A few weeks ago, my squad said goodbye to Guatemala and started our journey to Romania. The trip was forty-eight hours, spanning across four days, and four forms of travel. I love change and moving and adventure, so l had a great time with the whole wild experience.
We closed out debrief at 5:00pm on Monday and grabbed all of our bags to start our trek. We piled all of our belongings on the sidewalk while we waited on the curb for buses to come pick us up. We had been sitting there for a few minutes when two motorcycles collided right in front of us. One of them had gotten distracted by our group on the sidewalk and swerved into the other one. Both motorcycles skidded the whole length of our forty-two people lined up along the street. Thankfully, their path curved away from us and immediately, both drivers, plus the one passenger, stood up. Other than the fact of the occurrence of the accident, everyone was alright.
After that immediately rocky start to travel day, the buses showed up and we headed on our way. Our first of seven legs was a five hour bus ride to the Guatemala airport. I tried to soak in as much of my last view of the Guatemalan scenery as I could in the dark. I had my head perched at the edge of my open window for what felt like half of the drive.
We arrived at the airport at eleven and unloaded into a corner of the airport that we were allowed to sleep in. However, our plan was to go through security at 3:00am for our flight at six, so going to bed seemed pointless to me. Instead, I settled in with some snacks and called my boyfriend. Three came around and the squad was on the move again. We got through security and customs smoothly and were soon at our gate. I brushed my teeth in the first of many airport bathrooms on our journey and settled in for a couple more hours before our flight. Eventually we boarded and said ‘see you later’ to Guatemala. (My teammates yelled at me for saying ‘the end’ lol).
Our first flight was only about two and a half hours to Miami. I was writing a letter during that time, but all I remember was repeatedly waking up and writing a few sentences before falling asleep again. We landed in Miami and because we had a nine hour layover, we were allowed to leave the airport. Lyssa’s family lives in Florida, so they came to see her and a few of us got to hang out with them for a quick Target and Chipotle run.
(Fun fact- my American treat of choice was kettle corn PopCorners).
We went back to the airport ready for the third leg of our trip and our second round of security. That leg was a flight to Paris- an eight-hour, overnight flight- taking off at 7:50pm and landing at 10:45am local time.
They gave us dinner early on and then I clocked out for the rest of the night.
When we landed in Paris, we walked through the fanciest airport I could’ve ever imagined. The maze that lead to the gates guided us through Gucci stores and countless places to buy perfume or nice purses. That time, our layover was only three hours, so when we got to our gate, we just hung out and ate lunch before moving on to the next leg of our journey.
Leg number four was another short, three-hour flight, this time to Romania! I didn’t want to fall asleep because I was hoping to counteract jet lag, but sitting on a plane always proves to me to be the perfect environment for a nap. Faith was sitting next to me and she fell asleep before we even took off, but I was also asleep not long after.
We landed in Romania at 6:00pm, ready to wrap up the long travel days. We took a short train from the airport to the train station, switched to another train for a longer ride, and a few hours later we were met in Craiova by our ministry hosts ready to take us to our new house. Our last leg was a very short van ride to where we’re staying, and at 2:00am we had arrived.
2:00am in Romania is 6:00pm in Guatemala, so everyone was a strange mixture of awake in what would be the early evening, and tired from long days with little sleep. We soon decided to go to bed even when it felt kind of unnatural and the next day, most of my teammates didn’t wake up until noon. Our very new schedule and very different environment were somewhat strange at first. We switched time zones by eight hours, we switched climates by thirty degrees, we switched cultures, languages, and currencies. However, it didn’t take long for us to adjust. I’ve really been loving Romania so far and I can’t wait to see even more of what God is doing here.
