Leg 1: US to Moscow

Okay, I finally have access to a steady source of internet, aka, my laptop is finally hooked up to the world wide web! So here I am, in Russia, for just under 2 weeks and I already have a boat load to tell! I'll start at the beginning I suppose. I flew out of Portland and arrived in JFK just fine. I went to a hotel near the airport with all the other AFS students. It turns out that Sept 3rd was the regular departure date for France, Austria, South Africa, and Spain, so I got to meet all those kids. There was a crap load going to France and Spain. We stayed one night at the hotel and got a quick orientation from some AFS USA people where we talked about travel and safety and proper conduct during our stay and Russian culture, but of course we only skimmed the surface! There are 6 other Americans going to Russia, Phillip, Claire, Karla, Sara, Wilson, and Alex. We all got to hang out a lot in New York and got pretty tight. We get along really well. Everyone but Alex is in the same region, within an hour of each other, poor Alex. The picture above is of all of us in the JFK airport. From left to right, Alex, Sara, Me, Wilson, Phillip, Claire, Karla. See how happy we all look? Yeah, we weren't that perky after all that flying. hahaha

We then left for Frankfurt on the 4th. That flight was excruciating, though not as long as I thought, only about 6 1/2 hours. I had a crabby German lady sitting next to me, not fun. Anyway, we had about 5 hours in the airport in Frankfurt before we flew to Moscow. That flight was much shorter and much more pleasant. When we got to Moscow, we met AFS Russia reps and drove a few hours out of the city to a youth camp for another orientation. There are about 30 something students in Russia from the US, Italy, Germany, Thailand, Bosnia, Guatemala, and Bolivia. They had us do this weird activity where we cut the bottoms out of plastic cups and wore them like goggles and then walked around and had to count trees. It was supposed to represent tunnel vision and how we couldn't view things here with these restrictive goggles. I had my first taste of Russian food at this camp too. Honestly it wasn't that good. It was pretty boring except for the weird salads, which everyone tried but no one really ate! And I was put into a slight (but temporary) state of fear that I would die of dehydration because all they seemed to drink was tea! Hahaha. So on the 5th, we left the camp to begin our next leg of the journey; the train (dum dum dummmmmmm)