The second half of our time in Ukraine began with a bang: the sudden and unexpected announcement that we would be serving in a village about an hour outside of Odessa. We had 12 hours to pack and prepare. We realized the lack of warning was mostly due to language barriers, but were frustrated nonetheless.

The next morning dawned early (as it always does in a country where the sun is shining by 4:30 am every day) and we stood bleary-eyed at the gate with our things, waiting to head off.

The van ride out was crowded and everyone was silent and groggy. Our host, Maxym, was blasting Bulgarian music over the loudspeakers. I didn't mind too much, it seemed a fitting soundtrack for the time. Stuffed in this white van, trundling down one of the few highways in Ukraine, passing beautiful sunflower fields left and right, I wondered what on earth we were about to get into.

When we arrived at the village, it was like we had stepped into a new world. The houses were covered in red, blue, yellow or green tiles. The yards were full of gardens in almost every square inch. Everything we saw was practically oozing color. 

Our host, Alexi, was kind and wise. A young girl named Lydia translated for us. 

We spent our time there doing manual labor in the church yard and hosting English clubs for the people in town.

We met the village English teacher, who was bursting with enthusiasm when she met us. She told me that I was the first chance she ever got to speak to a native English speaker, since the Iron Curtain was still up while she began her career.

We met an ex-Soviet soldier, who told us stories of leading his men through harsh winters and praying they would survive. 

Our next door neighbors brought us fresh eggs and milk. Since they didn't know any English and we didn't know any Russian, we all hacked our way through amiable conversations peppered with hand gestures and laughter.     

Of course, there were some things that took adjusting to. Our toilet was a hole dug in the ground and our shower was a bucket of rainwater that might be warm or might be cold or might not be there at all.   Our bed was a hardwood floor. Our dining room was a small plastic table outside in the courtyard. 

I enjoyed it though. It was fun to spend time away from everything I take for granted. And it turns out that squatty potties build some balance and muscle in your legs. Who would have thought?

Overall, I was a little sad when a Russian man wearing a shirt that said "Cowgirl tough" in English (I've learned my lesson about buying shirts in languages you can't read) came to drive us back to the city in his small green car. With some of our backpacks stuffed in the trunk and other backpacks tied to the top of the car, we lurched and zipped back to Odessa.

This morning our host Maxim sat us down to explain what he had planned for us to do for part of our stay here. With Anya translating he described his outreach to the local gypsy people.

The gypsy people are a people group without a country, or a government. There are no numbers of how many gypsy people are spread across Europe and Asia, but Maxim told us that there are about 400.000 in Ukraine. The original Gypsy people came from India, they were artists, dancers and craftsman come from a lower caste who left the country and moved elsewhere. They have roamed all over Asia and Europe and faced a lot of persecution. 

Hitler considered them a worthless people and had them on the list of people groups he planned to systematically wipe out. While Hitler's plans were thwarted, the gypsies are still viewed as outcasts in modern society. They also keep themselves separated from others, believing that there are two types of people: gypsy and non-gypsy. 

Their cultural skills, such as craftsmanship and horsemanship, are quickly becoming obsolete. That, combined with the stereotypes that gypsies are involved in bad magic and are thieves and lairs, has made it hard for the gypsy people to take a healthy role in society.

Maxim and others work to help the gypsy people get documents, gain literacy, and break down the racial barriers that keep them separate. Maxim and his fellow missionaries work to share the gospel with these people, confident that God's word of hope and peace can break down some of the walls. One of the main focuses of missionaries to the gypsies are the gypsy children.

This is where we come in: it's our job to socialize with these kids, teach them games and practice English with them. I'm down with playing with kids all day as a job.

When we first drove up, they all ran up to shake our hands and introduce themselves. We clearly looked American, so they began practicing what little English they knew on us and they've even been trying to teach us Russian.

We've played many different kinds of games: soccer, baseball, run-through-the-bushes-yelling, clinb-a-tree, etc. etc. etc. They are eager to spend time with us, and don't even seem to mind that we don't understand any of the Russian words they are saying. They just want to be listened to. 

After they found out that I know how to ride horses, many of them asked me to teach them how. Which is hard without a horse around. They have been scrawling out notes to us on the back of postcards donated from Clanton, Alabama. Home to the largest peach. 

When I arrived at camp this evening, after a short break to go to the market for fruit, they ran up to me with pictures of unicorns and notes about how awesome I am. My ego grew. I was the girl who rides unicorns to them. How awesome is that? Michele...tamer of wild unicorns and all around nice girl. My team was a little jealous of my new mystical status, but they recovered quickly.

We will be hanging out with these kids for a few more days and then we'll spend some time touring Odessa and the Black Sea before we head to another kids camp in the city. It seems like a pleasant three weeks to spend with some adorable kids. 

