It's not the destination, it's the journey.

I've heard and loved this saying for a long time, but today I have to say that I was extremely glad just to get to St. Petersburg. Don't misunderstand me, it was a great day...

Started with Pat driving me to Purdue from home. We met at 11:00 to carpool to O'hare. We said goodbye after he had said hello to Anatoli, my trip leader, who also taught Pat's methods course at Purdue. Anatoli was surprised but happy when he found out we were dating, because Pat was "so serious during class times." Haha

Uneventful trip to O'hare, arrived at the international terminal 2 hours early. I called Mom and Pat (whom for a second thought I was already in Stockholm, haha) and made a tiny dent in my snack stockpile.

My first transatlantic flight!!! Things that were awesome: the ability to watch any of 20 movies available, hearing people speaking Swedish, watching the map as we flew over Quebec, Greenland, Iceland, and England, the captain repeating everything he said twice in two different languages (how hard would that be!), and, surprisingly, the food! Thing that was not as awesome: Even though it was cute for 4 seconds because he was screaming in a different language, hearing a 3-year-old scream for 3 hours was decidedly not awesome. But 8.5 hours later, we landed in Stockholm, where we temporarily got lost and then had to funnel back through security. There was a funny/tense moment hen Anatoli was worried that his two liters of duty-free whiskey would be confiscated and we'd have to pass it up and down the security line to "dispose" of it. ;) I took this picture in the line, tee hee.

Also, there was THIS outside the security! It's a smoking booth!

Then, we hung out in the airport for a long time, wandering around, buying some questionable candies and generally being lazy. Stockholm seemed really awesome, the airport was extremely quiet. Wish we could have gone out to the city, but it was an expensive cab ride away, plus we only had an our of viable time before we needed to be back.

Flight from Stockholm to St. Petersburg was extremely fast, maybe because by the time we took off I had been up for 24 hours. No food, movies, or screaming children on this one. Here's a view from the plane window in Stockholm. Admittedly, not much to see.

THEN, ST. PETERSBURG!!!! We landed pretty bumpily, but I was SO READY to be here! View from the window:

It's pretty overwhelming to someone who's only been here a couple hours, but I am SO PUMPED to go out and explore this city with our group. Tomorrow, we're exchanging our US dollars for Russian Rubels, getting groceries, and starting our museum tours!

We checked in to our Hostel tonight. It's nothing extremely swanky, but it's certainly homey and I feel like I'm in Russia, which I think is awesome. Here's a picture from the entrance:

Well that's all for tonight! I love everyone at home, but I don't miss you quite yet. ;)