Flight to Moscow

We met in the lobby at the Krasnoyarsk hotel at 4:30. After a long ride to the airport, we arrived, unloaded and went in to the lobby. We were so glad to have Yelena and Sergey with us. She took all our passports and tickets and checked us in. Fortunately, none of us had luggage that was overweight.

We walked through the doors to the right, put our shoes, coats and bags through the scanners, waved goodbye to Yelena and Sergey, and headed over to the holding tank (gate). It is hard to imagine what it feels like to be in a foreign land, not able to read or understand the language around you, and wonder if the overhead announcements are for you or for your flight. The area we were in was poorly lit, many people sitting very quietly all around. We were quite the oddity. We'd taken off our jackets and were talking and laughing a little. When the time came to board, we saw people stand up, so we did the same, stepping out into the night air, waiting en masse to board the plane.

We flew on Aeroflot. The plane was older, with very small seats, narrow aisles and very little storage space. Tim and I ended up with our 2 carryons on the floor talking up our foot space. O boy, we thought- 4 1/2 hours- we can handle it :0) Then, the lady in front of me put her chair back. It was quite a humorous moment. I actually could breath down her neck by leaning forward 5 or 6 inches. I thought about laying my head on her seat to sleep.

They served a hot "lunch" on the plane around 8am Kras time. When they came to serve the food, the stewardess made the woman put her seat up- she wasn't able to put the food on my tray, since the woman was in my lap.;0) Though restless, the flight was uneventful.

As we followed everyone off the plane and wound through the terminal we were praying we were headed the right way and would soon find our luggage and Philip, who would be taking care of us. We arrived at the baggage claim area, and after a few minutes, a gentleman came up to us and said, "Hello, are you flying in from Krasnoyarsk?" It was Philip. Apparently, we are very easy to pick out from the Russian crowd :)