Back in Zap

Our flight left Winnipeg at 6:30 a.m February 2nd so we stayed in a hotel near the airport so that we could get that little bit of extra sleep.....even though we never really sleep before a flight. We actually left late because the pilot wasn't there....once he arrived he apologized saying that he forgot a bag at home (or wherever he was staying) and then got a speeding ticket on the way back to get it! All I was thinking was "I have to be here two hours in advance but the guy who drives the plane just gets to show up on time?" ha ha. 

Despite our late departure we still arrived early in Toronto, leaving us almost nine hours to kill. We still had a gift card for the movies that we got for Christmas so we headed to Mississauga to catch a movie with the boys.

Back to the airport to prepare for our Toronto to Vienna flight.

The next morning flight from Vienna to Dnepropetrovsk was slightly delayed as well which was fine because the boys fell asleep almost as soon as we got to our gate on these awesome benches they have. ALL airports need to have these!!! It's sad that most don't!

The boys slept the entire flight which was an hour and 15 minutes longer than it was supposed to be - we got over Dnep and they told us that there was fog and they needed to be able to see 500 meters to land and could only see 200 meters.

We circled for 30 minutes to see if the fog would clear at all and it didn't in that time so they redirected us to Kiev which was so disappointing! We were SO close to home and then to fly 400 km further away, ahhhhh it was sad!!

After we landed we called Garry who had been at the airport to pick us up - he found out that we weren't coming and left. We also called Ruslan who was waiting at McDonald's in Dnep for over an hour for us....sorry friends!!!

Once we got our baggage an airline representative informed us that they were putting us on a bus to Dnep which sounded awful - a more than seven hour bus ride only to arrive in Dnep at 11 p.m or later. We knew we could stay with Ruslan and Katya but it was just so inconvenient! We went up to the Austrian Airlines booth and they told us that they would provide tickets on the express train to Dnep, which would also arrive at 10 p.m so once he got to the railway counter Steve asked if they would instead put us on the overnight train all the way to Zap, which they were happy to do.

We had a few hours to kill before the train left at 8:16 p.m so we got some food and relaxed at KFC right next to the train station. We were so happy to discover that our train car was really new! The bathrooms were still clean and smell-free in the morning! They also had a panel in the room that told us whether or not the bathrooms were occupied AND they didn't close the bathroom when we went through all these little towns (normally they close the bathrooms because....well.....the toilets empty onto the tracks. I know.....ew).

I slept a solid 8 hours on the train, until 5 this morning. The boys were wiiiiiiide awake by 3 and we arrived in Zap at 5:40 a.m. We came home to a new bathroom!! We knew that this reno was happening while we were gone but we were very very curious to see if it would actually be complete, and it was! Unfortunately, or fortunately rather, I have no before pictures but our bathroom was royally gross before! Probably 60 years old, black mold, peeling paint and just all around yuckiness so I'll save you from all of that and present our new, very Ukrainian (read as much into that as you want) bathroom:

Because of the renos there was a thick layer of dust on everything so we cleaned from six this morning until about 11 when we declared a much deserved nap time! We intended to sleep for an hour and a half but every time our alarm went off we would set it for just one more hour.....and we did that three times! But hopefully by tonight we'll be somewhat normal in our sleeping pattern, we'll see what happens!

All of that long journey really could have gotten us down but we've thought a lot lately about thanking God for the bad things too, mainly because of the story from Corrie ten Boom about her sister Betsy thanking God for the fleas while in a concentration camp. If you haven't heard the story, I recommend googling it :) But it made us realize that when bad situations get us down and make us grouchy, even though it's really hard in the moment, we need to thank God for those things because we just never know what He is doing!