First Days

On May 21, Scott and I finally boarded the plane for Russia. We left from Dulles headed to London at 7:50am. It was a 7 hour flight and ran very smoothly. British Airways has fantastic food and we both tried to sleep as much as possible. The next flight was from London to Moscow and it's a 4 hour flight and it again, it was a great flight. By this time you've probably figured out that it's May 22 and we've been flying quite a long time. It's nice when the flights are chopped up and you can walk around in between times. It was 4:50am when we landed in Moscow and there wasn't a lot to do. Moscow is an interesting place to land because they have 4 airports and this makes for an interesting trip. You may land in one airport and depart from another. In our case, we didn't have to worry about that and we were very grateful. Our agency told us that couples need to have 4 hours when they land in Russia because of the infrastructure there. We only had to wait for 2 hours before our plane took off for Krasnodar. This time we were flying with Siberian Airlines. The planes were brand new and this made Scott very happy. We had heard some pretty bleak news about flying Aeroflot and we were happy to see those bright green flying machines! At 7:10am, we were off for our 2 hour flight and we were closer to seeing our daughter.

After picking up our luggage, we were off to find our Russian host family. We were greeted with a firm handshake from Anatoli, our driver (and husband to our interpreter, Valentina). He knew us right away, I guess we look very American-ha! Let me tell you at this point, Scott and I were in awe of the beauty of the women here. We were surrounded by tall women that looked as if they stepped out of a magazine-amazing! Anatoli took us to his car and we were off to meet Valentina. We barely made it to the car when he asked us why we weren't staying with his family. It was quite a shock to be greeted with this and we quickly were apologizing. It felt a little awkward after that and we managed to give a good explanation for staying in a hotel. Twenty minutes later, we were at Valentina's house and she presented us with a HUGE meal! We had no idea this was coming and we had just eaten on the plane! As new guests, we didn't want o offend her and we sat down to eat. We started with soup because each lunch meal begins that way in Russia. It was 90 degrees when we landed and I did not want to eat hot soup. Of course, we did and the soup was very good. Valentina is an excellent cook and I loved all of the soups she made for us throughout the week.

When we finished eating, we spoke briefly about our schedule for the coming week and she had Anatoli drive us to our hotel. Driving in Russia is CRAZY! Not one driver stays in their lane and they manage to make 6 lanes out of 2. The cars are tiny and look as if they could fall apart at any moment. I think Anatoli was one of the craziest drivers out there. He got us to places quickly and I could tell that he loves to drive. It took about 2 hours to get to our hotel because of the chaotic traffic. Anatoli helped us check in and we were pleased to finally fall into a nice bed for some much needed sleep.