Prieviet (Whatever) from Novokutzhnik (I think)

Captain's Log - 10:37pm (Sunday), which is 9:37pm, Saturday in Nashville, 7:37pm, Saturday in California, and 8:37pm, for those of you logging on in Provo, Utah, not that we know anyone in Provo but we figured we were on a roll.

Brandy finally let me steal the keyboard for one blog so I figured I'd do the first one from Russia.

Has anyone seen the Seinfeld where they did the entire show backwards, starting at the end and working their way back to the beginning? Well, we're going to try that just for a second...

42 hours of travel later, we checked into our hotel. Goodnight everyone....just kidding.

So we left Nashville at 10:35am on Friday for a two and a half hour flight to New York. That flight was great and we actually flew over Atlantic City on approach and saw a ton of beautiful houses. We both looked at each other and said, move number 18? :-) It did have a beautiful golf course that I was trying to figure out a way to sneak in a quick round before the flight to Moscow.

That didn't work...so we had a two hour layover in New York and then it was on to Moscow. The flight, which was 9 and a half hours was pretty good. No turbulence and the flight over the ocean went very quickly for us. And Wes, you were right, we did fly over Greenland to get ther.

I did get stuck behind a guy that was a mix between John Lennon and Buckwheat. His hair was very large and blocked the entire movie screen. I had to sit in Brandy's lap to be able to watch it. I mean how am I supposed to watch "Spiderman 3" and "Meet the Robinsons" in these conditions?!! Are you kidding me?!!! Out of all the movie choices there are, these are the two we get stuck with?! But I digress.

So we land in Moscow and spend about 20 minutes in customs, because Brandy picked the wrong line....ouch, don't hit me. O.k. I picked the wrong line and got the slowest passport checker in Moscow. And to slow it down even more, because we don't "spreakin da Russian" (Madagascar anyone?), we didn't know to fill out the customs form. So after losing a game of rock paper scissors of who would go first through the line, I lost and Brandy went first. The woman was nice enough to fill out the form for her, but when it came my turn, I think she was mad at her boyfriend or husband or guy she met at the bar last night, because she throws the form at me and makes me fill it out myself. It took me about three minutes to even understand where to put everything because, once again, I don't "spreakin da Russian."

So we both make it through customs and thankfully our luggage all showed up. Let the fun begin.

We were given instructions before we left by CHI of what to do next. So I pull them out after getting our luggage and read them before carrying on. They said, go through the double doors,
"push through the taxi drivers" and wait for Natalia, our rep on the ground in Moscow. No big deal right?

It wasn't really but when they say "push through the taxi drivers", they aren't kidding. They want to take your luggage worse than a homeless guy after a $20 bill. We made it through and thus the waiting begins. Natalia wasn't there yet because, as we soon discovered, the traffic in Moscow is worse than L.A. to Santa Monica in Rush hour. (Dean gets it) Or Nashville to Murfreesboro at 5pm :-) (Times 5,000!!!!)

Natalia shows up after we've waited about an hour and a half and she is very nice. She also tells us that there is another family showing up from Atlanta. Bill and Tara arrive and after introducing ourselves, we discover they just flew from Atlanta, they're actually from Nashville. They were on the plane behind us and were following us across the ocean 10 minutes behind. Pretty funny.

So we take our luggage and meet our driver, Vitaly, and load into the van. Moscow is very big and developed but is very industrial. We also find out, it's the most expensive city to live in, in the world.

Natalia informs us we would be catching a flight later Saturday night to Novakutzhnik (whatever) at 10:20pm, while Bill and Tara would be staying the night in Moscow and going to their region on Sunday afternoon.

We opted not to check into a hotel for the 7 hours we had to kill and just stored our bags in Bill and Tara's room. It's only 7 hours right!?!?!

We walked around the area of the hotel, which is in the heart of Moscow, just down from a huge park with a large carousel and a long walkway with benches, pefect for people watching, and listening to Brandy's commentary on their interesting choice of outfits. We did think we saw, Shirley Maclain in Steel Magnolias, not from In Her Shoes.

Bill and Tara and Brandy and I did find a Mexican (yes Mexican) restaurant to have lunch in. Thank God they had pictures on the menus so we could order a Chicken burrito and a chicken quesadilla, which were both pretty good. But no chips and salsa was ever served....boo!!!

It's now 4pm and we have 4 hours to kill before being picked back up by Vitaly and taken to a different airport in the Southern (y'all) region of Moscow. What are we going to do?

We found a couple of couches in the lobby of the hotel, which by the way is very nice. It's a Holiday Inn but it very ritzy. We will be staying there on the way back.

I somehow fell asleep on the couch (maybe because I had two hours of sleep) and woke up to find my computer and Brandy's camera sitting next to me on the couch but no Brandy. I'm not even sure where I was but it definitely wasn't where my dream I just had said I was.

Anyways, Brandy comes back about 15 minutes later and says, "I found another couple from Birmingham sitting in the business center. Come meet them."

Josh and Lindsay are kind of in the same situation as us....they had time to kill before being picked up to go to their region, Vlad.

So we get talking to them and the next thing I know, Brandy is waking me up and Josh and Lindsay are gone. I fell asleep in the middle of talking to them and they were gone. Sorry guys, no offense.

