Well, I (and the entire rest of the group) made it safely to Ukraine, and we now begin our first official tour day today. After a long travel day yesterday - 15 hours or so, including an hour long bus tour of the Paris airport to get to my terminal for the flight to Kyiv, I arrived on time at Boryspil Airport, and was quite happy to see my gold suitcase waiting for me on the carousel! I was in Terminal F, which is one of the newest - not THE newest, that was just for the recent EuroCup participants. But, for those who remember the old Terminal B (for bleh!) it is an amazing upgrade, and makes arriving in Kyiv a completely new experience from "the old days." As I settled in to wait for the arrival of the rest of the group, I found a lovely Italian restaurant in the terminal where I enjoyed a cheese pizza and some beloved Nestea Peach Iced Tea over REAL ice. A small thing, maybe, but those of you who have been to Europe know how rare ice is here. It took a while to discover that another member of Evangelion, alto Kris Koenigsburg had been sitting in the same restaurant for a couple of hours about three tables away from me.... The funny thing is that we never knew the other was there until I posted about my pizza on Facebook. Free WiFi in the airport finally connected us! A new day in Ukraine, indeed!
The rest of the group trickled through the doorway from Passport Control, and eventually we all boarded an air conditioned bus (again, a new day!) for the Hotel Rus. After checking in to our rooms, we enjoyed a lovely group dinner together in the hotel restaurant. What a great group of people this is. There we also met our Ukrainian singers who joined us for dinner. It was a wonderful reunion, as most of them are recent Christian Music Academy grads. It was wonderful to see them, and to once again greet Oleksandr "Sasha" Kreschuk, Vitaliy Bolgar, and Serhiy Bilokin, our Music in World Cultures (MIWC) ministry partners. Then, it was on to much needed sleep in an air conditioned room. Today we rehearse in Kyiv with our UKR singer contingent, then head for Cherkassy for the next two days. The adventures have just begin. Stay tuned! Slava Bohu.
