23/8/16

Well, we arrived in Moscow on the 20th after a long slightly grueling day of travel.  My first bit of advice to future Fulbrighters –  if you have a connecting flights on your trip make sure you have more than an hour between flights. I know it makes the trip that much longer, but it might help alleviate traveling stress and help you avoid that insane sprint across JFK terminals to try and make your plane, arriving 5 minutes before they close the gate (only to have them hold the plane for some other people also running across the airport.)

My other advice is usually to try and get some sleep on the plan, but I myself was not able to follow that advice. I tried, I even took some melatonin, but as luck would have it, my seat would not recline and a certain someone used me as a pillow so she could sleep. I am traveling with my 13 year old daughter S. This is her first time in Russia, my 6th I think. It was fun seeing her experience the Airport in Moscow through her eyes. She was really excited and could hardly believe she was in Russia, that is of course until she realized she couldn’t read most of the signs. I don’t think she stopped talking until we met the driver who was scheduled to pick us up. That was another smart thing, rather than trying to wrangle all our luggage (6 bags of varying sizes – don’t judge I had to pack for 3 seasons in 4 months), I used Lingo Taxi and was able to order a mini van and had a set price which was very reasonable (about $50).