Fast forward now....it's 8:00pm, we're both laying on "our couches" in the lobby when Vitaly shows up, right on time. Brandy, who had fallen asleep, wipes the drool from her mouth and we get in the car, and within 10 minutes are back asleep again.

Now here's where the real fun begins...we get to this much smaller airport, about the size of the one in Long Beach, in 1985, at 9pm for a 10:20 flight. Ha!

Vitaly takes us in and looks at the screen, which IS in Russian, and says, "uh oh, your flight is delayed 3 hours. "

So when we were supposed to be checking in for a 10:20 flight at 9, we were now told to check in at Midnight for a 2pm flight. Great!!! Five hours in an airport, where we QUICKLY find out, we're the only people in the whole place (trust me, Brandy asked everyone), who spreakin da English.

So after taking turns taking naps, so that we could each check the screen every 30 minutes, I took the chance to take a real estate class that I needed to take, and Brandy caught up on her BSF and homletics.

In one of the "every 30 minutes" checks, I now discover our flight is delayed another hour, to 3:10 AM...checking in at 1:10 AM.

We go down to check in and notice many people have saran wrapped their entire luggage. Great, were we supposed to do this? And because nobody "spreakins da English", we've become concerned if this is required.

We decide not to and at 2:30AM finally get on the shuttle which drives 10 minutes to take us to our plane.

Next adventure....the plane was pretty decent sized, like a Southwest plane, but they've not taken the liberty to think about anybody over 5 foot 8.

Let me back up a second...we take one step on the plane, and you know that smell you get when you walk into an Indian or Thai restaurant? You know the food's good but you kinda want to throw up from it? Try that smell on an airplane at 3 in the morning, for four hours. Wow!

Brandy was trying to convince me it was the meal we were going to get, I told her to look around and see if she still thought that. I had to bury my nose inside a shirt that had been worn for 2 straight days with no shower, that could probably find it's own way to Russia, to get some "relief" form the overbearing stench.

Then it was time to sit down in my seat to quickly find out, I was either going to have to stand throughout the flight in the captain's closet, or take a hacksaw to my legs, right below the knees. So we asked a flight attendant, who you guessed it, doesn't spreakin da English, if we could move to the front bulkhead row by pointing and gesturing to my lower legs. She walks up there and throws all the flight attendants stuff to another row so we could move, which was awesome because there is now way in hell I would've made four hours like that.

Fast forward again...the flight was great and we land at, adding another 4 hours for the time change, at 11 am, pushing the chickens and goats off the runway as we land. We're not in Kansas anymore Toto. Boy, when Neil gets older and starts talking back to us, I'm going to remind him of "our labor" to having him. But it's all worth it.

The plane is coming to a stop and the flight attendant is giving instruction (in Russian) overe the P.A. system. When it stops, we are the only ones to stand up. Quick thinking tells us, she probably said, stay seated, it's going to be a few minutes before the shuttles can get through the chickens to come out and pick us up off the plane.

Finally, everyone gets up and works our way to the buses. One last beef about the plane, as I'm getting off, I nail my head on the doorway, because once again, the plane is built for those 5'8" and under and I'm half asleep and don't notice the height of the door.

The weather is crisp and cool but very beautiful. Brandy keeps saying this reminds her of Muldova, for the two of you reading this that may have been there.

We get to the "terminal" and meet our translator, Natasha, who is celebrating her birthday today and has already thanked us for giving her the best gift ever....not having to get up at 4 am to come pick us up, instead being able to sleep in until 10 because of our 6 hour delay in the airport. Happy freaking birthday to you Natasha.

Our luggage, once again, showed up and we were on our way to a 30 minute car ride to the hotel. She did explain to us the saran wrap was just for protection from weather and other suitcases. One other side note, Natasha did say our boy is very cute and sweet and said if he was a little older, she'd date him. That gets us more excited about tomorrow when we get to meet him. She said he has my eyes and a lot of Brandy's features.

The drive is simple and along the way we see little villages where people live in pretty poor environments. We should all be thankful for what we have in the U.S. Natasha also tells us the main industry and source of employment in Novokutzscnek (whatever) is coal mining. She says it's actually a pretty "rich" town because of this.

The town is very developed from what we expected, has a lot of shopping, and the hotel is pretty nice and clean. We get there at 11:30 am, Natasha takes us to our room and within 30 minutes, we have taken a quick shower (that water smelled great, between the combination of body funk and the smell of the water itself) and have fallen asleep, which is noon.

We wake up at 9 pm and realize, oh crap, it's 9pm and we haven't eaten. We call Natasha and ask here where we should go. She says there are two restaurants in the hotel and are both good. We decide on one, thankfully the menu was in both English and Russian, so we were able to order a pretty good chicken dinner with rice plate.

And now, here we are, blogging for the first time at 11:45pm at night, 10:45am Sunday morning Nashvegas time.

We are getting set to go to the room, put together some list of questions for the orphanage doctor about little Neil and then go to bed, because we are being picked up at 9:30am to go and meet him for the first time.

So until tomorow when we can blog again, good night and good luck.

Love,
Coby and Brandy

P.S. We have pictures and video to share but can't upload becaus we are using a computer in the business center, not our laptop. So we'll share them when we can.