So That’s What Happened to Him!

Back by popular demand….me! :-)
Well we made it to Novokuznetsk where the local time is 8:44 am, Monday the 10th.
Let me first explain the title of this blog. We landed in Moscow and walked off the plane on the tarmac and you’ll never guess who was pulling bags off….give up? Yup it was Milli, or was it Vanilli? Which ever one is still alive, it was him.
All I could keep singing in my head was, “Baby, don’t you lose my luggage.” (Any Rob and Fav fans out there?)
All things being said, this trip has started out much better than the last one, for the most part.
We woke up Saturday morning to the snow storm of the century. Nashville was blanket with 1 to 3 to 6 inches of snow, depending on which weathercaster you were listening to.
This was a bit concerning to us because we weren’t sure how this would affect plane travel, knowing our layover in Atlanta was 2 ½ hours before the flight left for Moscow.
And before getting to the airport, we had to drop Trot and Pebbles off at Trot’s biological (as Brandy calls them) parents house.
Thanks to our friends Jenny and Jonny who picked us up at 7:45 am and played dog taxi and airport taxi for us.
Well we get to the airport and notice our flight was still scheduled on time, which was 11:50 but I noticed the 8:50 Atlanta flight was delayed until 12:38pm. Being the investigative journalist that I am, this threw up a red flag.
When we checked in, we asked if our flight was on time and the attendant said, “yes” but just to be safe, put us on a flight that was scheduled to leave at 10:50. (Confused yet?)
Well it gets to be 10:40 and no sign of our plane yet. But our original flight shows up and the people board on it and it takes off. This stressed Brandy out a bit but the lady at the desk assured us we would be fine and we were. We actually left at 11:56 so we made it to Atlanta with plenty of time.
While waiting in Atlanta, we met a couple from Carrollton, Georgia, on the Alabama border, who was going on their second trip to pick up their son.
They actually sat behind us on the flight to Moscow so it was cool getting to know them.

Smell Story #1

We’re boarding the plane to Moscow, which surprisingly had a number of Russians on it J, and this dude who was already sitting on the plane when we boarded, jumps up between Brandy and me and grabs something out of the overhead bin.
His armpit was perfect level with my nose and quickly reminded me, as if I had forgotten, of the lack of deodorant use by the Ruskies.

Anyways, the flight was good minus a few turbulent moments where we thought there was a chance we were going to be fish food.
Our luggage arrived safely and we met our driver (same one). Since we had about 10 hours until our flight to our region, we booked a hotel where we were able to get about 6 good hours of sleep. This really helped.
Vadim picked us back up at 7 and took us to the next airport, which was about an hour drive.
More good news, our flight was on time and we only had about an hour to kill once we got through the check-in process.
We took off at 10:05 pm (2:05am in our region, 2:05 pm in Nashville, 12:05 pm in California) and landing to a snowy, windy Novokuznetsk at 6:05 am local time.
To our surprise (I thought she didn’t work with our agency anymore), Natasha was there to pick us up.
We arrived at our hotel, check into the exact same room we stayed in last time and went for our free breakfast.
While at breakfast, we met a couple who’s here from Germany and is with CHI as well. They are both doctors, one is a virologist, and are both going to court tomorrow as they complete their adoption of a 5 and 3 year old brother tandem.
We told them about our experience so far and about our first Andrey and they were able to really enlighten us about a lot of things that make a lot of sense.
It was a blessing meeting them and we plan to have dinner with them tomorrow night after they’ve gone to court.
So the plan now for us involves, sleep, eat and sleep again. We go to the orphanage tomorrow at 2:30pm for our first visit. Natasha says this Andrey is robust, a little chunk.
That’s all for now. We’ll update you after our first visit.

Love,
Brandy and Coby

P.S. Sarah, Brandy says your CDS you gave her were great and helped with the flights.