Russian Roulette

     Our time in Russia so far has been like roulette... I can never be quite sure what will happen next!  It also started with a tortuous day of travel, which didn't kill us but could have done us in!  Here is an overview of this past Monday:
* 6:30 am waking up to Deb at our door, ready to pick us up to drive to train station
* 7-8 ride on train to train station
* 8-8:30 waiting at train station
* 8:30-10 on train to Frankfurt
* 10-noon at airport, signing in, getting patted down at security (so farI've been patted down before every flight on GlobeTREK!  Maybe it has to do with my insulin pump)
* 12-2pm flight to Riga, Latvia.  I intended to read some of my textbooks on the flight, but I slept instead.  I woke up in time to see the Latvian coast before we landed.  It is beautiful!!!  It reminded me of God's power:  of His voice which breaks the cedars and of His power which preappoints the boundaries of the waters--thus far and no farther!  An interesting thought as I look at the meandering coastline.
* 2-3 An hour lost to time change.
* 3-5 in Riga airport.  We bought lunch, and some of us played card games
* 6-8 flight on Baltic Air from Riga to Moscow
* 8-9 hour lost to time change
* 9 Moscow airport!  We stopped for schwarma, and then boarded the train for our hotel.
* 10-12  Getting lost trying to find our hotel, watched by carvings of ancient tsars and saints from the walls in the city.  Thankfully Moscow is an incredible city, so I didn't mind getting lost too much.
* 12-1:30  Getting settled into our hostel room.  We needed our passports to sign in for the night.  A picture of Putin solemnly stared down at us from the wall as we filled out the forms.  Then we settled into our rooms.  Eric and Andrew got a room with several old men, grandmothers, and children.  The rest of us shared a room of bunkbeds with four other girls.

    Our time in Moscow included a lot of getting lost, what with a foreign language and alphabet.  However, we did bump into some interesting sights, including the Kremlin, Red Square, St Basil's Cathedral, and an international school where we shared about Prairie.  And we got to see a lot of subway stations... which was actually pretty cool, too.  Moscow's subway stations are complex, far-reaching, and quite efficient.  Under the Soviet Union, gold and decorations were stripped from churches and used in the stations.  The underground network of subways also served a back-up bunker during the war.

So... even if we are not quite out of Russia yet, we are still surviving!  Now we are spending some time with a family here, so we aren't as lost as we have been :)  I'm looking forward to the rest of our time here, and I'll let you know about it soon.