Angela's Thoughts . . .

Megan arrived last night as scheduled thankfully. We got a call form Olga that she never showed at the Moscow airport. Lori and I were slightly freaking out considering that Lori gave her specific directions about where to go. It was two hours after her flight had landed and they still didn’t know where she was. The only person that they release information to about a passenger is the police. So we had no way of finding out if Megan got on her second airplane. We were so worried because when you arrive in Moscow you have to go to a different airport to get on a flight to Ekat. We sat for two hours thinking of all the ways that she could have found her way to the second airport.

Maybe….. she had been talking to someone on the flight from New York and he/she had told her about the bus that you can take.

Maybe… she never got on her flight at JFK… but wouldn’t someone have called us to tell us she didn’t make it?

Maybe . . . she was still stuck in passport control…. Nope, Jane (the translator in Moscow) went to check and no one was in passport control.

Maybe . . . she couldn’t find Jane and she is just sitting somewhere in the airport….. again no- Jane had them page her multiple times.

Maybe….. because, she is travel savvy she just found her own way.


But why would she have not followed Lori’s directions…..

Ahhhh what are we going to do?????

Do we call the police?… Do we call Megan’s parents?…. Is it really necessary to have her parents completely freaked out because we don’t know where she is? Especially because there is a good chance she just found her own way and is on her flight to Ekat.

Well, what ended up happening is that because Megan had only a two and a half hour lay over the airline had an area for people that had less than four hours to go thru passport control quickly. When Megan went thru they kept everyone together and took them on a bus to the next airport. Nothing that Lori had described to her was the same. Megan kept looking for Jane but didn’t see people with signs to pick people up anywhere. It was not the same area that the other passengers go thru. She didn’t even have to get her luggage, the airport people just did it all for her.

During her flight she had made a friend that spoke both English and Russian and she was taking the same flight to Ekat that Megan needed to be on. So Megan figured if she stayed with her that was her best bet. Especially since nothing was as Lori described because of her short layover and having to go thru a different area then we had arrived at. Lori was extremely relived that Megan made it okay. I think Lori’s exact words when we finally saw her were “OMG I think I’m going to faint”.

Also, yesterday, Sasha (the coordinator that helped Lori with Katy’s adoption) came to Ekat to visit and travel to Chelyabinsk with us. We went out for dinner at this little Italian place that is just a block away form where we are staying. We really got lucky when they had a server that spoke a little English. We ended up getting pizza again and it was also really good. They make their pizza very different here. It is very thin and has almost no grease on it, we like it. Sasha doesn’t speak any English so it is kind of interesting to watch her and Katy interact. Katy speaks to her in English and Sasha speaks Russian to Katy. It is actually a little amusing to watch because most of the time, somehow, (I think mainly thru body language) they understand each other. Lori and Sasha communicate thru computer that translates everything. So it has been pretty quite, well except for Katy playing.

So all is fine - Megan is here and we are off to Chelyabinsk with Sasha today. We have a 4 hour train ride that should be interesting and I am excited to see a different city. We also may be able to go see Katy’s orphanage. :o)