Day 1 and 2!

Well, here I am! In Russia. It's cold and rainy here but I love it already. I'll go ahead and give you a play by play of my whole experience so far. September 5th came so quick, I wasn't even fully packed until 10 minutes before I had to leave. So of course, I forgot some stuff. But My Mom and I drove through the night of September 4th to make it up to the Salt Lake airport by 3AM. When we left St. George, My Dad and cute brother chased the car while we left making me bawl. Mom and I slept in the car for an hour and then checked in at the airport at 4AM. (My flight was at 6:30, which I strongly discourage against. Flying and hanging out in airports for 20 hours sucks!) My first flight was from Salt Lake City to Chicago, that flight wasn't too bad, I slept through the whole thing. I'm so happy that I remembered to bring my Jasmine and Raja pillow and my fish blanket. They saved my life through the horrible airplane/airport experience. After the not so bad first flight, We waited in the Chicago airport for 5 HOURS! That sucked. But we made it work. We ate lunch at this delicious sandwich place called Torta, recommended by my Dad. He knows his stuff. That sandwich was divine. After 5 hours of checking out cool bathrooms with covered toilet seats that move (Coolest thing I've ever seen), reading multiple celebrity magazines, and eating sandwiches that burned my mouth, we boarded the plane to Frankfurt, Germany. Now this flight was horrid. I was sandwiched between 2 people, one a handsome German who didn't speak English and guzzled wine and Jessica, one of the girls in the program, who I'm surprised I didn't knock out because of my falling asleep, head bobbing. Don't worry, she was asleep and never noticed it, I hope. I did start reading the book, The Dark Knight Rises, which is exactly the same as the movie. To write that book, somebody just watched the movie and wrote down everything they saw. Still cool though. I listened to the soundtrack the whole time too. I'm pretty sure anyone who saw me thought I was having a seizure with my head bobbing, awesome music listening and facial expressions to all the awesome things happening in that book. Anyways, after that flight, we landed in Frankfurt. We only had a 2 hour lay-over there which was spent waiting in line for another security check. Man, I hate those. After the security check, we had about 20 minutes until our plane boarded. Which was great, I did not want to wait around in an airport again. I'm still mad that our 5 hour layover wasn't in Frankfurt so we could have gone outside and explored. Someday! This next flight was from Frankfurt to ST. PETERSBURG! Now this flight was divine. I had a whole row to myself, 3 seats all for me! I was in heaven, sprawling out and such. I didn't get one drink or snack that whole flight because I was zonked out. The poor flight attendant had to wake me up because we were landing. Poor guy, I'm pretty sure he never wanted to see an American girl wake up looking like she's been electrocuted and give him the worst stink eye she's ever given. Oh well, he'll live. Hopefully... I was SO glad to finally be off of a plane. We went through customs, got our passports stamped (YES!) and got our luggage. I was so paranoid that my luggage would get lost. Thank goodness it was all there. We thought, I should probably tell you who we are. Flying together was Me, Marci Allen (Our head teacher, who is so fly! She has blue bangs and a pink Unicorn sweater.), Sydney Gillman (SCHS represent!) and Jessica Burt. We thought we had to hang  around and wait for all the other girls, who would land 6 HOURS later then us. So we picked a spot and camped out. We were sitting there for about 15-20 minutes when Alla (Our supervisor) came up to us with an ILP sign and said, "I'm taking you girls to the apartment and then we'll pick the other girls up later. There were 3 cars, one for our luggage, one for Marci and Sydney, and one for Jessica and I. Our driver was the cute Russian lady named Natasha. We found out on the drive that she is a child neurologist! Pretty cool. I'm so surprised I wasn't killed on the drive to our apartment. Russians drive like maniacs! There's no stop signs of anything like that, just green and red lights. So it's basically a mad dash to go. After a few heart attacks, we made it to our apartment! It's such a cute little apartment. We hung out there and slept... for 3 hours! Which was probably not the best idea, but we were exhausted! We woke up when the other girls arrived from the airport. We all pretty much hung out and talked and then went to sleep. Keep in mind that all of this happened over the course of September 5th and 6th. It all just kind of blurred together over time zones and flight changes so I couldn't tell you when was when. So end of day 1 and 2!

This pretty much sums up my whole flying experience.