Greetings from Moscow!

There is so much to tell, it is hard to figure out how to write it all down. We won't have high-speed Internet in our apartment for a week or so, so we are relying on dial-up right now.

Our flight arrived on time in Moscow Thursday afternoon and we are still dealing with jet-lag in our own way. It is almost 8am on Saturday and Kellye and the kids are still in bed sound asleep. I, however, have been up since around 4am. This is my second day to do that! Yesterday, I had a nice quiet time and then went back to sleep from 6 to 9.

We have met two "persons of peace" along the way, so far. The first was the woman who checked-in our baggage at the DC airport. "So there I was..." with 19 bags, most of them overweight, that had to be checked. "You are going one way?," she asked. "How long are you staying?" When Kellye answered that we were going to live there for at least three years, she smiled back at her and never measured or weighed a single bag. We paid the excess baggage charge and we were on our way. And, believe it or not, all 19 bags arrived at the same time and only two of them had been inspected by the TSA. Before leaving ILC, I decided to "seal" all of our Action Packer containers with strapping tape (the kind with strings in it) in the hopes that government officials would be too lazy to try to open them for a peek inside. It must have worked!

We had a pretty good flight. John-John stayed awake the entire transatlantic flight and then finally passed out as we were waiting to take-off from Frankfurt. SB has come down with a sinus infection, so she is feeling kinda crappy right now. The food was not bad. As a matter of a fact, the dinner on the plane was better than the ILC cafeteria!

Our second person of peace was found in the Moscow airport. After getting through customs, we found all of our baggage sitting on the floor next to the conveyor belt. We were told that we should get some of the free carts that are in that area instead of paying one of the porters, who will charge you up to $10 a bag and try to rip you off for even more if they feel that they can. The only problem is that these carts only hold two to three bags each. So, in the end we had 5 carts and at least 5 rolling suitcases that we had to get through customs. We lined all of the carts up at the entrance to customs and waited for the line to go down. About that time, an older, bored-looking customs officer walked by. I can't explain how, but I felt that God had sent him to us, so I used what little Russian I have to call him over and explained that our family was moving here and that everything I owned was on these carts. I told him that I did not know how I was going to get everything through customs by myself. Well, long story short, he asked me a few questions about what kinds of things I was bringing and then let me walk the carts through one at a time until all of our bags were out on the other side!

Traffic in Moscow was horrible Thursday, so we had to wait about 30 minutes for our team leader to arrive. (It took him 3 hours to get to the airport!) We then had to wait another 45 minutes for the van that was going to carry our luggage to arrive. However, we got to our apartment around 6:30 Thursday night. Our team had stocked our fridge with some frozen pizzas and other things so that we would have supper and breakfast for the next day, which was very nice. We unpacked a few things, including John's X-Box, and crashed around 10pm.

On Friday morning we were met by one of our team members around 11 and we got our "Metro Orientation." We also stopped by the office so we could register with the Russian government. I bought cell phones for Kellye, SB and myself (we have to have them activated today...you have to go to a separate store to do that here). When we got home yesterday evening our Moscow boss and his family brought us supper and we were able to fellowship a little bit. It was a lot of fun. It was almost surreal though for us all to be together and realize that we were in Moscow and not Richmond!

Kellye and the girls are going shopping at IKEA for a few household necessities today. I am going to rearrange furniture and unpack some more. I am hoping to get the family to downtown on Monday so we can see Red Square and take some photos. I start with my language tutor on Monday the 15th, so I am going to try to rest some and enjoy the week ahead.

Well, Hannah and Kellye are finally awake. Hannah has been enjoying watching American cartoons in Russian. She is watching Aladdin this morning and the kids laughed themselves silly yesterday as they watched SpongeBob in Russian!

Blessings,
Marc