We were taken at 6:30 to the train station only to find out that our train was only leaving at 8:00 am. Sometimes it takes all of our strength to not explode at Ukrainian planning. Steve has grown leaps and bounds in his patience in the last 3.5 years and just quietly asked Andre why we had arrived so early but apparently it wasn't up to us to choose the time - the owner of the base said 6:30, so that's when we left.
Finally the electritchka arrived:
The Lviv train station:
We put our luggage into these ancient old lockers - they have a price of 15 kopeks (like cents) on them, but currently the cost is 30 greeven (like dollars) so that gives you an indication of how ancient they are!!
And what do you know - August fits!
The train was much more comfortable on this trip. The weather was cool, cloudy and even rainy at times so the wagon stayed comfortable. Unfortunately for me my neck started acting up really badly Friday night so all day Saturday and and all day today I have been in quite a lot of pain. I had a nap as soon as we got on the train and managed to sleep somewhat comfortably overnight but we were all really thankful to be home today!!
I always feel in the moment on any trip that things are just going terribly and the answer we get is always "this is Ukraine." But once we're home and I reflect on our time I think about how much fun we had! These things that are dreadful (HOT TRAINS) and annoying (getting up WAY too early to be places WAY too early) all make for good stories and remind us that we need to be flexible. And I really feel like we accomplished what we set out to do - build relationships with some teenagers that we knew OF before, but didn't really KNOW, and it was awesome being able to share our own stories of how we came to follow Christ and to ask others what they thought about all of this "God stuff".
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