Day 2: Giving a Literal Meaning to a Bumpy Road

so i typed this on word and had pictures but could not get the pictures to transfer to my blog...well try that later...


They told us before we left New York that we would have breakfast about an 1.5 hours from Kiev, Ukraine. So, when we got our Egg biscuits and bananas I knew we were getting close. One thing I thought was ironic was that on the plane ride over they played mainly British movies and then when we were coming into Ukraine they had a recording of 30 Rock playing (a show that takes place in New York for those who don’t know). Kiev is the capital of Ukraine and a large city. I got a couple of good pictures from the plane:



The wing got in the way but I wanted to post this picture because it has some football (soccer for us silly Americans) stadiums. I have heard some horror stories about going through customs in a foreign country and how the people are mean, but we did not have any problems (except our leader had to take out his video projector) and the people seemed nice.
Pastor Oleg, the Pastor of the local church we are working with here in Ivano-Frankisk, and one of his friends named Sasha picked us up in a van at the airport. Sasha did not speak English, but Pastor Oleg speaks English that he was taught in Ukraine. He told us the ride would be about seven hours and that we would stop to get something to eat on the way. When we got on the road he asked us if we wanted to stop at McDonald’s in Kiev because it was the only fast food restaurant that we would pass. We asked if we could stop at a local place down the road because we have McDonald’s in the United States. Pastor Oleg said alright, but that we needed to do exchange some of our money to get local money. We learned quickly that Oleg is a very nice man because when we stopped to change money, he bought us ice cream cones at the McDonald’s next door:


We told the Pastor that he did not have to do that, but we ate the Ice Cream cones very quickly and did not complain that he had bought them for us. Old Kiev and present day Kiev are separated by a large bridge. I could not pass over a bridge and not take a picture for all your bridge lovers (mom).


Old Kiev is over 1000 years old we were told.





Our ride ended up taking about 10 hours (including the 4 stops we made for bathroom breaks and we spent around an hour at lunch). We passed mainly countryside, but did go threw a couple of smaller cities. In one of the cities we saw a government building with a statue of Lenin out in front of it.


The restaurant we stopped at was in a small town area. It was mid-afternoon so we had the whole place to ourselves. I ate a chicken dish that tasted similar to Sweet and Sour Chicken you get at a Chinese restaurant. The TV in the restaurant was on a Russian Music video station. I enjoyed watching the videos because even though I could not understand what they were singing, I could figure out what was going on for the most part between the actors. Below are some pictures of outside the restaurant.





As you can see the restaurant had a nice garden outside of it as well as a WWII statue (for all you Lake J people, check out my lovely watch that I am still having to wear…long story for those that don’t know). Well a good portion of the ride was bumpy and I did not get many pictures because it was mainly farms and the like. For those Dawson Day camps if you can imagine the bumpy road out to Camp Dawson lasting about 300 miles that is what our ride was like. Well we finally reached the Ivano-Frankisk area and the first few sights we saw were very sad.
Pastor Oleg told us that earlier in the week one of the rivers had flooded and many people suffered from flood damage. I did get a few pictures of that, but it looks a lot worst in person than the pictures show.



We finally reached the city and I was trying to observe so much that I did not get many good pictures, but I will be sure to get many more over the next few days. Below you will see one of the first buildings we saw when we came into the city, a picture of a statue we thought most be of an important person, and a dark picture of the fountain in the center of a nice plaza only a few blocks away from where we are staying.






We are on the second floor of a small Bible college and Pastor Oleg’s mom is preparing all our meals for us. So far they have all been excellent. Below is a picture of the place where we are staying:



An interesting fact about the place we are staying: there are three bathrooms, but only one shower. We have three men staying here along with four women. Showers will be challenging, but hey one shower is better than no shower so I am not complaining (plus men like me and Jeff Bass don’t need showers to make us look or smell good right Jeff?). Anyway, more pictures to come later, along with more good stories. Kind of wrote these two days in a hurry because we are getting to try and Skype to our church in Dothan.

Ben