I don't know where to begin. Our lives have been forever changed by one little blonde haired blue eyed boy. There are so many emotions right now it's just unreal. Excited, heartsick, totally in love with this little boy who will now be known as Alexander Michael Fitch. Last week was by far the most emotional week we have ever lived through. I didn't know you could fall in love so fast with someone you just met. I guess I'll just start from the beginning.
We had a very good flight overall. The layover in Paris was one that I could have done without. Everything smelled funny, the people were rude and there just wasn't enough time to even catch our breath from racing off the plane from Cincinnati, to boarding the one that would lead us to our final destination. Moscow. The plane was very "warm" would be the best way to describe the flight from Paris to Moscow. I now know why everyone smells over there. :o) It was the most uncomfortable leg of our journey. But it got us safely where we needed to be. We landed in Moscow around 10:50 am on Saturday May 29th. We made it off the plane, through immigration and customs and out to where our translator Lena would be waiting to meet us.
This is where it gets a little interesting. We walked out from customs and there were all these people waiting there for passengers, everyone was holding little signs and we were frantically looking for one with our name on it. Lena was no where to be found. I was beginning to panic. There were a bunch of taxi drivers there offering there services in Russian, which we did not understand at all. Michael was scanning everywhere and I was digging for a phone number to reach AAi. This went on for about 5 minutes or so when this pretty little blonde lady came to our rescue. LENA!! She was just running behind as she had been seeing another family off back to the US. She was so sweet and nice, she immediately whisked us onto the elevator and up to the ground level where our driver Vladimir was waiting to take us to the Radisson.
We were exhausted and ready to get to the hotel and shower and take a nap. We piled all of our luggage into the tiny car and away we went at warp speed. There are no words to explain the driving there. It was just fast and wreckless. Two lane roads were turned into 4 lanes, everyone was just flying around at a mad pace. Lena informed us that our flight would leave tomorrow for Stavropol at 6:00pm. We paid her for the tickets which cost about $150.00 US dollars. Not bad at all compared to what it cost us to get to Moscow. We made small talk on the way to the hotel which was about 40 minutes away from the airport (Shermovito).
We got to the hotel, took all of our luggage in and got checked in and away we went to our room. Vladimir was going to pick us up around 10:00 in the morning and take us for a little bit of site seeing before we headed off to the airport for Stavropol. The hotel was very very nice. Should be for the amount of money we were paying for a room. ($289.00/night US dollars) You'd think we had rooms at the palace. :o) We went to the room unpacked a few items not much since we would have to pack right back up in the morning. We were looking out our window and witnessed a guy getting the crap beat out of him down on the street. Hmmm. Doesn't make you feel real warm and fuzzy, but we decided after a quick shower that we would walk around a bit outside the hotel. They had told us not to go out alone, but we were just going out to check out the fountain and the walkway over the Moscow River just right outside the hotel.
Much to our surprise when we walked out, we saw a man in camo armed with a machine gun standing outside the hotel. You guessed it. Definitely no warm and fuzzy here. :o) We made a quick pass around outside, snapped a few pics which I will post and made our way back into the hotel where we crashed. We got up later that evening ordered some dinner from room service and went right back to bed. This jet lag thing is for the birds. Hopefully before the trip is over we will adjust to the time difference.
Tomorrow is going to be a big day. We are going to do a little site seeing and make our way to Stavropol to see our son for the very first time.
Stay tuned...................
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