February 14-15: Up Up and Away

25 hours of travel! Whew! Glad that’s overwith!

We left the Pollards home in Salem at 4:00am for PDX and arrived there around 5:15am or so. Mr. Pollard’s flight was at 6:40, so we all checked our bags, got our boarding passes, and went to see the dreaded TSA people!!! Fortunately (for us, and for them!), it wasn’t one of those airports that does all the lovely security checks we so often hear about in the news! I say “fortunately” for them because I firmly believe Jordan is one of those people who would walk through in a Speedo J

Anyhow, our flight was not untill 11:15am so after we saw Mr. Pollard off, Jordan and I had just about 4 ½ hours to kill at the airport :P Glad we’re easily entertained!!! We walked from one end of the airport to the other, searching the little shops for something amusing. We sat and had a latte while we wrote letters, posted on the blog, and Jordan slept for a little while on the bench while I played spider solitair and parused facebook. After that, we decided to walk around some more, hoping we would find something exciting to do. Well, no luck there. However, we did take a few pictures while we were out and about!

Well, the time came around for us to mosey over to our terminal…..and so we did. And off we went to Seattle airport! Riding in airplanes has never sat well with me. I can rarely sleep and it makes me very motion sick so the short ride to Seattle was not so pleasant. In Seattle, we had time to grab a quick burger before catching our next (horrifyingly long) plane. We flew Luthansa air, wich I would highly recommend if you are traveling abroad! Although it was still not particularly pleasant, it was a fairly comfortable ride, and the all of staff were very kind and helpful. We were in the very back of the airbus and it was still pretty decent! We were offered drinks at least every hour or more. We each had our own movie screens. They had a fairly good selection of movies and music. And the food was fantastic (as far as airplanes go!). Dinner was three cheese penne pasta with tomato and basil, a dinner role, a cold pasta salad of rice, peas, and carrots, and a chocolate brownie, washed down with hot coffee. MUCH better than the fish noodles we had on our trip to China in 2006! My one complaint is that I didn’t sleep more than half an hour the whole flight, but I was expecting as much.

Anyways, we arrived in Frankfurt, Germany and made our way to the terminal as directed by our boarding pass. After waiting around for a good while, we decided to go check and make sure our terminal had not been changed. This was prompted by a girl next to me asking where in Canada we were going! Thankfully, our plane was delayed and we made it to the CORRECT terminal with a few minutes to spare. And so we began our final plane ride to Kiev, Ukraine.

We arrived in Ukraine around 1:30pm on Monday afternoon. Going through customs was exciting. A very scary looking security guard wanted to know what was in one of our bags. It just so happened to be baby clothes and a few tools. He kept asking us how much it cost. Well after trying to explain that the clothes were donated and were a gift for our translator, we finally guestimated it to be worth $70, and the suspicious guard begrudgingly let us through. When talking to Mr. Pollard about it later, he said that he probably wanted to tax us on the overall cost. Thankfully he didn’t :P

Mr. Pollard arrived an hour after we did. While we were waiting we talked with our translator, Yulia, and played cars with her little boy, Mark. When Mr. Pollard made it through customes, we loaded up in a taxi van and headed for Barishivka. We arrived at the church around 3:15pm. We got settled into the annex and after a hot meal and tea, we all crashed.

-For Christ and His glory,
Lindsey Kae

This one's for you, Daddy! Reminicent of our first China trip :)

Jordan's letter

Jordan writing said letter :) 

Jordan "pick-pocketing" a satue of one of Oregon's senators, I believe! 

Jordan providing entertainment for passers-by

It's hard to tell what he was doing exactly, but let me assure you,

it was pretty entertaining/slightly embarressing!

In the tube of death to Seattle!

 Our first meal, which was pretty awesome

for airplane food!

Dinner AND a show!

Preparing to go to sleep, these is our

"Are we really ready for this?" faces!