Have Referral...Will travel!!!

We have it!

We picked up our referral today and are leaving tomorrow morning EARLY (5am!) to head to his region.

We slept in this morning and it felt great! Then we got up and tidied the apartment a bit since we will be leaving in the morning. We re-packed the bags and organized what couldnt be packed yet. We will still need to get up around 4am to be sure we are ready to go when Nicolai gets here at 5.

Then we headed out for lunch! We walked to the bank first and exchanged money on our own! Luckily the bank ladies understood "change" and we left with our grivnas. We figured it would be better to change some over here before we got to region so we wouldnt have to set out to find somewhere when we first arrived.

We walked to Celentano's Pizza. So yummy! If you stay it "the" apartment it is only a 6 minute walk. They charge you for each part of the pizza. The crust and sauce is 17 grivnas (roughly $2), the cheese costs 10 grivnas ($1.25 - assuming you get mozzarella) and toppings are based on what you get. We got pineapple for 4 grivnas (50 cents). Our entire pizza (10 inches) fed us both and cost us 31 grivnas (just shy of $4.) Then we ordered water...accidentally fizzy water...but it wasn't sour like soda water and it wasn't super bubbly like it either. That was another 20 grivnas ($2.50) so our entire lunch was less than $7.

Here is Brian at Celentano's:

Then we walked home to wait for Nico to come and take us back to the SDA to pick up our referral. I took a video of our walk from Celentano's to "home." It is six and half minutes long but will give you an idea of what it is like here - if it loads...Which it won't. I can't figure out how to get videos to load on the blog NOR can I figure out how Jenny Monier created her youtube channel...so video will have to wait. Well it says it will upload but it will take 140 minutes to upload a 6 minute video.

We walked upstairs, rested and then left again with Nico to head towards the SDA. Here are some pictures from our journey.

This is a horrible picture; but, if you ever drive with Nico you will understand! See the breakdancer on his head in the poster? That's Nico's son. :)

Look! It's English!!! Every time I see it, I smile...even though I can decode fairly well and I know my Cyrillic alphabet, I don't always know the word I've decoded. But "Coffee is Life" I understand!

Churches like this are all over. You can't see it in this picture, but in the one below you can see that the tops of the churches are all gold. SO PRETTY!

For my O-Town friends...this may be the worst picture ever, but this is a Rosie O'Grady's!!!!

This is taken from the fence of the SDA just to the right of where the shot of the church below was taken. From this hill, you can see almost all of K***. Very cool!

This church is right next to (really on top of) the SDA building. It's being restored. Only half of my picture is here...I hope the other half shows up when I post. If not....I dunno what happened to it.

This is the first president. His statue is on the way to the SDA.

Anyway, we have our referral, we leave here at 0500 and should be getting into Sterling's region at 0900. Hopefully we meet him tomorrow, get settled into a new "place" (don't know if it will be a hotel or apartment) and we feel comfortable and safe there. Everything I've read says his city is a nice city. We may or may not have Wi-Fi so you may not hear from us for a day or two until we get that sorted out but I will post pictures of Sterling even if I have to go to a coffee shop or buy a USB modem!

Please continue to PRAY!