Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

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24 June 2011

7:00am – roll over as my third alarm goes off, groan, and climb down the 5 steps to the floor from my bunk bed, Joni is already up. Strange.

7:03am – half dressed and half asleep, my door bursts open and there stands Theresa, I had completly forgotten their team was arriving this mornig, she shreiks and gives me a big hug.

7:10am – I greet the rest of their team and my own team who were all waken by team zion.

7:20am – start running my laps around the house, so over what people think of me and my weird exercise routine, I refuse to go out the gate.

7:50am – quit running 10min early because I suddenly realized how much i need to do before we leave on the train to Ukraine at 7pm.

9:00am – Devotions done, hair washed, starting to pack and chatting to Shar and Nathan on Facebook

9:45am – hair dried, dressed, trying to decided weather to go on a last min shopping trip with my team mates, still chatting on facebook.

10:30am – in a taxi with my team mates going shopping, while trying to not tell myself how irrisponsible this is – I still haven’t really packed!

12:45pm – in a taxi on our way home, I never even bought anything, oh well good team boinding.

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 comming up the stairs yelling for our attention, I can’t ignor them its our last day with them, they have yet another chocolate bar for each of us.

4pm – Logistics meeting with squad leaders, trying to plan final de-brief, we have nothing. We spend time in prayer knowing that the best thing we can do is trust God with it.

5pm – the taxis are here to take us to the train statiion, I’m still in the meeting. 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.

5:40pm – we arrive at the train station and here we are 4 girls with alot of luggage, including a huge groccery bag of food each from our contact, travelling 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 numerus 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.

6:15pm – Leyna realizes she has forgotten her phone charger and the phone is dead. Her and Emily take off to find a place to buy a new one and possible charge the phone. Lace and I are left with the bags and while sitting there realize that we both forgot to grab our laundry and are now down to half the amount of underwear we had.

6:37pm – our train arrives, Leyna, Emily and Lacey take some of the bags and go to find our car, it takes them forever.

6:50pm – Emily and Leyna return, out of breath, we are like the furtherest wagon away and we still have 3 big bags and 5 min before the train leaves

7pm – we make it, no thanks to any of the train workers who just sternly told us to hurry as we struggled by. We are all out of breath and sweating buckets, we feel as though we are back in India!

7:20pm – the train is moving and with much difficulty we have managed to organize our bags and are now despreatly 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 neighbours, 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 oversized 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 graab them and wait.

9:15am – we are in Moldova, and its freezeing, 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 I leave Lacey and Emily with the bags as we go try to figure out our next train. We arrive at the information desk, where we are pretty much rudly 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 schedual was. We find a girl that speaks english and Romanian, she agrees to help us.

10:45am – after a very painful proccess including withdrawing Moldovian Lei to pay for tickets that we had already paid for, and alot of eye rolling by the information lady we finally have it all figured out.

11am – the train arrives, Emily 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 suppossed 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 girls take all the small bags and start walking to number 25 as i stay with the big bags.

12pm – Emily and Leyna return to say they only made it to wagon number 16 and they think we should just take our stuff and pick an empty spot closer by then going all the way to 25, so thats what we do. Leyna stays with the stuff in wagon 11 and Emily 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. I follow 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 inturpret 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 absoluty have to come all the way to wagon 25 as the train seperates 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.

1pm – we are finally 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 helpfull, 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.

10:15pm – We find ourselves in the same delimma 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 alot of hand and body motions we finally straighten out what we need. Only to discover they need more money from us, there are no ATMs 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.

11:10pm – we think that we 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 akwardly in my top bunk.

12pm – my book is 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.

7pm – we arrive at the house that will be home for the next month and are greeted warmly by the family and warm bowl of bourch and our travel days are finally over.