It wasn't hard for our host family to spot us; with our round faces and camping backpacks we appeared like a herd of misplaced American turtles. They whisked us away in a white van to the house where we were staying. And thus marked the beginning of our Ukraine adventure.

I need to take a moment to describe our host home.

Autsanna is the driver. She speaks no English, but graciously agrees to drive us all over town in her white van. Sometimes with traditional Ukrainian tunes blaring over the speakers, we weave through traffic. The van tends to have trouble shifting gears right at the most appropriate times, such as when we are in the middle of a two lane road with cars speeding at us from both sides. But we always get out of it, sometimes with our fellow Ukrainian passengers giggling at us, the gasping and shrieking Americans. Autsanna also heads up the cooking committee, which has made sure we are well-fed here. We have been eating just about every two or three hours so far, full meals, which we attempt to finish each time because we don't want to offend. Two days later and we are waddling around stuffed to the brim with meat, bread, dill and mayo of many varieties and salted pig fat, the Ukrainian national dish.

Maxim is our main host. He has worked in the gypsy ministry we are involved with for two years. He knows little English, but we whack through a thicket of laborious conversation with him. It is obvious that he cares about us and wants to make sure all is well. He made sure we knew not to "make a tragedy" when we descended the steep staircase from our sleeping quarters and he worried about us when we didn't come home before dark. Whenever work or language barriers become difficult, Maxim always tells us "don't worry, be happy" in his thick Eastern European accent.

Anya is our translator. Slender and calm, she descended on a scene of mass language mayhem at the end of one day of trying to communicate with no translator and no knowledge of Russian and saved the day. She is willing and ready to help and fill us in on what's going on in the conversations around us.

The house is also packed with other Ukrainian missionaries who are friendly and happy, but no little English. We all grin at each other and chop our way through communication. It really is amazing how little language is needed to make a friend.

Other things to know about our humble abode:

-A rooster in the next door neighbor's yard crows every hour or so. Well, I'm not sure if I can call it a crow. It's more like a guffaw/death shriek. He has interrupted many a debrief session or naptime thus far.

-The house is guarded by a big white polar bear of a dog. Who is accompanied by a small white cat who finds it necessary to pee on our things. So far he's got Stephanie and Jonathon, we have reason to believe that he plans to pick us all off one by one.

So, all in all, I couldn't ask for a more friendly and quirky environment. I think I wouldn't choose any other way to immerse myself in Ukrainian culture for three weeks. 

On the plane ride overseas I kept thinking about how I was in a giant steel tube hurdling itself farther and farther from my home, my family, my boyfriend and my comfort zone. I realized this wasn't a good way to look at things (and maybe a tad melodramatic) so I tried to find a way to sleep while still sitting in the upright position without also making it impossible to move my neck for the next three days. 

Airplane food and foreign films seem to be my only memories of the next ten hours or so. My mind was sucked into the travel vortex and all that remained was a hollow shell of a headache.

We landed for layover in Paris. I was struck by how small everything looked out the airplane window, like a little toy city with a toy Eiffel Tower. I would have liked to try and practice my French in the airport, but instead I curled up in a ball and shivered and slept on the cold floor until it was time to board our next flight.

When we finally arrived at Kiev, we immediately went to the central train station to catch our train to Odessa. At the train station we searched for food. The language barrier turned us off at first. But eventually we enjoyed our meal.

At one point a man with a buzzed mullet tossed down his duffel and joined us. We were wary and kept a close eye on him, but began to try and chat while still remaining cautious. He knew very little English and we know even less Ukrainian/Russian. But we waved and gestured and stumbled our way through small talk. At the end, I am not certain whether he thought our names are Texas, South Carolina, Indiana and Florida, or if he understood that is actually where we are from.

Getting on the train was a long and difficult process because we couldn't read the ticket and all the conductors got mad at us in Russian, but eventually my team-mate Stephanie and I were shoved into a 4-person sleeper cabin. Below us were an attractive blonde girl and a middle aged man. They both spoke little to no English. They did their best to help with train protocol and etiquette by pointing and shaking their heads when we did something wrong and demonstrating what was right to do. It felt like I was in an awkward Wes Anderson movie full of colorful characters and abrupt but meaningful scene changes.

 I was relieved to finally get a chance to lie down. As I began to get drowsy, it occurred to me that I would have laughed in the face of anyone who had predicted this scenario for me a year ago. Who would have thought this up? I was letting go of everything I knew in order to venture into the unknown without any knowledge of the cultures I was crashing into and no idea what I was getting myself into. But maybe that's the fun part in the end? Eh, you only live once: might as well spend part of that life in a sleeper car in the Ukraine... The train rocked and hummed us to sleep and I didn't wake until a team-mate came to tell me we had reached the station in Odessa.