I'm Writing to You From the Future

7:30 am Wednesday 8-30-06 = 8:30 pm Tuesday 8-29-06


Hello Mountain Standard Time citizens! I'm writing from my new favorite city in the whole world, St. Petersburg, Russia. It is GORGEOUS here! This is the most European-feeling city I've ever been to and I love it! The buildings here are so ornate and there are statues and carved figures and monuments everywhere. Plus, everything is done in beautiful pastels with different shades of oranges, yellows, blues, and greens. It is mah-velous. This city was built on a swamp so there are canals and rivers throughout, which mean bridges and fabulous water everywhere. I could spend so much time here! Unfortunately, we only have 2 days. So, while Adam is making the most of his time by participating in his fantasy football draft (those Utah rugby boys are such dorks!), I'll fill you in on some things I've noticed on my trip.

Kari's Observations of Russia & the Russian People

1. Mullets= cool to Russians. For some unfathomable reason they think the mullet is something to be proud of & they are seen in large numbers in all cities. I've even started to make classifications for the vast styles of this horrible 'do: the Pixie Mullet; Gothic Mullet; Faux-Hawk Mullet; Cat Mullet (this one was probably the best one we saw--hair cut short all the way around a ponytail--oh wait, it was a banana clip!. Hilarious!); Baby/Young Child Mullet; She-Mullet (a classic); and Businessman Mullet.

2. Russian girls are very skinny. Their thighs don't even touch (yes, Katie would fit in well here). And, they wear high heels everywhere & at all times...on the plane, on rainy days, walking a million miles all across the city...

3. Smelling good? Not a priority. Smelling bad? Very common...one might even venture to say it's the norm.

4. Nothing in Russia opens until 10:00 am...probably because everyone is too hung over from the night before to get out of bed any earlier. On weekends, it's 12:00 instead of 10:00.

5. Light switches are low on the wall instead of higher like in America. They are at hand height when your arms are at your side. Makes some sense I guess.

6. Lots of people go by shorter forms of their names, even if they're not shorter. Here are some examples (given name first, shorter more commonly used name second):
-Olga= Olya
-Daria= Dasha
-George= Gosha
-Maria= Masha
-Natalia= Natasha
-Sergei=Seriosha

There's also about a 60% chance that any given male is named Alexander (shorter name Sasha--how they came up with that from Alexander??) and any given female is Olga or Lena.

7. I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure there is no such thing as emissions testing.

8. There are no set prices. Oh wait, yes there are, it's just that Americans get charged 2 or 3 times more than Russians. Some places will even have it listed: "Russian Price" and "Foreigner Price". It makes me very mad because in America, we don't discriminate like that and screw over all travellers. They even come and live in our country and we end up paying for it! This issue really makes me mad, but I digress.

I'm sure there will be more, but for now I am done. I've written 38 pages in my journal so far and I haven't even journaled past last Saturday. I will be home on Thursday so I'll try to give a little summary of highlights from the trip sometime after that.

Paca!

Privet from Russia!

We're in an internet room at our hotel in Novosibirsk waiting to check into our room so I can only write a little bit. For this blog, I will take an excerpt from my journal.

"Ok, so let's talk about how lines work in Russia. You have to stand very close or someone will come & just cut right in front of you, even though it's totally obvious that there are a million people in the line. And you really don't want to stand close because everyone stinks! No regard for personal hygeine (spelling?); no deodorant; no gum or mouthwash. Or, what I like even better...someone comes from out of nowhere & goes directly to the front of the line & says to the person who is next in line, "We're late" and proceeds to walk right ahead of them."


It is very interesting being in a different country. We are having a really good time though and have been very safe and well. It helps that my husband is an "armoire"... meaning a very large and strong man (as referred to by a lot of members from the Omsk branch). Everyone here is really excited to see us and has been very friendly.

I'll try to post again in about a week when Adam insists we come to an internet cafe so he can be there for the draft for his fantasy football league. Yes, we still have our priorities straight even though we're on vacation and will be in one of the prettiest cities in the world!! (st. pete's)

Much love!

Well...We Didn't Really Want to Fly to NYC Today Anyway...

