Our arrival in Sheremetyevo Airport was very nice; cool with temp around 50F. We were last off the plane due to where our luggage was in the overhead but that made little difference as our experience in July helped us make our way to a 'moving' passport line. We located our checked bags (3) and headed out to meet Violet. Our first surprises awaited us. Lana was holding a sign: BUIU. Thus, we didn't have Violet again as we had hoped, but Lana was as informative and helpful as Violet was in July. She was a blonde about Carol's height and as slender as she also. So, we met Lana and she directed us to the parking lot where Vladimir and his large-scale van awaited. It was then we found out we were not going to Domodedovo airport for the K'grad flight ... it would be at Sheremetyevo Terminal 1 which was a 10 minutes ride to the other side of the Sheremetyevo complex where Delta comes in.
We also learned that the flight time was 6:10pm. It was now 12:05pm. Hmmm. What to do with 6 hrs between flights. Lana told us we were going to Terminal 1. So we went.
Terminal 1 was pretty busy. It had few seats to sit in but Lana coerced a few Russians to buch up a bit and sat Carol and Christina together. Then she located another seat about 3 aisles over for me to sit ... in the middle of Russian humanity. Lana basically said we should sit and make ourselves comfortable (for the next 4 hrs!). So we did.
An hour or so passed before a seat directly across from Carol opened up so I could move closer. I had no 'close calls' where I was nor was I uncomfortable. They all knew we were not Russian. But it was not an issue. The 4 hrs was a pretty long wait considered we just got off a plane that we'd been sitting on for nearly 10 hrs. Christina was getting pretty weary at this point. But we took the opportunity to observe the culture or at least I did. Christina and Carol were nodding out a time or two before 4pm.
We were finally motioned by Lana to pass through security, a place she could not pass due to the new restrictions since the plane and school disasters in the past two weeks. We passed ok and proceeded to Line 20 where we would pick up our boarding passes. The attendant did not understand my request of 1 checked bag for each ticket. I could only place one piece of luggage on the scale at a time so she marked the first and stapled the luggage ticket to my ticket vouchers and said 'Go to Gate 11.' I reminded her I had one piece of luggage for each ticket, please check them. She looked a little annoyed at me and pulled the first piece forward allowing me to place the second on the scale. She repeated the procedure, lining through the original receipts, then announced 'Go to Gate 11.' So, I had failed to make myself clear. So I tried again. She says 'You have another piece of luggage?' 'Yes, I do.' She was clearly annoyed at this point. She pulled the second piece forward allowing me to place the third on the scale. She repeated the procedure, again lining out the previous line-out, then points to the area where Gate 11 is located. I said 'Thank-you.' :-)
We waited for an hour at Gate 11 before we boarded a bus to ride over to our TY-154b aircraft, practically identical to the ones that were blown up just two weeks ago tomorrow. We had an uneventful trip with clear skies after a long delay on awaiting departure. We learned later that new rules were in place for arrivals/departures due to the bombing of the aircraft two weeks ago. K'grad airport was anything but busy. We landed as the only aircraft (Flight 761) to be attended to and we were 15 minutes late.
Our next surprise awaited. Lenna and Constantine were not our interpreter and driver this trip: now introducing Natasha and Misha (Natalia and Michael). Natasha is a talker; there's no wondering why she pursued being an interpreter. Misha is as quiet as Constantine was and drives a better car for us: Audi station wagon; more space, better ride and better pick-up. Our luaggage was too much for the wagon so we held our carry-ons and Natasha had to hold one of our red pull-alongs. We proceeded to The Turtle in K'grad and met Alexander (of Russian agency) outside. It was a joyful reunion, he as glad to see us and we him. They have been worried for the adopting parents due to the violence in Russia of late. We assured him we were not as worried as our family and friends! Alexander had moved our reservation from Rm 302 to Rm 101 which in his estimation was bigger. We met briefly in Rm 101, just enough to set a schedule for Monday the 6th and Alexander departed. I then had the clerk let me view Rm 202 (Rm 302 was occupied) and Rm 204. Carol chose Rm 202 as our best option and we immediately moved upstairs. Rm 204 had a king bed while Rm 101 did not and there was three times the space in the bedroom portion of 202. However, the sitting area was only 1/2 as big. But, the boys will be sleeping in our bedroom, not the sitting room where Christina will be; thus, we decided to move.
We then ordered dinner for two (Christina was out cold the first 15 min in the room) and I tried to get online via the basement PC. This was a Win98 machine with 32 Meg of RAM. It had dialup service but 1/2 of what was on-screen was the Russian alphabet. The browser was not up-to-date with latest encryption standards so I was unable to login to my Earthlink eMail account. Then the modem stopped working altogether. I was tired and couldn't fiddle with it any. I was off to bed, finally, after about 32 hrs being mostly awake (I did catch a couple of 15-20 min naps on Flight 30). Our long awaited travel day was at its close. We give thanks for the safe journey and hope everyone reading these notes were not too worried for us. It is a LONG way to Russia and many things could have happened to make things tense or worse for us; all can relax now as we've reached our destination and look forward to seeing the boys tomorrow.
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