taste of vereniki, and wandered around Kiev to pass the time. When we got back to the train station, we had around 20 minutes until our train was scheduled to leave. We found out that there were still boarding passes that had to be printed, so two of our leaders went off to print the passes. While the rest of us stood in the terminal waiting for them, a Ukrainian man came up to us and said with urgency, “Your time is limited, you must go faster!” In response to this, Hannah almost took off, but we grabbed her and reminded her that it was under control. Instead, we prayed, and were able to make it into our train cars in time.
 
I already wrote about the experience that Mary and I had in our train car in a previous blog, but it was definitely a treat. With awkward people accompanying us and doing awkward things, and being covered in sweat, we still managed to have great conversations and even sleep for a few hours.
 
Many days, hours, airplanes, buses, and trains later, we finally made it to L’Viv and could not have been happier to see our wonderful American contacts waiting for us at the train station.
 
5. This month, we began losing our concept of time. We started telling our days by country, rather than month. For instance, Julia’s friend Stephanie was going to be moving to Moldova while we were there. We knew that she was going to be bringing goodies for us from Julia’s mom, so we spent our month in Ukraine talking about her arrival. Instead of saying, “Stephanie is coming on September 28” like normal people, we would say, “Stephanie is coming on the 28^th of Moldova”. This is how we refer to most things. Most of the time, we have no idea what month it is whatsoever.
 
6. For our last week in Ukraine, another team of 7 World Racers moved into our home. This made 21 World Racers under one roof, plus the family of 5 who we were living with. So, altogether, there were 26 people. 26 beds, 26 bellies to fill, 26 people to be transported anywhere we needed to go. Crazy. When the team moved in, we decided that it would be fun to pull a little friendly prank on them. The family whom we were living with were affiliated with the Messianic Jewish community, and celebrated the Sabbath meal every Friday night. This team was moving in on a Friday afternoon, so the timing was perfect. As the arrived, we would touch each of their foreheads when we greeted them and said “Shabat shalom”. When any of us spoke to one another, we would refer to each other as “Sister Hannah” or “Brother Caleb”. When it was time for dinner, the father of the family blew a ram’s horn, and we all grabbed our scarves and ran down to find a seat at the table. We put our scarves on our heads for the blessing, which was tradition for the mother of the household to do at Sabbath meal, but not for the rest of us. We also told the others that we could only take a drink from our cups if the father of the household took a drink from his cup. So, everyone spent the meal watching him to take a drink when he did. Finally, at the end of the meal, Mark (the father) said, “I just want to ask you all a question… Do you really think this is normal for us?” The other team was relieved that life was not going to be so strange, and we were able to be normal again.
 
7. After that prank, our team was in the pranking mood. Some of our girls went out to town for a while. When they returned, Ashley, Mary, Hannah, and I decided that it would be a great idea to pretend that we were asleep. When Julia came in, we all pretended to be asleep. She got into her bed and started messing with her iPod. After a few minutes, we all sat up and said, “Surprise! We’re awake!” She did not like our prank. She said, “That wasn’t even a prank! I just thought you were asleep!” But we still think that we got her SO good. Ever since, anytime someone is out of the room, we’ll pretend we’re sleeping when they come back into the room.. Even if we’re sitting up. After they’ve come in, we always say, “We got you SO good!” So… pranking maybe isn’t our strong point. No big deal.
 
8. This month, a giant tracker jacker (Hunger Games reference) found its way into our bedroom. This thing was HUGE and vicious! It would fly around, but when we would try to kill it, it would dive bomb into our beds and bury itself inside of our blankets. We chased this thing around for probably 30 minutes before we decided that it must have flown back out of the window, and we all laid down to sleep. After a few minutes, Lindsay screamed and jumped out of her bed, throwing off her sock that she was sleeping in. This giant bug had climbed into her sock, and when she put it on her foot, it viciously stung her! Even after this, it was still alive and more angry than ever since it had been trapped inside a sock. We finally had to hand matters over into Chuck’s hands and evacuate the premises until he could finally locate it and kill the evil thing. It was traumatizing to say the least.