This is just stupid...

"This is stupid"
If only we could have counted in the past 2 days how many times we said this phrase... It was normally followed by laughter at how ridiculous our situation was.
What should have been a quick, good trip to Kiev turned into 23 hours stuck on a train. We were supposed to stay the night at some friend's house in a village outside of Kiev then the next day go into Kiev see our friend and have a meeting. We had heard that the weather was going to continue to get bad but we thought with taking a train we would be okay. Honestly, we all had bad feelings about going but didn't listen to our instincts. Our train left at 4:37am and we should have gotten into Kiev around 10am. At about 9:30 the train stopped and we were only 10 minutes or so from our stop. We kept waiting to start going but an hour passed, then two and we were still sitting there. Sash and I were in one car and Anika and Chel were about 10 cars down. After about 5 hours of sitting, they made the trek of coming down to us. Most of the people in our car already go off to try and walk to the nearest Metro stop. The train guy working in our car told us that the train was going to head back to Sumy when it got started. We asked him if we could just stay on it and make the trek back. He said he would work it out for us. Luckily, we had already kind of made friends with him which was definitely for our benefit...

After 8 hours of sitting there the train finally started moving. What should have taken 10 minutes to get to the next stop probably took us about an hour. The train would start and go about 100 yards then stop. We finally make it into Kiev and were starting to worry about whether or not we could stay on the train because we didn't have tickets. We knew the train guy said we could pay him for the tickets but people just kept piling and piling on. We were praying hard core for seats. God totally blessed us with there being 4 seats. We then proceeded to make the trip back to Sumy. That also took way longer than it should have. We finally pulled into Sumy around 3:30am. We get off the train and it is still snowing like crazy. There are no buses running at that hour so we have to fight with all the other people to get a taxi. We couldn't even get one to take us all the way home because our roads are really bad going to our apartment and no taxi driver wanted to drive there.  It seems that it was a day of waiting.

I try to not hate anything but oh man do I not love Kiev... It has never been kind to us and this did not help my love for that darn city. It is the end of March and in the last 2 days it has snowed about 2 feet. I am so ready for the sunshine. Be excited for the video giving a glimpse into the crazy day we had yesterday that will soon follow...

The start to our trip... Little did we know..

The crazy is starting to take over us.

This is our we hate Kiev faces.

Our one time outside, venturing to get some water and snacks since we didn't have any. You can't see it but when we got away from the train the snow was past our knees.

Our snacks

We looked over and saw that this was a train transporting prisoners. Sash remember being on one like this and was telling us how awful it is. We took some time and prayed for all the prisoners that were there.

Thankful that Chels had some Starbuck's Vias with her.

We had finally made it back home.