Plane tickets and other stuff. 5/19/04

I got up and headed into work this morning, knowing full well that there would not be very much work done. I had to get ahold of ECVO and find out what they came up with on tickets. When I talked to them later this morning I think I misunderstood a lot. That said, they are Russian and spoke with very very thick accents. I thought she told me that she found seats for us, but they weren't together. I told her I would see what I could come up with but to hold them for us until this afternoon, just in case I didn't have any luck.

I found a site called gotorussia.com and found the best deal on tickets. Let me tell you it was no "deal". It ended up costing us 3200.00 for both tickets round trip. It was basically the same price that ECVO had but I knew we would sit together. Booking on short notice we didn't get any type of "bargain fare" Mom and Dad offered to pay for the plane tickets for us. That was a blessing. Michael had been working 6 days a week for the last 6 monts and we had saved up around 4000.00 on our own, along with the 22,500.00 that we borrowed on the blazer and the boat, we were going to end up coming up short in the end with how expensive the tickets were ending up being. We did get a bit of a discount if we hopped planes several times. I had first looked at a direct flight from Cincinnati to New York and then on to Moscow. I ended up saving around 400.00 going from Lousville to Cincinnati, Cincinnati to Paris, and Paris to Moscow. I emailed the itenerary to Amanda to make sure that it would work for the translators and drivers. She would get back to me that aftenoon so I could go ahead and book the tickets.

I got word later that afternoon that all was a go and to book the tickets. Done. The visa's should arrive by Tuesday of next week via FedEx, our tickets will be coming FedEx also and should be here by the end of the week. Now it's on to booking a hotel. I'll work on that later. We are scheduled to have a telephone travel meeting on Friday and they don't want me to book a room until after that.

Like I said before, I didn't get much work done (that I was getting paid for anyway). I just feel like my head is spinning out of control. Most people get a month to plan this we have 10 days. Whoops, 9 days now. I mean how crazy is it that we are going to Russia?? We are going to be parents. We've wanted and waited for this for so long, it's scary now that it's really going to happen. I am so excited though. We just can't wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!