A day in Poland!

Day three Today we slept in. I mean hard slept in. Woke up to a knock at the door. Missed the awesome breakfast and then we were up and running all day. As soon as we woke up we dropped medical supplies that we transported from the USA to Solomon Carter Smith who is taking them into Ukraine. He is awesome. We then went to the hotel and picked up the refugee family from last night (5) that wanted to get to the train station. They loved the awesome breakfast and nice beds at the hotel.

We took them to the train station and booked them a train to Germany with their 2 rats, cat, and dog that had just had puppies (more on that later). Again Poland rocks. If you show a Ukrainian passport or biometric card (what you get if you don’t have a passport) you get free train tickets in Poland or to an adjoining country. How awesome is that. We covered the upgrade and bought one ticket for the girl in the group with a biometric passport because we didn’t know the process to get the free ticket and then didn’t want to wait in line to get the money back. The Polish people are honestly some of the best on the planet.

After the tickets were booked they wanted to go to the refugee center at the station to spend one night before leaving the next morning for Germany. The refugee center volunteers are amazing. They are attentive and helpful and very kind. Their dog had to go to the vet because it wasn’t doing very well before they left the next morning. We drove the mom and daughter to the vet to get the dog help. It was only a 6 minute drive but can you imagine doing that on your own without a driver, an interpreter, and being worried if your kids were ok. Servey Zasukha Sergey Zasukha was amazing as my partner. It just simply wouldn’t happen or would add immense stress writing if you did was going to die. The Polish vet was amazing! He did everything for free and got them right in when we arrived. He was kind and loving.

The 10 year old daughter was the dog whisperer in their family. She came with her mom and forgot her coat because she was so worried about the dog. Another funny animal moment occurred with the cat. We were in the train station refugee center and the volunteer was helping the family get situated. The girls asked for a litter box for the cat but the Polish volunteer was not following. He was trying to figure out why they wanted a box. But then it clicked and he said “oh a place for the cat to shit and piss”. Favorite quote of the day. Again Polish people are awesome. Their English is amazing and my Polish is zero still.

Then we had a miracle or tender mercy. Whatever you want to call it. We needed another van but had not been able to find one for 3 days. Rob Sturgill booked a car because we couldn’t find a van. We went to pick it up and the rental company had just closed. I found another rental car location 500m away so we walked there.

There wasn’t one there. But there was a large mall so we walked in and it connected to the train station. No car rentals there either. Ughh. So we decided to go to the airport. When we got there Rob got a car. As we were leaving we asked about a van that was in the parking garage. We ended up with it and tonight we were able to transport 12 refugees on a portion of the journey. Two families and one individual.

We dropped off the individual tonight and will get the other two families from their hotel to the airport and train station tomorrow. Both families were shocked we are doing what we are doing at no cost and extremely grateful. This is the starfish mission. Simply helping who you can. #liftwhereyoustand #polandrocks #typeofwood

I will never be the same.