The Flight

Our flight left on time today. We got through security and baggage check just fine – no problems or delays. We arrived in New York and walked right to our next flight, which was already boarding and it left about one hour late. Even with this delay, we still arrived exactly on time in Ukraine. During the flight they kept posting the flight information on a big screen. It said we traveled at 33,000 feet. The air temp outside was a balmy –27F! Our speed was close to 700mph, and it was really neat because it showed where we were on a map from time to time. We flew north over Canada, then over Iceland, the Atlantic Ocean, then over Amsterdam, north of Belgium (where I used to live as a kid), then over Germany, Poland and finally here to Ukraine. While we were flying I looked out the window a lot and there were three things I saw which I wanted to make note of so I don’t forget. Once I looked out and saw a big white cross, which I don’t know if it was a building rooftop or what, but it seemed like a symbol to me to remind me that the Lord is with us through this experience. The next thing that was really neat was in a farm field I could plainly see a smiley face. Then after dark, I looked out and down below was a bank of clouds that seemed to be glowing in the moonlight. Then I looked out and up and could see the light at the end of the wing (we sat above/behind the wing) and right above it the big dipper. No other stars – just that constellation and it reminded me of laying in the yard just a few weeks ago with our girls and looking at the stars and seeing the big dipper above our horse barn. It was really neat to me to see these things. We already miss our little girls and just writing this makes me miss them terribly!

Touch Down!

Well, no problems at all getting through customs and to our apartment. We paid for VIP service, which is supposed to get you through customs much quicker and help you fill out your paper work, etc. It did exactly that! We did not wait at all! We went right through customs past everyone else who flew on our plane and was standing in line and went right to baggage claim. We never had to do a thing, and they came back to us with our passports stamped and we were ready to find our driver. Our bags arrived and we found our next contact person whose car was just big enough for us, and our bags! In fact one big suitcase had to sit next to me in the back seat and James sat up front with our driver and talked to him the whole way to our apartment. The drive was exciting – no rules to the road and we went about 150kph (I don’t know if that’s the right abrev. or not). Anyway, there is a lot of new construction here and many new apartment high-rises being built. However, many seem very old and run down looking – there’s a real mix of old and new. Our driver said that most of the buildings are 3 years old or less though. Then we drove across the oldest bridge in Ukraine, which survived WWII, and as we did we could see a beautiful Church across the river with the onion shaped dome roofs, which are covered in gold. Near that was a HUGE statue of a person holding a sword up above their head, and it is made out of what looks like shinny, silver. It looked to be about the size of the statue of liberty and it is to symbolize soviet independence. As we drove on we noticed that many cars are parked up on the sidewalks, which they have to jump the curb in order to park there. We were told that is because the tow trucks can’t move their cars from there and that’s why they park there – hahahaha! Then we drove into the downtown area, which is where our apartment is. It looks somewhat like Chicago. Eventually we got to the building where we were supposed to stay, or so we thought. We got out and hauled our bags up 5 or 6 flights of stairs only to find out the driver took us to the wrong building. He kept knocking on the door of this one apartment and the woman who lives there kept telling him that we were at the wrong place. Eventually, after many cell phone calls to another contact, our driver had us get back into the car and brought us to the right building and the cleaning lady was still here trying to get it ready for us. So, then we were left alone for about 7 hours and we were told they would come to get us around 6pm. Our facilitator did come when he said and he took us to buy some groceries and water, because we were dying of thirst and beginning to get quite hungry. The grocery store was very nice and we exchanged some money there and bought just a few things to hold us over. We understand that tomorrow we will go sight see and then the next day we have our first appointment. We are going to ask permission to go that day to the orphanage. If given permission to go right then, we will leave here and drive 5 hours to the town where Marina lives. It is a very poor area and I hope we will be able to find a good grocery store there as well. I’m going to ask tomorrow about this, in case we need to stock up here on things we can prepare for ourselves at the house we will stay at there. Tomorrow we will take many pictures and try to post them for everyone to see. We are going to try and rest some more now – we are having trouble adjusting to the time difference. We sleep a couple hours here and there and then are awake for a while. I just woke up about an hour ago and it is 1:30 a.m. here/5:30 p.m. at home. Looks like I will be up for a while during the night again:)