We began our journey on Monday, May 16th. Our flight was to leave somewhere around 7pm, to Boston. Once in Boston, we would board a flight to Paris. Weeelll. We hadn't even left the Atlanta airport before our "plans" got messed up. There was apparently bad weather in Boston, so our flight was delayed. All 18 of us ventured over to the International Rebooking desk and Richard got to working his magic with Miss Margaret. After a couple of hours of standing around the desk (a few games of Ninja took place, as well as some great bonding time), we had 18 standby tickets for a flight directly to Paris. Now, I'm not sure if you've ever flown standby, but it's hard enough to get one person on the flight they want. But we were all believing in our awesome God and trusting that we would all make it on that flight. We still had several hours before we could even get in line and try to fly standby, so we settled in to make the best of it. We then found out that we would be getting two vouchers for free food in the ATL airport. Some of us had already eaten dinner, but we could use them to get water bottles or other treats for the flight. Then it came time to attempt to fly standby. Now, remember Miss Margaret? Well, most people that came to her desk were pretty rude with her. But we knew God was for us, so we were very patient in our waiting. So she quite liked us. When it was time to try and fly standby, she came and got us to the front of the line, and -- are you ready for this?? -- ALL 18 of us got on that flight. Directly to Paris! We didn't even have to have a layover! So we all settled in for our overseas flight.
We arrived in Paris in the morning.
Our luggage did not.
Everyone was surprisingly calm about the whole situation though. As it turns out, our luggage made the journey to Boston first. AirFrance gave us little toiletry packages, and would reimburse us for up to 100 Euros for "necessities."
Because of the flight mixups, we'd missed our train to Brussels. But by this point, no one was too concerned. We (of course) got the train situation settled, and spent the afternoon in the train station in Paris. We got our first taste of Parisian food, and quickly realized that NOTHING in Europe is free -- I spent over a Euro just to pee in the train station!
We caught the last train to Brussels, and arrived there late at night. EuroBrad and EuroDale met us at the train station and drove us to CTS (Continental Theological Seminary), where we would be staying for the next few days.
We got our first taste of European driving (which only got crazier as we travelled East!) The girls at CTS had collected toiletries for us, and we were SO thankful for that! They even gave us little laundry sheets so we could wash our clothes in the sink.
The days at CTS were a bit of a blur, but I will share what I can remember. We spent our first day touring Brussels, and it was absolutely GORGEOUS! I've spent most of my school career hearing about Europe and the wars there and such, but this city was absolutely filled with history. There were buildings there that are older than our country.
This was also my first real experience not knowing the language. I took a few years of French (they speak French in Belgium) in middle and high school, but the best I remembered was "Parlez-vous Anglais?" (I'm not even sure I spelled that correctly.) That got me pretty far, as most people spoke English. However, when it came time for us to order our Belgian waffles (you can't go to Belgium without having a Belgian waffle!), the vendor didn't speak much English. There was a lot of pointing and gesturing involved. And let me tell you, a Belgian waffle is not just a thick waffle. It's a dessert -- covered in chocolate and cream. MMMMM.
We spent the next few days at CTS learning about European culture. We got to hear from a man named Joseph, who spent his first 30 years in Communist Bulgaria -- he wasn't allowed to leave the country during the communist reign! It was absolutely remarkable, and his unwavering faith was incredible. He had a lot of good things to tell us about what Europe, particularly Eastern Europe, was like both during Communism as well as now. He gave us a little bit more understanding as to what we might encounter in Romania, and how it would be different from what we were experiencing in Belgium.
The Romania team also got to speak with a girl who was writing her thesis on Reactive-Attachment Disorder (RADs). Many children who grow up in orphanages experience this, and she gave us a lot of good insight about what we could possibly expect in the children we encountered.
Finally the day came to say goodbye to the Berlin team:
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| The wonderful GSU team in front of CTS. |
I don't know about the other girls, but from the standpoint of the girls of the GSU team, we were a little nervous at this point. We'd been doing all this fundraising and praying and preparing for this trip with Mark and Richard for several months now, and suddenly they were off to Berlin. But our nervousness was soon pushed aside by our excitement to head to Romania. We just barely made our flight to Bucharest, and boarded a plane filled with excitement and nervousness about what God had in store for us for the next 7 days.
