The Trip to Ukraine

I left for Ukraine on Monday May 25th, only 10 days after I received official confirmation from Students for Development that I had been accepted into the program and was actually going to Ukraine. Everything was so rushed, and since I didn't even have a passport, I had to request that it be processed as an urgent request. Of course, in order to do that I needed to get the plane ticket, and of course, the travel agency had that ready on the morning of the Thursday before I left. And OF COURSE... the passport was not ready until 11:00 am on Monday morning, when my flight was leaving at 4:30 pm!! Wow, hahahaha. It was so rushed, but it all worked fine :D

After saying goobye to my family, my mom drove me to the airport on Monday and saw me off a little bit before my take off. I had to make two separate connections, one in Dusseldorf and the other one in Munich (both in Germany). There was only an hour in between each of my connections, but the system they have set up is pretty good and I had no trouble connecting flights.

However, if I had to use one word to describe my flights to Ukraine, it would be: TURBULANCE!! D: Man... I HATE turbulance!! Hahaha. Especially when it happens on a toy-sized plane like the last one I took from Munich to Lviv, Ukraine! Other than that, however, the flights were actually ok, and time went by pretty fast (only 12 hours of travel).

In the first plane I sat beside a funny old man whose name was Ted. When the plane took off, he giggled and said in excitement, "That is the best part!!!" I couldn't help but laugh as he was enjoying the thrill of the take off while I was sitting on my chair clenching with my nails to the seat, hahahaha. Different strokes for different folks, I guess! :D

When I finally arrived at Lviv, I was dumbfounded by the little security they had. The 'airport' looked just like a small government office building. I didn't even have to walk through a metal detector. All I had to do was fill in a sheet with my info.

When I got out, I was received by Jen and Jess, the two other Canadian girls with whom I will be working, and by Orest, my new host family brother! He is pretty cool and speaks perfect English, so that was a huge plus!! All four of us took a taxi to the train station, and from there we took a train to Ternopil.

The train stationwas pretty cool, and the ride was awesome! The cabins had beds where people just randomly slept. I did too, since I was dead tired! Hahaha.

Oh, it seems that I have to go now, but I will continue this later.