Traveling to Russia

Hello everyone! Well, first of all, we arrrived safely in Novosibirsk this morning at about 6:oo. Now for a rundown of what happened before that. We actually got to Raleigh in plenty of time. Amazing for us! :-p There were problems in NYC, so our plane was late leaving out of Raliegh. We had plenty of time, so it was OK. We were dissapointed that we didn't really get ot see much of NYC...just the skyline off in the distance from the airport window. As soon as we boarded the plane in Raliegh, you could tell we were headed for a different place. The plane was full of many types of people speaking many languages. JFK airport is like being in a foreign country already. We felt like real NC country folks trying to find our way around. We finally located the Aeroflot check-in desk, where everyone was chattering away in Russian. As soon as we walked on the plane, the greeting was "Zdras-tvoy-tyeh". (hello) All the announcements were in Russian, then in English. It's a strange feeling to be the minority. Kevin has developed a new understanding for his Mexicans. We sat on the runway 2 hrs. before we took off for Moscow. We were expecting to get supper on the plane, so hadn't eaten yet. Were we ever starved! We finally ate around 11:00 that night. One neat thing about the Russians is they love hot tea. So after the meal is done, the stewardess' bring around hot tea for everyone. On your meal tray is plastic tea cup. After eating, we got as comfortable as you can on a plane, and slept. We got into Moscow about 2pm on Mon. After fumbling our way through passport control, we got to the baggage area, and no luggage. So after wondering around awhile, we went out through customs. There was Alex with our names on a sign. He finally found a lady to help, and she all at once said to come with her. She took us to our suitcases. Answer to prayer. We spent about 4 hrs. in a food court in the airport before we went to the other terminal to board our flight to Novosibirsk. Quite something to be left in a place where hardly any signs are English, and all we heard was Russian. We boarded our flight at 10:30pm. It was an absolutely huge plane--it could seat 350 people. We arrived in Novo at 5:30am. While we waited for Aleksey, a man came up and tried to tell Kevin we were to go with him. I was very skeptical about him, and all at once Aleksey aappeared and was introducing himself. The first man still was insisting we were to go with him. Who knows what would have happened to us! He brought us back to their flat, and we sacked out. Today has been really weird... hungry and sleepy at strange times. We'll be glad when we can go to bed and wake up properly. We haven't been able to access our e-mail, so if you've posted we haven't read them. But we can still send to the blog. Remember us tomorrow as it will be the BIG day.