And the Train Pulls out of the Station

Right now, I should be five hours into an eighteen hour trip to Eastern Ukraine to spend a week with two of the girls from last Fall's training center. Instead, I'm sitting here at home, after a rather eventful afternoon. Let me start by saying that I hate talking on the phone in Russian. I'm to the point now that when I'm conversing face to face, I do ok. But over the phone? Well, that's a different story. It's just more difficult. So, keeping that in mind, I will also say that I hate calling for a taxi. I've done it now at least ten times and in spite of some amusing situations, have always succeeded in getting a taxi to arrive when needed.

Today, I failed for the first time. I called, gave all the information as normal, she repeated it back to me, it all sounded good. 30 minutes later, she called to say it was waiting and I walked outside and saw no taxi. I called back and found out that she had sent it to the wrong place. Up to this point, I had done everything correctly. But now, as she started trying to call the driver and talk to me at the same time, I couldn't follow the conversation. So when she said another driver would be there in fifteen minutes, I thanked her and hung up the phone. Fifteen minutes later she called to tell me the driver was there and asked if I could see him. Nope, no blue minivan anywhere around. It turns out that she had told this one to pick me up from the train station, not from my apartment. So as she's getting angry with me, I repeated again what I had said in the beginning. She finally agreed that I had said it correctly, but she was frustrated that she had asked me something in the second conversation and I hadn't responded, so she wanted to blame it on me. So then she wanted to try a third time, but by then, it was too late and I couldn't make it to the train station in time.

So I took everything back upstairs, got on a bus, went to the train station, stood in line for an hour, got to the front and found out that there were no tickets for tomorrow. Sigh. So, I got back on the bus, rode home the 45 minutes and contemplated Plan C. I couldn't leave on Friday, because the girls I was visiting are going to be at a youth conference for our church association(which I am now missing). After working through the options, Plan C has me returning to the train station at 6:45am tomorrow to meet the group from church that is returning from the Crimea and to attempt to get new train tickets for Sunday. This will be my fourth trip in the last week to the train station to stand in line, which is not my idea of great fun and a good use of time. For those who don't live here, appreciate: your bills that come in the mail, checks, online bill-pay, instant plane and train tickets online, etc., etc. Those things don't exist here. Everything is accomplished by standing in line. But, this is a part of life here and wonderful for teaching one patience. So I wait and I experience a bit more of life here as the train pulls out of the station and leaves me behind.