Far Side of the World

Well, it´s been a long few months of outreach—that´s for sure.  We arrived on the ship a day ago and boy am I glad that traveling is over.  We finished out outreach in the port  city of Constanta, Romania almost a week ago.  Then as a team we went into central Romania (Translvania, where Dracula is supposed to be from) to wrap things up, spend some time together and debreif (talk about) our time abroad on outreach.  It went really well.  And it was nice to spend time with eachother without other people around.  Our last team bonding.  We were only there for two days before to caught an EARLY morning train to Bucaresti.  We almost missed the train, it was so stressful waiting for the rest of the team to arrive in the other taxi.  But after a hard run to the train we sat down, lungs burning and thanked God that we´d made it.  After that we needed a bus to the airport, so Matt went to find out how to get there.  He found the place and the number of bus, but not where to buy tickets.   We didn´t have a clue where to buy them, and we were running out of time for our plane, so we chanced it and went on the bus.  I was praying real hard that we wouldn´t get caught.  10 minutes before we arrived at our stop three undercover-ticket-checkers got on board.  they didn´t speak very good englash. ¨

“You have ticket?  You need ticket.  You pay fine.  300 lei.”

“We are not from here.  We didn´t know where to buy the ticket.  We need to catch our plain.  Please, we don´t have any money.” 

“Passports please.  No money, then we go to police.”

Gee, my heart was beating pretty fast. We didn´t have any money on us because we were leaving the country.  I had 30 euros and Cristia had 10 and I think we had 20 lei…..not even half the money they wanted.  They were trying to scare us so that we would pay….but we really didnt have the money. and they had our passports.  I was so worries that they would talk us to the police station, we would miss our bus, either go to jail or stay the night on the street and miss all our three connecting flights.  And being in charge of 4 other people….not a possition I want to be in.  thank God, they took what money we had, gave us our passports and we caught our plane.  Phew.

the flights went well.  We made all our connections.  after spending a night in the barcelona airport we were on our last flight.  we needed to meet the ship on an island in spain, but they had changed plans since we heard from them last and we sended up going to the wrong city, then we found the right one, but the ship was no where to be seen.  Matt and Ian went to go look for the ship, but ended up on an epic 2-hour journey.  they finally found it. then we had to pack all our luggage in to garbage bags, dinghy them to the ship in the middle of the harbour in rough water…. phew.  after 3 taxi rides, 1 train, 3 planes and a night in the airpot: 37 hours we were finally on Next Wave. 

I am so glad that´s over.  Thank you for all your prayers.