Well, after a VERY long 2 days of travel, we made it successfully to
Perm. Saturday began at 3:15am when we
awoke from our very comfortable bed (after about 3-4 hours of sleep). We went to the Pittsburgh airport where we
then traveled the quite easy 1 hour (6:00-7:10) flight to New York’s JFK
airport. Once at JFK, we got our
bearings and found the food court in the international terminal. We had 1 choice at 7:45 in the morning for
breakfast so McDonalds it was. We were
then in touch with Laurie’s parents who reported that Andrew slept until after
8:00 (of course he would sleep in on a Saturday morning for them).
We ended up hanging out in the food court for the majority of our 7 hour New York layover (“playing” on the computer and/or phones) so that we could eat lunch there as well before our long flight to Moscow. We timed things so that once we went through security again (because we had to exit the airport to enter a different terminal) and charged our electronics for a few minutes, it was time to get in line to board our long flight (left at 2:30pm).
We spoke to Andrew before our flight took off . He was, however, quite pre-occuppied with all of the "new" toys at Grammy and BupBup's to play with and the thoughts of going to the playground and Chuck 'E' Cheese later so we didn't get much more than a "love you". He did take the time to record a video saying "Hi Baby Sister, I love you!" for us to show her during the week :)
For the next 9 hours we were aboard an Aeroflot (Russian airline) airplane. Our plane was quite large and was equipped with individual TV sceens with a large choice of movies and games. Laurie watched 3 movies during the flight but John managed to "break" his TV trying to play poker so he listened to music. Neither one of us are big plane sleepers, but we were able to each get about 2 hours of sleep during the course of the flight. We landed in Moscow at 7:30am (11:30pm home time) and by the time we went through customs, collected our checked bags and rechecked them for our domestic flight to Perm, we had used up 1 1/2 hours of our 8 hour lay-over at that airport. We went through security and found our way to our own row of 4 seats by a window. The seats were quite possibly the most uncomfortable seats in the world but we were so tired that we both fell asleep slouched over using both our neck pillows and carryon bookbags as pillows. We are pretty sure that our necks and backs will never be the same but we were able to get 3 more hours of sleep and use up more of the time until our next flight. After grabbing a quick bite to eat at an Irish Pub in the aiport we headed to our gate for our last flight of the weekend.
After a fairly short (2 hour) flight to Perm, we arrived at 8:00pm (10:00am home time). The Perm airport is like nothing we have ever seen - to say it's the size of a Giant Eagle would possibly be a stretch. It looks like one of the first airports in the world that was never expanded or had any updates done. We were greeted there by our agency's Perm coordintor, Olga, and our Perm driver, Val. We were suprised to learn that Olga speaks no English so Val had to interpret everything to us (he on the other hand, speaks English very well). On the drive to our hotel, they told us that they would be back to pick us up at 8:30am for our appointment at the Ministry of Education (where we will get our official referral) and then it's off to the orphanage! Val told us that we will visit the orphanage once a day and that the time will vary from day to day based on their (Val & Olga's) schedule.
Well, we are off to get some sleep since we have an early and exciting morning ahead of us!
We ended up hanging out in the food court for the majority of our 7 hour New York layover (“playing” on the computer and/or phones) so that we could eat lunch there as well before our long flight to Moscow. We timed things so that once we went through security again (because we had to exit the airport to enter a different terminal) and charged our electronics for a few minutes, it was time to get in line to board our long flight (left at 2:30pm).
We spoke to Andrew before our flight took off . He was, however, quite pre-occuppied with all of the "new" toys at Grammy and BupBup's to play with and the thoughts of going to the playground and Chuck 'E' Cheese later so we didn't get much more than a "love you". He did take the time to record a video saying "Hi Baby Sister, I love you!" for us to show her during the week :)
For the next 9 hours we were aboard an Aeroflot (Russian airline) airplane. Our plane was quite large and was equipped with individual TV sceens with a large choice of movies and games. Laurie watched 3 movies during the flight but John managed to "break" his TV trying to play poker so he listened to music. Neither one of us are big plane sleepers, but we were able to each get about 2 hours of sleep during the course of the flight. We landed in Moscow at 7:30am (11:30pm home time) and by the time we went through customs, collected our checked bags and rechecked them for our domestic flight to Perm, we had used up 1 1/2 hours of our 8 hour lay-over at that airport. We went through security and found our way to our own row of 4 seats by a window. The seats were quite possibly the most uncomfortable seats in the world but we were so tired that we both fell asleep slouched over using both our neck pillows and carryon bookbags as pillows. We are pretty sure that our necks and backs will never be the same but we were able to get 3 more hours of sleep and use up more of the time until our next flight. After grabbing a quick bite to eat at an Irish Pub in the aiport we headed to our gate for our last flight of the weekend.
After a fairly short (2 hour) flight to Perm, we arrived at 8:00pm (10:00am home time). The Perm airport is like nothing we have ever seen - to say it's the size of a Giant Eagle would possibly be a stretch. It looks like one of the first airports in the world that was never expanded or had any updates done. We were greeted there by our agency's Perm coordintor, Olga, and our Perm driver, Val. We were suprised to learn that Olga speaks no English so Val had to interpret everything to us (he on the other hand, speaks English very well). On the drive to our hotel, they told us that they would be back to pick us up at 8:30am for our appointment at the Ministry of Education (where we will get our official referral) and then it's off to the orphanage! Val told us that we will visit the orphanage once a day and that the time will vary from day to day based on their (Val & Olga's) schedule.
Well, we are off to get some sleep since we have an early and exciting morning ahead of us!
1 comment:
Very exciting! Best of luck. We were originally in this region a couple of years ago but things were so slow our agency recommending switching. I'm glad to see things are moving along there so children can be matched with a family.
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