Backtracking

As promised, here's some info about our trip to Russia.

We got an early start the Monday after General Conference and Jeff got up to take us to the airport (thanks Jeff for getting up at 5:30). Here we are at the airport with everything we thought we'd need for 18 months. It looks like a lot, but we'll need all that--really! At least we think we will. We will be buying Siberian winter outer wear (coats, hats, boots, scarves) here in the fall. I folded up my U/U fleece blanket and put it in a pillow case and tucked it in a suitcase. When we got to Moscow and the weight allowances were less than for international flights, I took it out of the suitcase and carried my "pillow"--an acceptable additional carry on! It's been used a lot since we got here and it lets the American Elders know where our loyalty is, so I'm glad we brought it.

We had a full and very bumpy ride to Atlanta. We were concerned about our tight connection for our flight to Moscow, but made it just fine. It was both a relief and a disappointment when we got close to the gate and started hearing people speak Russian--a relief that we made it to the right gate in time but a disappointment when we realized we were hearing Russian but not understanding ANY of it. We wish we'd had more time to learn more Russian before we left. Fortunately that plane wasn't very full and we could change seats and stretch out and sleep, as much as you can stretch out with two seats each on a row. Dave stayed on our exit row (thanks MJ) and I moved across the plane to an empty row. Anyway, it's amazing how time "flies" when you change 13 time zones! (Still, it was a long overnight flight.)

We arrived in Moscow and were taken to the American Embassy where we arranged for second passports to be used for our visas every three months. As I said in my "Busted" post, we need to keep our passports with us at all times, and they need to send our passport to Finland for visas, so a second passport is required and legal. Then we got a brief tour of the Church mission offices in Moscow and were dropped back off at the airport where we had a 6 1/2 hour wait for our flight to Novosibirsk. Because we checked in so early, we got the exit row--again. About 45 minutes before our flight, a welcome sight showed up--a Sr. Couple who spoke English! It was McCauleys, the office couple in our mission. We'd talked to them several times on the phone and through emails and felt like we knew them. Then we got a little sleep on our 5-hour flight before we landed about 6:00 am. This was our second night in a row of trying to sleep on a plane.

President Trejo met our flight, took us to a nice hotel about a block from the mission offices and told us to get some sleep. Our room had blackout shutters and we were able to sleep very well. That night we had dinner with the Trejos and McCauleys and then got briefed with a mountain of information of what we needed to know. They said we seemed MUCH more alert than most arriving missionaries. When we told them we'd taken Ambien to sleep on the plane to Moscow, they said that was a good idea--they took sleeping pills after they arrived instead of sleeping on the way.

The next day they put us on the train and we arrived in Barnaul and you know the rest!