Kiev.....that's in Ukraine

Soooooooooo for my internship I was given this totally awesome opportunity to go visit Kiev for the 55th General Assembly. After months of prep at the Brussels office, the time had finally come to go off into the world unknown (its a very exotic place.. no joke).

So i woke up at 5:30am on Tuesday to get myself all ready, set, go and made my way to the bus station at Schumann to catch the bus that goes to the airport... after getting lost (but only a little bit)I paid for my ticket and was off! I made it to the airport before any of my co-workers and stood in line waiting for them to arrive. Finally Charlotte and Miriam arrived and ditched Pawel who was M.I.A. and stood in the wicked long line for security. (Never again will I complain about airport security in the States). Anyway, we met up with everyone at our gate and boarded up to our first stop :Prague.

I wasn't doing too hotly in Prague(read: I became sick) so the original three hour made five hour layover was AWFUL except that a) this creepy Italian man was making a bad job of hitting on me and b) I meant Lucy who was one the Canadian reps on her way to Kiev as well. Lucy was very entertaining and she chatted with me the entire way there which is when things got interesting. We arrived at the airport which looked more like a bus station and nobody from ATA was there to pick us up. Lucy used her famazing Russian skills to ask around but still nada... so I called Pawel and Charlotte to see what was going on. They managed to get us a car and we drove the 45 minutes into town. By this point neither one of us had eaten since breakfast and were famished so we ate the the hotel's restaurant where I proceeded to get insulted by some locals for being American and wanting to take over everywhere.It was so fun to be insulted...not. Anyway no biggie but I was wicked tired to I called it a night.

Next morning Miriam and I got dressed and were ready to help but Charlotte told us she didn't need us right away so we thought we'd take the morning off to see the city. However, Pawel did so we went straight to work...... and that's what I basically did the remainder of my time in Kiev. I sat in on lectures, meetings, helped out board members, took notes and everyone's favorite....distributed reimbursements. I got to meet some awesome people, namely those of the Slovakian and Canadian delegations and on Thursday but it failed mostly cause I wasn't feeling it and then again on Friday and that was a huge success.

On Saturday morning we got to go on a hour and a half tour on Kiev before boarding the bus back to the airport. What I did get to see was absolutely gorgeous and a great incentive to go back someday to see it properly. I made it back to Brussels without a hitch and rested up the following day after my five-days of non-stop running around...but it was totally worth it!