Safely in Stavropol... what a day and a half

It's now 1:10pm on Sunday and we are safely in Stavropol. We just returned from the orphanage... more on that later.

We arrived last night around midnight local time after an extremely long and tough day of travel. Lisa was ill Thursday night and Friday morning, but we could not afford to let our court date slip by... we've been told that if you do, you might be lucky to get another one in six months... maybe. We left Columbus on-time. Thanks so much to Jen and Rich for their shuttling us to the airport. We had A LOT of turbulence coming into Atlanta and Lisa was pretty green in color by the time we landed. Fortunately, she recovered well. Our Atlanta to Moscow (Sheremetyevo) flight was aided by a good tailwind, so it was a little bit shorter than planned and that was a good thing. Luke became pretty airsick and the last couple hours on the plane were really hard for him. Lisa didn't feel great for that leg of the trip, but she was doing a lot better by that time.

Once in Moscow, we had an 8.5 hour layover with our next flight out of Vnukovo airport... a 20 - 40 minute drive. Our driver (Vlad) was the same one we had for the last trip and in whose apartment we had stayed. He let us know that we could meet with our Moscow coordinator (to pick-up our domestic flight tickets and pay the fees) and then go straight to the airport, or, he could give us a driving tour of the city first... for $60. After having sat in Vnukovo airport for way too many hours on our last trip, we opted for the tour. As tours go, it probably wasn't worth $60, but it was far better than just sitting in the airport. We stopped by an open air market where Vlad introduced us to his friend... who happend to have one of the tables with items for sale. We didn't have any room in the luggage, so we'll shop on the return leg. We also stopped by "Victory Park" where we took the photo of the kids climbing on a couple of Russian Battle Tanks.

Our flight from Moscow to Stavropol was a real concern. Just after we got to the Vnukovo airport, it started snowing. Hard. Really Hard. We probably had 2 inches of snow in 60 minutes or less. A lot of flights were delayed, including ours. We had gotten all the way to the boarding call before they delayed it. We prayed pretty hard that it would go through because there is only one flight to Stavropol, and it's at 7:45pm and it only goes 5 days per week. It would have really been a challenge to stay the night. Fortunately, we boarded (at another gate) about 30 - 40 minutes later. The plane was completely covered in snow. They got the runway plowed and our plane de-iced and we made it out of Moscow. What a relief.

I had a little adventure in the airport in Stavropol. I made what turned out to be a VERY silly mistake by taking a picture of Lisa and the kids just outside the door before we went into the terminal from the plane after landing. The nice fellow in the soldier uniform informed me that photos of sensitive areas are prohibited... he asked for my documents, and he confiscated my passport. Fortunatlely, our interpreter (also named Vlad) had just arrived. Lisa and the kids waited with the bags while we went to speak to the security officers. After a lot of cajoling, Vlad was able to convice the head security man that I am not a threat and that he could return my passport. Keeping it would probably be more political trouble than it would be worth. It seemed to our interpreter to be a really good idea if I would give the security man a "gift" to thank him for not filling out all the paperwork. I could leave it on the sofa in the security office. It was a 1000 ruble lesson to reinforce that this is not America.

We finally got to bed around 1:00am, after 34 hours of being on the go.