Traveling here...

Hallway in front of our apartment door

Rock with Cyrillic alphabet on it and beautiful view of city

So we hopped on a plane at 6 pm Friday night, headed to Chicago.  Our flight was low-key, although it was really windy landing so we had a few bumps before we arrived.  Because our plane out of Wichita was so small, we had to 'check' our carry-on bags so then we had to wait at the ramp for those to be returned to us.  We only had a 1 hour lay-over in Chicago and were a bit nervous about finding the correct terminal in such a short amount of time, in such a large airport.  But we made it with a few minutes to spare...at least enough to grab a sandwich before we boarded for our long flight.  Let me just say, long flight does not describe how long it really is...phew!  I don't sit well for long periods of time, and it was a lot of sitting.  We had a very large, nice airplane and I even had the luxury of the seat next to me being empty so I could stretch out a little more than most.  I watched a movie, listened to a few podcasts, and tried to sleep some.  About 10:30 pm, the flight attendants came around with supper (haha!)-I was told there would not be a meal served on the flight, this was a nice surprise.  Jerad ate, I was not hungry.  By about midnight everyone began to shut down their electronics, turn off their reading lights and attempt to sleep.  I bounced in and out of sleep, because my rear end kept going numb, my legs kept falling asleep, my neck was sore, and I just plain can't sleep sitting straight up.  I finally hit a good sleep about 4 am, I believe, when Jerad punched me in the side to ask me if I wanted breakfast.  He was met with a 'loving' WHAT??! Anyway, we then arrived in Germany where we hopped onto another plane in route to our final destination for the next few days.  We flew over some beautiful country on the way.  I actually slept better on this plane than the previous one, I think I was finally SO tired, I could have slept standing up!

Area in front of our apartment

I was also very excited to be arriving in Blake's home country.  This place represents his history, family, heritage, culture, and his identity.  I was anxious to be stepping foot here in hopes of learning about what will always be a part of his life.  We got off the plane and then had to wait in line at customs (or something like it).  It was a bit confusing, there were so many lines and so many descriptions, we finally just stepped in a line and hoped it was right.  They stamped our Visa on our Passport and asked where we were staying to which I had no answer...haha, the man finally said "ahh" and waved me on.  Thank God!  I wasn't sure what to say.  We then said a quick prayer in hopes that our luggage made it with us...which it did.  We walked through some more doors and saw Niko holding up a sign that said "Basile/Woods"...we knew that was us!  Basile was nicely typed out and Woods was handwritten in.  I guess our information did not make it to our facilitators in Blake's country, so they did not know when we were arriving, how we were arriving, and where we were staying...thank God I had mentioned to Sarah the night before when we were set to arrive and she relayed the information...otherwise we wouldn't have had a driver to pick us up at the airport or an apartment rented for us to stay in last night.  Thank you Jesus, for arranging that for us.  See, prayer does work!!

View from our apartment

Limousine attempting to back-up a curvy hill with traffic coming

We were exhausted last night.  We went grocery shopping and headed back to our apartment to crash.  We couldn't get our Skype to work last night so weren't able to see the girls but did talk to them a short while and off we went to sleep.  That is..for a few hours and then the jet-lag kicked in and we were both awake.  Luckily, someone mentioned bringing Melatonin Extra...I popped a few of those and was out until 10 am this morning.  So for those of you traveling soon, grab some melatonin..it really did help!

We are headed out to sight see today with Eugene, our driver, and Sarah and Shawn.  I hope to post some pictures later of our day's adventure.  Tomorrow is SDA appointment where we hope to get our referral to go see Blake at his orphanage...so be praying for that.  Our appointment is at 11 am, Sarah and Shawn's is at 10 am.

Beautiful cathedral under renovation

More of the Cathedral

Train we rode up for about 100 feet to see a great view of the bay

Street leading downtown, lots of walking