The Arrival

I got to the airport about an hour early just to be safe--I didn't want my mom sitting in some foreign terminal freaking out because she couldn't find me and everyone around her was speaking English. I'd heard she was kind of scared right before she came, so I was very proud of her when she said she hadn't been scared at all, but instead was bright-eyed and ready to go!

When she finally came out, she looked happy and laid back--you'd never know she had just flown for 15 hours!! So we grabbed her bags and headed out to catch a marshrutka (public transport that looks kind of like a van) to get home. We got off at rechnoj voksal and went straight to my office so she could meet everyone and give people the stuff she had picked up from the States for them--chocolate chips for the Halls, lotions and maple syrup for Acia. We went down to the rinok (market with a bunch of different shops--one shop for vegetables, another for meets, yet another for cosmetics, etc). Acia came with us, and we decided to make our "Office Salad," which is really a Greek Salad--tomatoes, brinza (a really yummy French cheese that is kind of like feta), greens, peppers, and olives. We checked email and then rushed off to drop our stuff at home so we could be on time to meet Tyler and Ryan at the Izmailovsky Rinok (a market where you can buy souvenirs, clothes, etc). From here on, Moscow would prove to be a crazy marathon where we raced around as fast as we could to get everything in during the short time that we had!

To get home from work, I decided to show my mom the shortcut I had found. She was kind of freaked out to think I'd been walking home by myself through the "forest." We made the exciting little trek, wound past the construction site, and ended up in my apartment, where she had a chance to look around at where I live. We unfortunately didn't have time to let her stop and rest, or even take a shower after her long plane ride, but I don't think she was missing out on much, as our hot water was still shut off.

We took the metro down to meet Tyler and Ryan, which consisted of buying a 10-ride metro pass for my mom and getting her used to swiping the pass and going through the check-point. We may have accidentally used 2 of our 10, and we drew quite a bit of attention as I tried to tell her how to get through from the other side of the turnstyles--I had already gone through the gates--but we chalked this up to a learning experience and headed down to our train. I had apparently forgotten what it was like the first time on the metro and how it takes a little bit of practice to keep your balance while walking when it's moving, so as we pulled up to our stop, I told my mom this was ours, and put my hand on her back to help her stand up. Well, instead of helping, this turned into shoving her as the train screeched to a halt, and she tumbled sideways into the woman and child next to her. Luckily, not too much damage was done, and we made it out alive (which was much better than the experience she had the next day...but we'll leave that for July 25th's blog...)

We bought some great souvenirs and talked to a lot of Russians that knew English words like, "I give you great price," "500 rubles," "for you, big discount," and oddly--"Brigham Young." My mom saw some stacking dolls with last years football team and the rest of the time we were at the market, this guy selling them kept dropping the price and saying, "I give you for 500 rubles. You take now." The trip to the rinok revealed how stingy I am, not to mention how picky and indecisive I can be! While this was probably was annoying, it proved to be to everyone's benefit in the end--upon getting home, we realized it would cost an extra $200 to have Tyler check a 3rd bag, Everyone suddenly seemed okay with me passing up the Russian book of fairy tales and the other nativity scene.

After the rinok, Ryan decided to run home and meet up with Nastya. He was nice enough to take our bags with him. It was all going to end up at their house anyway--we decided it would be easier to have them take the fragile stuff on a direct flight to the states, and I will be toting around a bag full of other random stuff in Europe. Tyler has been so good to help us out with this!

Tyler, my mom, and I headed off to Taras Bulba, a great Ukrainian restaraunt, so that my mom could try some authentic Russian/Ukrainian dishes. We ordered up a bowl of borscht, chicken po Kievsky (Kiev chicken), mors--a traditional drink made from cranberries, and some vereniki (pasta shaped like half-moons filled with fruit). Everything was so delicious, even if I was a little over-zealous and ordered way too much food!! Then it was off to the rest of the (mostly-unplanned) evening!