We landed in Bucharest as we all were wearing shorts, flip flops and T-shirts. We were just in the hot, hot weather in Africa and now were standing in the airport with all these Romanians glaring at us. There was snow outside and it was negative weather. This was the first time any of us had experienced this for the first time since last Christmas, that is 2010. All I could do was laugh it off. In the past when people were staring and commenting about me, I would fear their opinion, but not this time around. Romania to say the least reminds me of Mount Horeb-the size, the people, the SNOW! So, after we had changed into our “winter” clothes of jeans, tennis shoes, and sweatshirts we caught a bus to a train station. Here’s where things start to get funny.
Our “layover” in the train station was close to 3 hours. 3 hours seems like nothing, but in the freezing cold weather without real winter clothes, it’s not fun. We had received socks on the plane from Istanbul, which turned into our mittens and gloves. Anything we had, we used our imaginations and turned them into mock winter clothes. Here’s where I make a complete fool of myself, which I can now laugh off, but it took a few hours in order to do this.
About 15 minutes before the train left, my team and the other team started to board the train on our way to Draganesti-Olt for ministry for 3 and ½ weeks. We had approximately 1 minute for 13 of us to board. So, of course we spread out and tried to board as quickly as possible with packs on our backs. Now, this is a detail I completely forgot to mention. My pack wasn’t on my back, because I had thought I would throw my pack onto the train really quick and jump up. My pack was in my airporter thrown over my shoulder. As I was boarding, the train doors started to close on me!!!! Part of my body was inside the train and the other was, well outside with my pack. Really the only things on my body that were stuck outside where my right arm and well, my butt, with my pack. There was a Romanian man right behind me that wanted to get in, so he decided to try and help me by pushing my butt. This was my first experience with a Romanian, a fairly interesting one to say the least. Anyway, after about 10 seconds that seemed like minutes he decided to press a button outside of the train car that would open up the doors and I almost fell on the ground. Meanwhile, the whole time my teammate Jamie was watching me and trying to coach me on how to get up.
Another thing we didn’t realize was we had entered the wrong car, just about 4 cars down from where we needed to be. So, as we pushed our way through Romanians laughing and mocking us, we finally made it to our car to find out that our contact, Raul, who I will be working with, said to our teammates that we had another minute to get off and that we literally to jump off to the left. Kristen, one of the team leaders had been told that there wasn’t a platform. Well, about 2 hours later, we were at our site jumping off as if we were part of the military. I fell into the snow, but some of my other teammates literally made face-plants into the snow. To say the least, it was quite the experience and my first one of being in my favorite country so far on the Race!
I asked the contacts a few days ago what they thought of my team as they saw all us falling into the snow what they thought in that minute and they said “Well, we got some crazies this month.” So, going back to Romania is going to be great and even though I’m going to work for God, there is still crazy things that can happen.
