We're here! (Moscow Trip 1 - Day 1)

We made it to Moscow around 10:30 this morning... not without some fun though!!

We got to the airport, tried to check-in on the self-service kiosks only to realize we wouldn't be able to because we had to have our visas checked. We got in line... a very long line and started to panic a bit. We had about an hour and 45 mins before our flight was supposed to leave. Some lady that works for Delta was pulling people off the BACK of the line to send them to other stations with less of a wait. One time she took 5 sets of people and we were the 6th. We got our tickets and made it to security about an hour prior to departure time, got through security and made it to our gate with 10 minutes to spare. GO US!

So here's where the fun starts. We're on the plane getting all comfy and a man comes on. He was acting rather odd. Had his stuff all over the place and when the girl in the seat next to him came to sit down he had to move his stuff. He was very confused and just started rambling. Keith and I were watching him pretty closely. Okay, I was probably staring.

He started to pull the "pleather" on the seat in front of him out from above the tray table and was trying to stick his fingers up underneath and pull at the cushioning to rip it apart. The girls that were supposed to sit next to him have already gotten their stuff and moved. It comes time to depart and the captain is backing the plane up. Well, this guy won't sit down. He goes up into the section in front of us (his seat was in the row next to ours) and starts talking to someone. The flight attendant keeps telling him to sit down and he rambles on about how he won't and he has to get something out of the overhead bins, but he never does. Now there are three flight attendants trying to get him to sit. They threaten to pull the plane back up to the terminal and he finally sits down.

Keith is freaked, I'm freaked. This guy spoke fluent Russian and perfect English. So I look out the window and see we're pulling back up to the gate. They disarm the doors and a security guy comes on to get the guy off the plane. He starts refusing, then starts crying and won't get his stuff. I was SO impressed with the security guy. About 5- 10 minutes later they finally told the guy if he didn't grab his stuff right now he was going to be arrested. After repeating that about 5 more times he took everything and left but not before conversing loudly about how he's never going to see his father again. I felt so much better that he was gone but my CSI husband decides to share his thoughts with me. "What if it was all a diversion and he left something on the plane". Oh goodness gracious.... wrong thing to say to me. So, we tell the flight attendant that he was pulling apart the seat, they came and looked, had emptied out the luggage on the bottom of the plane and about 15 minutes later we pulled back from the gate again.

Needless to say, we were VERY impressed with how Delta handled the situation. They came on the announcements and said that they had to allow a passenger off due to some medical concerns and it turns out the guy was saying he couldn't sit down because of some nerve disorder or something. It was nuts. The rest of the flight was absolutely fine though! I slept a bit and watched 27 Dresses. Keith didn't sleep a wink and watched The Golden Compasss, The Bucket List and I am Legend.

Once we got to Moscow, our translator "K", met us and we headed to the exchange office to exchange some money, then to the grocery store and because we had a little bit of time before we could check into our apartment, we went to Red Square. It was amazing to see St. Basil's since I've been staring at it on my computer desktop for many months! We took a quick tour, walked through GUM (a huge fancy mall) and then headed to the apartment.

We checked into the apartment and by that time sleep deprivation had hit both of us. We planned on taking a 3 hour nap and then getting up and facing the world. 7 hours later, we woke up! It was about 9:00pm and was bright outside. Apparently the sun doesn't go down until about 10:30, yet it rises around 6:00/6:30! I made some soup (I forgot to bring Peanut butter ARGH!) and Keith had a mystery meat sandwhich. He claims it's balogna. I'm not willing to find out if he's right.

Now here we sit... just like at home with both of us on our laptops. Unfortunately, my laptop charger was left at home so we'll have to share laptops in the next few days. :-)

Tomorrow we're going to go explore and try to get our bearings. We're going to be meeting Karyn & Norm, Dana & Aaron and hopefully Ron for dinner. We're going to My My (pronounced Moo Moo) for dinner. It's a Russian buffet of sorts. Hopefully someone can point out something for me to eat. I'm not a fan of trying new things. The good news is, I will hopefully lose a few pounds on this trip! :-)

Hope all is well with everyone. I'm going to try my hardest to keep up on blogs even if it just means reading them and not commenting until I get home. Time to leave you with some pictures!