From Russia, with love...and apologies to 007

So...clearly I'm awesome at this "travel blog" thing, haha. Internet is pretty accessible, but finding a good time to use it is not...so here I am, a week and a half into my trip and just writing about the beginnings of it...Here's my luggage, while waiting for the bus that started my journey (an hour late, I might add!):

MC dubbed it 'the turtle' and the name stuck. I kind of adore it. Speaking of MC, he gracefully hosted me for a day in Chicago before I took off on a 20+ hour homelessness adventure. By gracefully hosted, I mean he made me a steak smiley face:
Then he made fun of it:
After that lovely dinner and a day of walking about Chicago, and sushi with the everyone (which I neglected to take pictures of because I fail, mostly), I got up at fucking 5 AM to go to O'Hare and fly to Atlanta, and thence to Moscow. Besides the usual, it was pretty uneventful...checked in, checked luggage, had a coffee, security, hour long wait for my flight. Bah. Stalkerishly watched a mom with two adorable little boys, 4 and I'm guessing 1 1/2 years old (because they were adorable!!!) while reading Dance with Dragons. Slowly. Flight to ATL was 2 hours, and not chock-full, which was nice. Mom with the two boys sat in front of me and managed to control them impressively well. (Having had little sisters, I remember how difficult it is to keep a handle on little kids in-flight). To my surprise, I started passing out toward the end of the flight and actually missed landing! Which is one of my favorite parts :( Oh well.

Atlanta airport is HUMONGOUS. The terminal had 5 sections (A-E)...I had to go through all of them (A-E) to make my connection). I walked from A to B...then I got tired/nervous about getting there on time and grabbed the train. (They had shuttle things coming by every minute or two.) Finally got to E-wing, found my gate, wandered around a bit, grabbed a food. Tables in the food court were decorated with pretty flowers:

Hallway in the airport was decorated with dresses made out of recycled materials:

Those were my two favorites. :) Made of plastic bags and bottles. There were others that were paper, etc. Anyway, I got to my gate, waited a half hour, boarded, and sat on a plane for 10 hours. Sunrise:

Delta wasn't as terrible to fly as people would have had me believe...true, no modern conveniences like power outlets or internet, or free alcohol, but the flight attendants were super nice and the flight was half empty so I had two seats to myself. They also cleverly served breakfast and coffee right before landing, so I arrived in Moscow feeling fresh and alert and ready for adventures. Quickly found the express train to the city that my parents had told me about. My mom had also warned me not to pass out when I got on it; I found out why:

It was NICE! The ticket was like 11.50 for a 40 minute ride, though...Impressively quick for that ride, though, so it's worth it. First impressions: Russian cars, people selling veggies at the elektrichka stations (sort of like metra, commuter trains), little country houses (dachas), a group of goats, giant piles of trash, and graffiti. Also, old-school and new-school Russian block apartment buildings:

They looked really shabby to me on first glance (and some of them actually are) but mostly it was just open windows (windows here actually open, guys!) and laundry drying on balconies that gave this impression (dryers are considered a huge luxury here, even well-to-do people dry their laundry on a line on the balcony). So really, things aren't as bad as I first thought, haha.

My next stop was the "Belorusskiy vokzal" or Belarus Station to take an elektrichka a few stops, then catch a marshrutka or "route taxi" to my grandma's. These 'taxis' run along existing bus routes (or their own routes that don't follow bus routes) and are actually cheaper than bus fare by a few rubles! They aren't taxis in your typical sense, and sometimes they seem kind of sketchy. But I've discovered that a lot of things I would think are sketchy (taxis, kiosks, smaller shops) are actually standard here. So, here's the train station sign and here's the elektrichka.

Going to go spend family time now with cousins, my further adventures will follow another day ;)