I am starting realize more and more that people have no idea what I do here. And often they think I don't do much. One of the most asked questions is, "what is a typical day look like." This is by far one of my least favorite questions because there is no typical day here. A day can be as simple as waking a kid up for school then doing things around that house that need done and making dinner for a house full of kids. Somedays, it is taking care of the business side of Open Arms. It can be preparing for graduate meetings and then having the graduate meeting and being with the kids. But no matter the plan there usually is some sort of crisis that takes place with a kid or something ministry wise that needs to be taken care of. We HAVE to be flexible. Everything here takes so much longer then I am used to from transportation(as we don't have a car) to getting any kind of documents approved. For instance, I will give a run down of how today went. Anika, Sash, and I got on a bus at 12 a.m. Imagine riding Indiana Jones for 5 hours straight then waiting 3 hours at McFoxy(which is a knock off of MacDonalds). We took this horrible bus because there were no more train tickets unless we could afford first class for 400 grevna per ticket. I needed to renew my passport so I can apply for a new visa. This was our whole reason for going to Kiev today. I had an appointment at 8:30 at the American Embassy. I was in and out in 50 min. But our train back was not until 3:30. So we had some more time to kill. Now mind you, it is already cold in Ukraine especially for this California girl. I am thankful that it is not as cold as is has been in previous years but regardless, it is cold. We finally made it home at about 9:40 p.m. For a 50 minute appointment we spent almost 24 hours with travel and waiting. I will say, this does give us a lot of time to make memories doing crazy things to make the time pass.
Now while we were doing that the rest of the team was making a last minute trip to a village outside of Sumy looking for one of the girls from our orphanage who is supposedly studying there. There is a family who is adopting her brother and needed help finding her. They did not know if they would find her but they just jumped in a taxi and showed up at the school. This was not what they thought their day would look like but it is how it works here. Everyday is usually different than what we planned. Tomorrow is supposed to be a work day getting ready for our wednesday night grad. meeting and our Thanksgiving plans which will involve quite a few kids. Life sure is different here but, I am really thankful for the all that it teaches me. Wish I could say I always have a smile on my face when things don't go as planned but, anyone who knows me knows that is probably not true. :)
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This is what happens at 5am after riding the bus for 5 hours.
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At the American Embassy.
So proud of his American shirt with the American flag.
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| The trip was worth it just so Anika could find her wedding dress :) |
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| So excited we got to eat Dominos pizza. |
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| So sad we not home yet, as we wait on the floor in the train station. |
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| Finally made it home and I think we all lost it :) |
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