So, you might think that we'd be in New York right now, probably boarding a plane to Moscow. Ha! You're wrong. We have stand-by tickets and while I was a little worried about making our flight, I thought, "Nah, we'll be fine". So we got to the airport this morning, checked our bags, waited in some long lines and went to the gate to watch the plasma screen hoping our names would show up on the cleared list. They did show up on the waiting list and we kept going up and up in priority, but Adam went and asked the lady how many seats there were and it wasn't looking so good. Then, they called us and asked us to come stand by the door so we'd be ready and then they broke the bad news. "We can take one of you". Like that's a viable option! So, we had to go all the way back downstairs to international check-in and try to reschedule.

Luckily, we had a really nice man who helped us and now, we are leaving to Atlanta at 11:45, arriving at 4:3oam and hoping our bags arrive there (since they are probably already in New York). Then, we will leave tomorrow from ATL to Moscow at 3:30 pm. That's presuming we get on those flights. Actually, the Delta guy who helped us said that we really have great chances of making it onto those flights and even if we weren't able to get on to ATL tonight, we have like 3 more flights to try. I wish we would have thought to fly to Atlanta in the first place, but, being the ever-so-unprepared travellers that we are...we didn't.

So, it's really like it's been an exciting trip already. (I keep having to tell myself that so that I don't be disappointed that this delay alone is taking like two days out of our trip!) Wish us luck!

What is with the weather lately?

There has been some crazy weather here in Utah! There were huge microbursts down in Utah county a couple weeks ago and on Saturday, this is what we had in Salt Lake.

Yep, that's hail. It was coming down so hard! Adam and I were going to grab some lunch down the street when it first started and so we decided we'd wait it out in the car underneath the carport because we thought it was going to dent our car! After about 20 minutes it had slowed down a little so we figured we were in the clear. Not so much. While in the drive thru at Iceburg, it started coming down even bigger and harder. We're talking dime-sized balls of hail. When we made it back home, I was completely content eating our ever-so-healthy lunch in the car under the carport, but Adam--being a boy who likes pain--decided he wanted to know what it felt like and convinced me that we should just sprint into the house. Well, there was a river running through the middle of the parking lot which I ended up stepping directly in the middle of and the hail? Yeah, it hurt! It pelted down on my head and completely soaked us in the five seconds it took to run to cover.
It did eventually stop, but only to start again an hour later. We probably got 4 inches of rain and hail in 2 hours. There was an inch of hail covering the whole ground. I am so not ready for summer to go!

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you...........Kong!"

As we all know, Kari= not the biggest fan of the movie "King Kong", so you can imagine my surprise when last Friday I checked my mail and found a package in it. Now, we weren't expecting any packages in the mail, so I took the mystery parcel inside for further inspection. What I saw when I opened it..........well, here, take a look for yourself.






Yep, that's right...a King Kong shirt. Now, who would be so clever as to pinpoint my love for King Kong and send me a surprise, unmarked package containing such a wonderful gift? Adam? Let's call and find out.

Me(sounding slightly suspicious): Hey...I got something in the mail today.
Adam: Oh yeah, what?
Me: A shirt.
Adam: What kind of shirt?
Me: A shirt with...(laughing a little) King Kong on it.
Adam (still a little bit confused): What?
Me: Yeah, did you send it?
Adam: No.
Me: Ok, because I think someone who read my blog might have sent it. Remember my post on "King King"? I think someone might have sent it from there.
Adam (now quite aware of how truly funny this is and bursting into laughter): Man, I bet you're right. I wish I would have thought of it.


My next call was to Katie Belle. We talked about some other things first and near the end of our conversation, I said to her, "So I got something in the mail today...". To which she replied, "Oh really?". (Insert audible grin and an attempt to mask giggling).

So, thank you two clever girls, Katie and Gwen, for being so funny and sending me this awesome gift. It really did make my day because I was totally stressing about our trip to Russia and getting everything all worked out so when I got the package, it really did make me laugh.

Where Shall We Go? To Russia, Of Course!

