(Sean's Post)
Actually, we never did get to the King Cake or the coffee, either. We realized (of course, at the last minute) that we were one photo album short for court. Needless to say, I hope that they don't compare the pictures too closely. I'm actually starting this post as we're still at Houston Intercontinental Airport waiting for our flight which is delayed an hour and 15 minutes. This should help us to get in the "go with the flow" attitude, huh? We had no problems with the bags during check-in. I guess the weights were close enough. Good thing that one pound extra gets rounded down when you convert to kilograms (something for you engineers there).
Thanks to the delay we managed to enjoy yet another "last USDA beef hamburger and fries for a while" meal at Ruby Diner at the airport terminal. Leave it to us to find a Pappa's-owned hamburger joint! We had some awesome strawberry shakes, too.
Talk at ya later (from Frankfurt, maybe)!
(Maureen's Post)
Okay, my turn. Actually, Sean is right; we never did get to have the King Cake and café au lait. That's okay, though, as we had been enjoying that all last weekend, anyway.
Well, we had a pretty good flight into Frankfurt. Hit a little bit of turbulence here and there but nothing major. We really didn't get a chance to do much in Frankfurt except practically run to catch our plane. With the hour and fifteen minute delay we thought that maybe we should still make our flight on time since we should still have at least another hour before boarding began. What we didn't plan on was the plane parking on the tarmac, us having to catching a bus to the terminal, then maneuvering throughout the airport to get to our gate. As we descended down the escalator to the level where our gate was located we were greeted with a huge cloud of cigarette smoke. Actually, the smell of cigarettes was pretty pervasive throughout the airport. As Sean said, "nothing says 'Welcome to Europe' like the smell of tobacco!" What's so interesting is that the warnings on the cigarette boxes are in huge print and are very blunt. Sean saw a carton of Marlboros in one of the duty-free shops that simply stated, "Smoking will kill you." Of course, this was about ten yards away from the communal carbon-type ashtray which was surrounded by smokers (refer to the aforementioned cloud of smoke near the escalator).
The flight to Almaty was pretty uneventful, too. Also on our flight was a group of young men in athletic pants and jackets with "Kazakhstan" written on the back. We assumed they were part of the Kazakhstan national team for something - not sure what sport, though. They were accompanied by their coach who was interviewed by a reporter just prior to us boarding the plane. We got to finally meet one set of our travel partners, Bob and Jodi Mechem from Maryland. They will be going to Kokshetau with us. We also met Bill and Jill Sullivan from Wisconsin while waiting to go through passport control. They actually sat on the plane in front of us.
We were met outside baggage claim by our driver, Vitallii, and Dilnoza, a very nice lady who works with the Sisters. Once we were given instruction on our meeting with the Sisters on Wednesday morning, we loaded up Vitalli's car and headed to our accommodations for the evening. Vitalli is great. All Sean had to do was ask him how the New Year's holiday was and he got very animated talking about what a great time it was, and how much vodka was involved, etc. He speaks English pretty well, too. He dropped us off at the hotel and made sure we and our bags were situated in our room. The Mechems ended up in our hotel, too, and stayed in the room next to ours. Even though by this point it was about half-past midnight, our internal clocks were really screwed up (12-hour time difference from home, so our bodies thought it was really half-past noontime). So, we went to the Mechem's room for a bit to visit before turning in, ourselves.
A few things we've noted just in our drive from the airport. Lots of different kinds of cars - even saw a Chevy dealership. Vitallii drives a Toyota Camry wagon with a stickshift. The holiday lights from New Year's celebration are still up all over the city, including pictures of Santa. Driving didn't seem too bad, but again, it was midnight and not too many cars on the road at that time.
Well, that's all our posting from today. We have a few more pics to post from today, so check back later in the week on this page and they should be downloaded. Hopefully, we will get to meet our baby tomorrow! Love to all!
Actually, we never did get to the King Cake or the coffee, either. We realized (of course, at the last minute) that we were one photo album short for court. Needless to say, I hope that they don't compare the pictures too closely. I'm actually starting this post as we're still at Houston Intercontinental Airport waiting for our flight which is delayed an hour and 15 minutes. This should help us to get in the "go with the flow" attitude, huh? We had no problems with the bags during check-in. I guess the weights were close enough. Good thing that one pound extra gets rounded down when you convert to kilograms (something for you engineers there).
Thanks to the delay we managed to enjoy yet another "last USDA beef hamburger and fries for a while" meal at Ruby Diner at the airport terminal. Leave it to us to find a Pappa's-owned hamburger joint! We had some awesome strawberry shakes, too.
Talk at ya later (from Frankfurt, maybe)!
(Maureen's Post)
Okay, my turn. Actually, Sean is right; we never did get to have the King Cake and café au lait. That's okay, though, as we had been enjoying that all last weekend, anyway.
Well, we had a pretty good flight into Frankfurt. Hit a little bit of turbulence here and there but nothing major. We really didn't get a chance to do much in Frankfurt except practically run to catch our plane. With the hour and fifteen minute delay we thought that maybe we should still make our flight on time since we should still have at least another hour before boarding began. What we didn't plan on was the plane parking on the tarmac, us having to catching a bus to the terminal, then maneuvering throughout the airport to get to our gate. As we descended down the escalator to the level where our gate was located we were greeted with a huge cloud of cigarette smoke. Actually, the smell of cigarettes was pretty pervasive throughout the airport. As Sean said, "nothing says 'Welcome to Europe' like the smell of tobacco!" What's so interesting is that the warnings on the cigarette boxes are in huge print and are very blunt. Sean saw a carton of Marlboros in one of the duty-free shops that simply stated, "Smoking will kill you." Of course, this was about ten yards away from the communal carbon-type ashtray which was surrounded by smokers (refer to the aforementioned cloud of smoke near the escalator).
The flight to Almaty was pretty uneventful, too. Also on our flight was a group of young men in athletic pants and jackets with "Kazakhstan" written on the back. We assumed they were part of the Kazakhstan national team for something - not sure what sport, though. They were accompanied by their coach who was interviewed by a reporter just prior to us boarding the plane. We got to finally meet one set of our travel partners, Bob and Jodi Mechem from Maryland. They will be going to Kokshetau with us. We also met Bill and Jill Sullivan from Wisconsin while waiting to go through passport control. They actually sat on the plane in front of us.
We were met outside baggage claim by our driver, Vitallii, and Dilnoza, a very nice lady who works with the Sisters. Once we were given instruction on our meeting with the Sisters on Wednesday morning, we loaded up Vitalli's car and headed to our accommodations for the evening. Vitalli is great. All Sean had to do was ask him how the New Year's holiday was and he got very animated talking about what a great time it was, and how much vodka was involved, etc. He speaks English pretty well, too. He dropped us off at the hotel and made sure we and our bags were situated in our room. The Mechems ended up in our hotel, too, and stayed in the room next to ours. Even though by this point it was about half-past midnight, our internal clocks were really screwed up (12-hour time difference from home, so our bodies thought it was really half-past noontime). So, we went to the Mechem's room for a bit to visit before turning in, ourselves.
A few things we've noted just in our drive from the airport. Lots of different kinds of cars - even saw a Chevy dealership. Vitallii drives a Toyota Camry wagon with a stickshift. The holiday lights from New Year's celebration are still up all over the city, including pictures of Santa. Driving didn't seem too bad, but again, it was midnight and not too many cars on the road at that time.
Well, that's all our posting from today. We have a few more pics to post from today, so check back later in the week on this page and they should be downloaded. Hopefully, we will get to meet our baby tomorrow! Love to all!
