More Travel...

The day before we left Kiev, we went back to the train station where we met back up with Alan, his wife, and Emily, who is like a daughter to them. Alan lives in Kiev, and so became our tour guide as we went to sightsee as much as we could before heading home. We saw beautiful churches and monasteries, the deepest metro in the world, a street full of souvenir shops, and the golden gate, which is left standing from hundreds of years ago. The gate itself is called the golden gate for the gold that the merchants would pay at the gate to pass through into the city beyond. It was a fun day, and we didn’t get back until about 9:30pm.

We originally had arranged to have a short meeting that night so I could sleep before an early flight out, but, go figure, it turned out to be the longest meeting of the entire trip. We decided to do the ‘circle of encouragement’ where you go around the circle and each say words of encouragement and things you appreaciate about them. We didn’t finish until about two in the morning – and I had to get up at 4 in order to be there 2 hours before my 6:00 flight. Needless to say I got little sleep that night, but I’m very glad we got to have that meeting anyway. (Because of this, I also didn’t have the chance to fill out all my evaluation forms for OWM, so Adam, if your reading this, hopefully I will be emailing you within the next few days with my completed evaluation forms.) Okay, back to post…

Alexandra accompanied me to the airport and took me as far as she could, and from there, it was fairly easy to find where I was supposed to go. Actually, I had noticed a few people speaking English and started talking to them, and before I knew it, I was right in front of my terminal – with about an hour left to wait until boarding. I didn’t talk much on the plane, mostly slept, but when the flight attendent came by with drinks, the Ukrainian next to me must have heard me speaking in English, and HE started talking to me as well. He spoke really good English too. We chatted for quite some time, walking through the airport together until I went down to baggage claim, and he went on to catch his connecting flight.

My bag was the first one I saw on the wheel right as I was walking up, and Andrea was the first person I saw as I exited baggage claim. I think I might have scared her though when I yelled Andrea!, and started running towards her. (she had been looking in the opposite direction)… From there, we made our way to the Century by train, and got aboard surprisingly smoothly. We got there at the perfect time, and they brought us up and sorted out all the computer confirmation and such right away (since I’m not on the actual guest list, but am in the computer). Anyway, they got me through and aboard before any of the other 2,000 or so passengers that were waiting at the gate. I got to meet my ‘cousin’ and so many others – it will take quite a while to remember everyone’s name…

But yes, Mom, I am safely aboard, so you don’t have to worry… I apologize for the lack of internet communications thus far, the connection has been very bad onboard…