Ukraine Trip 2007 - Part I

A lot of people have asked me about my trip and there is just so much that it is hard to say it all in one conversation or to even know where to begin. So, I'm going to try to post something about everyday of the trip over the next week or so. We left Thursday, February 22 and returned Saturday, March 3.

Day 1: Making it to Logan Airport was the easy part. Leaving...well, that was a bit harder. We made it through security all right, but we found out that they had some room on a 3:00 flight so they were going to move some of us to that one an hour earlier. However, our regular 4:00 flight got delayed to five and that would have made us miss our flight to Budapest. So, suddenly they were faced with trying to get all of us onto that three o'clock flight. Then we find out that the three o' clock flight is delayed until four. At first they only managed to get all of the boys on the flight. Then they added me, then Catey, and then Mrs. Urban. That was all they had on there when it was time to board. We were all sitting in the plane waiting and waiting when slowly one by one the rest of the girls got on. Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Whissel were at the front of the plane waiting to see if they could get on because it might be too heavy. Everyone made it on except Slavic and Natan. We spent less than ten minutes in the JFK airport so I never actually caught a glimpse of New York City. Oh well, that'll have to wait for another day. Needless to say we were relieved to see Slavic and Natan make the connecting flight to Budapest. It took a while just to get off the ground. We had to wait in line for the runway! One lady on the plane got sick and had to leave so we were forced to wait while they unloaded the luggage to find hers. On international flights it is the law that if you get off your luggage must go with you. Other than uncomfortable chairs and a sketchy tv show, the flight was pretty unevetful. Unfortunately there wasn't much sleep to be had, for the girls anyway. From what I saw the boys had the shut-eye factor pretty under control.

Day 2: Our first sight on waking up was us flying into the sunrise...not a bad way to start the day. We arrived in Budapest around 10:30 in the morning to discover that several people had missing luggage. Catey, Jen, Tiana, and Mr. Kempe were all missing at least their clothes if not their donation suitcase as well. There wasn't much we could do, so when Pastor Paul met up with us we headed out to find Peter. Right next to the train station is supposedly the largest mall in Europe (never expected that to be in Hungary). You had to go underground to enter it and outside the glass doors didn't feel so safe. Inside was incredible. There was a waterfall three stories high with hanging plants and a pool at the bottom right as you enter. We ate lunch there. Not being able to speak a word of Hungarian, Katharine and I went for nice safe Burger King. To order you just point and hand over your money. Just as a side note - Hungarian is about the second hardest language to learn in the world and is related to no other language except perhaps distantly to Finnish. Makes me want to learn it. :) After two hours of wandering around we had only seen about 1/3 of this mall. It was huuuuuge. Funny thing is most of the stores in it were really, really small. The train stations was attatched to the mall so we didn't have far to go. We discovered that in Hungary you have to pay to use the bathrooms and grab your toilet paper BEFORE you go in. Just what you wanted to know, right? We established a guard over our pile of luggage. Alan Cook and Marlow had joined us by now. We had Sam Crook, fresh out of boot camp, and Slavic on each end. Other than one blunt "who are you people?" we were pretty much left alone. Hungary is the most likely place to have things stolen so we have to watch at all times. Everyone had made it onto the train safely and were all settled in when we found out that they had double booked every seat in our car. There were random Ukrainian men coming up to us and letting us know that we were in their seats. Then we found out that the car we were in would be dropped at the border so we had to switch all of our luggage and ourselves while the train was in motion. That was an experience. I actually got about three hours sleep on the train in the oddest position. Getting through the security at the CSOP train station was nearly so nerve racking this time. In fact I wasn't nervous at all. It was more like routine. On the bus ride to Nehemiah House we saw a rather interesting sight. There was a truck on the side of the road and farther up a cow lay on it's side. Not something you see every day. Around 10:30 Friday night we arrived at our destination. There was warm dinner waiting for us and comfortable room. However, we five girls discovered something interesting about the water. It turns off every night between 11 and 1 because of the filter system. Makes brushing your teeth a little difficult. This year our room was on the third floor so it was a hall to get up there. All five of the girls shared one suite of rooms and the boys along with Mr. Kempe were right next to us. Also on our floor were the Whissels and Alan Ross.