AAHHHH! I'm so excited...I really think it's happening. So yeah, we're going to Russia! Some people think it's kind of a weird place for a relaxing get-away, but really, we're so excited. Adam served his mission in Russia and so we've talked about going back since we met pretty much, but we sat down about 3 weeks ago and looked at the calander and our bank account (small as it may be) and we figured, "Hey, let's spend almost every penny we have AND let's just go ahead and do it on these days".

Yes, planning a trip to RUSSIA in about two weeks....not the easiest of tasks. And, if you want to add a little more stress? Try travelling across the entire country! Oh yes, and let's not forget...I had to get a passport AND we still have to get visas. And what fun would it be if you could plan things while in Russia if you didn't have to have your passort number? Obviously none at all, that must be why those smart Russians DO make you have your passport number for anything that you would be remotely interested in having ahead of time, such as flights within the country and hotel rooms. Man, they really were thinking.

So hopefully the travel broker we are working with can get my passport number to us today and Adam can make the reservations for hotels and flights. We have our flights to and from the US to Moscow and got a screamin' deal...$395 each round trip...thanks to a guy Adam works with whose wife works at Delta. I'm a little scared because they're standby tickets, but I think we'll be ok. Plus, she sent us an flight schedule and we're scheduled right now to be flying business class the whole time, so that would be awesome, seeing how the flight to Moscow is something ridiculous like 16 hours or something.

Here's a rough break down of how our trip will be. Click on the map above to enlarge because it shows all of these cities.

Wednesday August 16: Fly from SLC to NYC, then from NYC to Moscow
Arrive in Moscow on the 17th--stay until 18th--fly to Omsk
Stay in Omsk from 18th-21st
Take train (Trans-Siberian Railway) from Omsk to Novosibirsk
Stay in Novosibirsk through 23rd
Take train the night of 23rd to Krasnoyarsk
Stay in Krasnoyarsk until 27th
Travel somehow (train or plane...I don't remember) to St. Petersburg on the 28th
Stay in St. Petersburg until evening of 30th--take train back to Moscow
Leave Moscow on 31st--Fly to NYC, then home to SLC


Yay!! I am so excited! I'm not going to understand a word they say, but I can say "I don't know", "I don't understand Russian", and "Please", "Thank you", "Hello", and "Goodbye", so really, I think I'm set. Adam tells me I probably won't like a whole lot of the food there except for bread and a few other things, so if I'm lucky I'll shed a few pounds while I'm in the motherland as well. Woohoo! JK, I'm sure I'll manage to eat enough of something so I don't drop any of my much needed weight. (HA!)

Ok, well that's our plan for now. We'll see how our reservation making goes today and turn in our visa applications tomorrow. Just a tip for anyone planning to journey on over to Russia in two weeks notice without proper travel documentation...it costs a freakin' ton! Wanna know how much it costs to get a visa overnight for the two of us? Almost a thousand dollars. I guess we bring it on ourselves by being fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants kind of planners in this venture, but oh well.

I'll keep you posted on how things go today. Let me know if any of you have suggestions on MUSTS for things to do in Russia!

A little something to look forward to...

I received a most wonderful present in the mail the other day. I really can't do it justice with a post alone, so I will hold off until later this week when I can get a picture. Two of you lovely bloggers know exactly what I'm talking about, but for the rest of you (Gina and anyone else who happens to drop by), you will be in sheer suspense for a few more days. Keep checking back, for you never know quite when it will be here, and yes, it's that great, so you don't want to miss it.

I'm back!

It has been forever since I posted! I have been busy working in Cache Valley and there's a chance that I MIGHT have dropped our laptop (while it was open and it landed flat, face down) a few weeks ago and oddly enough it just hasn't been itself since. Hmm...weird. Anyway, I haven't taken it with me so I don't have any way of posting. But I have some pictures from our boating trip with the fam last week that I hope blogger will let me post so here goes.

Look how cute this boy is!





My cute sister Tara (and half of Larry's face)!


Tara & Travis on the tube.


Josh & Kate--the tubing champions.


Adam & Jakey-Bake in the front of the boat.


Pretty much the cutest little girl ever!








Here's a picture of my mom too (from the next day) because I didn't want to leave her out!