Come Together

First weekend accommodations. Mine is the messy bed.

     I'm still feeling a bit jet-lagged today so this'll be a light post again. There are challenges every year and they're starting early for me. This year it's sleep. The past two nights I've gotten barely over half my usual amount of sleep. And for some reason, it was split into two parts each night. Even with the opportunity to sleep in way past the usual time. In lieu of that, I decided to take Sunday afternoon for myself and just relax. But back to the beginning.
     Sunday morning was again weird. I slept about 2 and a half hours after midnight. I then laid awake until around 7 when I slept for 2 more. For some reason, I just wasn't tired. But I got up around 9 to get ready for breakfast. I had the same thing as yesterday, three fried eggs with bacon (just thinly sliced strips of ham) with black tea. The only coherent thought I had before arriving at breakfast yesterday was "Tea, eggs." Apparently my groggy brain has good tastes. It was worth a repeat this morning. With breakfast down the hatch, we ran off to get to the marshrutka stop on time.      In a bit of good news, Phil made it here safely. He arrived about half-way through breakfast ordering. He spent a mostly sleepless night in Stockholm before boarding a plane to Kiev at 4:30AM. The team is finally coming together for the first time since we decided to go.
     I've been out of the loop with most things here. So it came as a surprise that Big City Church moved locations. They are still on the same street, just a little south of where they were before. But it was still good to worship with old friends again. The time before and after the service was filled with many conversations between old friends. They whole team (minus newbie Guilio) got to catch up with people they haven't seen in a wile. Funnily, Rich finally got to meet David Purvis in person. They've emailed back and forth a few times, including passing along teaching materials. But today was a first for the face-to-face.
     The post-worship lunch was a traditional Puzata Hatta. I skipped anything solid on account of not being hungry and just talked with the people at my table. Just a Coke and water. Don't worry mom, I did have a granola bar and some peanut butter crackers when I got back to the room. Since then, I've been trying to cool off (A/C no worky), relax, and write. The rest of the team went back out on the town to sightsee and stretch their legs. For some reason, Phil wanted to go back out despite barely sleeping in two days.
     As for tomorrow, it'll be an early morning (relatively). We need to be at the office by 8AM to be ready for student arrival at 9AM. It'll be a whirlwind of final preparations, testing all 21 students, packing and traveling before we even arrive. Fortunately our first English session isn't until after lunch. But that's for tomorrow to sort out.
     And at the beginning I said this'll be a light post. It seems I can't control my words even when I want to. I'm hitting the publish button before the team is back. But if one of them has a few minutes and wants to write about their afternoon in the city, I'll add it in here.