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Now here is where the party starts. Kind of. I fell asleep in the middle of the floor of the Amsterdam airport, and woke up witih a crowd of elder Russians staring at me. My fly wasn't even down either. We then boarded our flight to Moscow, which I slept through the whole way (why so tired?). In Moscow we had to check through customs, which I had been apprehending the whole way, but it turned out to be pretty easy, no cavity searches, no Russian yelling. After that we had to pick up our luggage and step out into the world. Immediately we were attacked by taxi drivers. And apparently we had to find the cheapest one, because we had to transfer to the domestic airport. We found a good guy, drove to the airport, checked in no problem, and flew to Mineralny Vody. Easy. Then, right off the plane some police officers asked for our passports and hotel vouchers. After we were allowed to enter the airport, we discovered a tiny hut pretty much. The whole airport is like 2 rooms, one for arrivals/departures, and one for luggage pick up. Our bags decided to be the last off the plane, so the airport lady was very displeased with us by the time we left. We found the driver to take us to our hotel, and walked about 20 minutes to where he had found free parking. Then, we had the task of loading up the car, a teeny little sedan. Take in mind we have 3 well filled large duffel bags, and a big ski bag. Looks like we have a problem. We managed to fit the duffels, but then had to give our skis to a van who apparently was going the same place as us. The hard part about all this is that many of the people don't speak English. Kind of a problem, because we don't speak Russian...but it's also kind of fun, like a giant game of cherades; eventually the point gets across. So on the 3 hour drive to Terksol, the village where our hotel is, we hit about 50 police checkpoints. It was crazy, we would get rolling, then have to stop and hand out our passports and papers. Eventually we made it, got in our room, and passed out.
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