After many a toil and trouble, we have finally made it successfully to St. Petersburg! We left Washington yesterday around 5:15 pm to fly to Frankfurt. I ended up being seat buddies with our RD, which was actually pretty useful because I got to ask him about the program and the trip and such. Plus we harmonized to the engine before we took off, so that was some quality bonding time.
The 7-and-a-half hour flight wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. I watched Paranormal Activity just to see what all the fuss was about. Throughout almost the entire movie, I thought it was kind of creepy, but not as scary as I'd heard it described - until the end. I won't ruin it for anyone that has seen it, but I'm pretty sure I scared everyone around me with my sudden jerk-and-gasp gesture.
The transfer to the flight to St. Petersburg was pretty uneventful - there were definitely a lot fewer people on that flight and the food was much fresher though (german breakfast - hoorah!) The real drama came when we arrived and found that all but about 5 or 6 of the group had a missing checked bag. So we all had to go into this intimidating closed room to meet with a Russian woman to describe our bag to her - and her english wasn't so great so right away we were forced to start practicing our Russian. We still don't have our bags yet, but they SAY that they are usually good about it getting it to us in the same day... but it is already 8:05 and no knocks yet..
We got money and dinner (blini and crab salad and tea for about $3!) today, but haven't had time to do too much else - and not everyone has warm enough clothes for a walking tour of the city yet.. Cross your fingers they come soon... I took a few rough pics of the hotel and the city.. I kind of thought that the stereotypes about all the fur coats and fur hats and stone faces were an exaggeration, but from what I saw today, they are not at all!
Promise to have better pics tomorrow!
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