volcanos aren't as cool as you might think....

May 9, 2010

We FINALLY have arrived in Kharkiv!!! Let's see…we left Cincinnati at 9 am on Saturday morning and we arrived in our city at 1130pm on Sunday night!! Our flights went super smooth until we boarded the plane at JFK for Kiev and ended up sitting on the runway for over 3 hours! They had to reroute our plane because the volcano in Iceland is still erupting. Not only did they have to get a new flight plan, but the winds were so strong in New York that they only had 1 runway open. Once we were finally airborne it went very smooth and we even watched 2 movies, Leap Year and Crazy Heart. We met up with Scottie, and then 2 others we hadn't met yet, Bonnie who is another nurse from Fort Worth and Dr. DiSessa who is the cardiologist from Lexington, when we left JKF. So we were on the plane for 14 hours including the time we were waiting on the runway and actual airtime which is for sure the longest I've ever been on a plane! When we arrived in Kiev we finally made it through customs and then went to check our what we should do since we missed our flight to Kharkiv. They basically told us that the other flights were full and we could all pay $70 to get on a flight tomorrow at 3pm. Luckily we found some really nice ladies from Delta who spoke great english to help us figure out what to do. They got us bus prices and we decided that it would be better to ride the bus than wait a whole day to fly. So Katie and I pretty much got it done and went ahead and bought bus tickets. So we boarded a really nice bus at 4pm where we would spend the next 7 hours, haha. These two Ukranian men sat in front of Kaite and I and really wanted to try and talk to us in English. This guy Chad who we met in the airport (he's from Alabama) had a pocket translator that we used to have conversations with the one guy who was really nice. The other guy let's just say was a little on the creepy side….He LOVED Katie haha….He loved her so much he gave her a gift of a dead fish. I am so not joking here at all! We made a pit stop to get drinks and go to the bathroom and he got back on the bus and handed her a dead fish, smiling from ear to ear with all his gold teeth haha. I'm not talking recently dead, this was like a 4 day old stinky fish that was sorta dried up still completely intact, eyes and all, and he wanted her to drink the guts out of it. Our other friend on the bus told us this was like buying her a drink, hahahaha. Needless to say she didn't eat it, she told him she had a fish allergy. Since this was only about an hour and a half into the bus ride the stinky fish rode along with us in the seat pocket and every once in a while we would get a wiff. And not only did we have a stinky fish the bus was extremely warm…so just imagine how pleasant that was! Finally at around 1130 PM we arrived at the bus station in Kharkiv where Igor (one of the guys organizing our trip) met us. It was nice to actual get somewhere and see someone who knew what was going on! We took another short bus ride to the hotel where we just checked in, It is called Hotel Myr and is really nice. Katie and I are sharing a room with 2 twin size beds. It seems like it will be really comfortable. We will have complimentary breakfasts so hopefully that will be good. Going to see the hospital in the morning which I'm really excited about. Dr.DiSessa told us it is an old rundown hospital reminiscent of the 1950s so I'm curious to see what it is really like. Well we have been up for 36 hours so I'm really looking forward to getting some shut eye!