With the train in constant lurching motion, I tried to keep the contents of my stomach inside but failed miserably. My first and only 17-hour overnight train trip turned out to be disastrous! Ironically, the only time I’m sick this entire summer is when we are cramped into the tightest space with the worst restroom facilities.

I’m pretty sure I had food poisoning, which felt like a mixture of baking soda and vinegar in my stomach. The toilet was also a circular metal thing with a hole straight down to the tracks, which was oh-so-easy to use considering how much the train rocked and swayed the entire time. There are many things I’m grateful for: no lines for the restroom, plenty of plastic bags available next to my bunk when I needed them and the fact that my vomiting didn’t cause Volodya and Zoe to follow suit (which would’ve been horrifying by the way). I did survive the night and got to rest a few hours the next day in our hotel. Phew!

Zoe and I are spending our last two weeks in Ukraine in a town called Gorlovka in the western part of the country. It’s located 17 hours by train and forty minutes by car from Odessa where we’ve been staying for the last few weeks. We have two missions while we’re here: to teach everyone in the congregation how to speak fluent English and basically to pick up chicks. The church here consists of about ten young men, aged 20 to 28. I’ve never been to a congregation that had such little diversity. No children, elderly people, women, or anyone of different ethnicity.

Yesterday we met them all and had our first two-hour English conversation at the church. The plan is to do this twice a day for the next two weeks. I’m not sure yet what the plan will be for picking up chicks. If the guys can’t seem to talk to girls about church, I don’t know how Zoe and I will when we don’t even speak their language! We’ll see how it goes though; I’m a pretty friendly person so maybe I could finagle a few girls into hanging out with some nice church boys.