Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

My patience was tested this week, and I failed. After spending a few days with Virginia in Turkey, we bought our bus tickets to go from Istanbul to Varna, Bulgaria. The man who sold us the tickets was nice, and Virginia was there to interpret, which I clearly took for granted. We were instructed to jump on this service bus that would take us where we needed to go. So the service bus took us to a nice little terminal, where we waited 2 hours for our bus.

As we were starting to get a little nervous, 8 minutes after our bus was supposed to leave, a kind man selling roasted chestnuts looked at our tickets and took me into the station. Everyone was looking worried…

It turns out we were at the wrong station. I was able to figure out that much. They told us to get on another service bus, but that’s all I could figure out. A bus to where? When would we get there, and when would we be able to catch a bus to Varna? Conveniently, nobody spoke English, and I don’t speak a lick of Turkish. I sat on the service bus and prayed for patience. I couldn’t handle it much longer, so I wandered around the terminal for a while asking everyone if they spoke English, and my frustration grew and grew. Finally, as I had resigned hope and was ready to get back on the service bus, somebody said “Where do you need to go?” The English language never sounded so sweet.

It turns out we got on another bus that beat our bus to a truck stop and dropped us off, while calling the other bus that would pick us up. Turks are extremely accommodating, as Virg told us, and their kindness was a huge blessing. I’m such a talker that it drive me insane not to be able to communicate. That small taste of hopelessness and frustration made me realize that I will be an extremely motivated language learner when I land somewhere long-term. Or maybe even for the summer. Pray for me as I start trying to learn Romanian so I can somewhat communicate and not find myself so completely out of control and hopeless again.

And so it begins

Well, it's 2 in the morning and we're hanging out with one of Katie's friends who is a "worker" here. The flight all went well, we even got a free upgrade on our 8 hour flight, which makes a big difference! As our flight landed in Turkey, I looked at Katie and said, "well, here goes not being able to communicate with most people for 3 months!" You can pray for us on that one, as I am a big communicator, and it really frustrates me not to be able to do so. I'm going to get a Romanian tutor this summer, but how much can you really learn in two months? As I was at the airport listening to people from all different nations talking to each other, I wondered what it would have been like at the tower of Babel. When you go to a different country, you expect not to understand people, and it's still a bit shocking. Imagine one day you just can't communicate with just about anyone around you. That must have been a rough day... Moral of that story, do what God says.

Anyways, we're pretty excited for the next week. A week from today, we meet up with the missionaries that we'll be staying with for the summer in Moldova. Until then, Katie and I will spend a week making our way up to Moldova, which is 3 countries away. This is our one week of being alone. This will be our first week of being alone, not having homework, just spending time together. It'll be great. Then the big adventure begins and we will move into a family style orphanage, which is a small house with two parents and 8 kids ages 6-17, and then us. Craziness. And only one of them speaks English...a little. Alright, I should go to be to try to kill this jetlag thing. We'll keep you guys up to speed!