It's 5 AM in the central US, which means that I will be in Moscow in exactly 24 hours! My bags are (mostly) packed, and I leave for the airport in just a few short hours. Now all that is left is to try to fit in a bit of sleep and then jump in the car and head up to Minneapolis/St. Paul. It's still not seeming entirely real, but that is about to change in a hurry.
Some more about my arrangements: As far as flights are concerned, I take off from MSP at 1:15 and fly to Houston, TX. After a layover of about an hour and a half, I fly out of Houston at 5:40 PM. The flight to Moscow's DME airport takes about eleven and a half hours. Once I land in Moscow, I have a few important (and potentially confusing) things to figure out. First of all, I need to find a way to call my host, which I'm sure won't be easy without a functioning cell phone. She informed me that the airport may have public phones, and those phones might accept change (which I won't have) or require a purchased card (which I have no idea how to buy or use.) After I figure out how to handle this situation, I will need to ascertain which bus goes to the particular metro station where I am meeting my host. Sometime prior to this I will have to have exchanged some dollars for rubles. Keep in mind throughout all of this that I speak absolutely no Russian and I have never been on my own in a city anywhere near as gigantic as Moscow. When I have somehow accomplished all of these things, I still need to meet up with a host I have only seen in a sepia-toned art photo taken in profile.
Speaking of hosts, I am very excited to meet mine! Her name is Svetlana ("Sveta"), and she seems awesome! She lives with her family near the city center. She likes to cook, so I'm hoping we can show each other a bit about our native cuisines. I could easily gush about CouchSurfing for an entire paragraph here, but suffice it to say that it is a wonderful community and I am eager to have another CS experience in another location.
To continue with a theme, my host situation for my internship in Ulaanbaatar has changed. I will now be staying with Ms. Altnaa and her three daughters. One is college-aged, and the other two are twins who are in high school. No picture this time, and no description of careers. But I am told that "there is constant supply of hot and cold water" to the apartment. Always good to know.
And now, sleep! (That is, if I can get my thoughts to stop going a million miles an hour.)
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