Goodbye UK, hello KZ

Somewhere over Eastern Europe... Granted by the time we post this we will be nowhere near any altitude over Eastern Europe but you have to admit it sounds so much cooler this way. We are two hours into our flight and probably about another two hours before we briefly stop over in Ekaterinburg, Russia and then on to Almaty. For those history buffs out there, Ekaterinburg is the city in which the last tsar and his family were executed. That’s got to be a tough one to live down. There is a new Cathedral of the Spilt Blood built on the site where the family was massacred and an ornate flight of steps is supposed to replicate the steps down to the cellar in which they were shot. On a brighter note…

We are still on British Airways and I gotta tell you that BA has some of the friendliest air staff around. Okay, there was that less than pleasant guy at the counter in Heathrow who mumbled a lot and griped about our carry on luggage. Otherwise, everyone else has been quite a bit friendlier than most flight crews I have encountered in the States. I personally think it is an English frame of mind for the most part. All the signs in London for anything broken seemed very apologetic, so much so that you almost felt bad for the sign. Even some of the road signs take a unique perspective on things. One street sign we saw while riding a bus said, CHANGING PRIORITIES AHEAD. We thought that this must be a metaphor for our adoption trip, sort of like when the road signs were speaking to Steve Martin in L.A. Story. It actually turned out to mean something like the lanes were going to change up ahead. I guess it would be a bit much to expect this and I would question whether I had spent too much time at one of the pubs if this were the case. But every sign seemed this way. Where we would say DO NOT ENTER, here you had ROAD MAY BE INAPPROPRIATE FOR REALLY LONG VEHICLES, IT WOULD BE REALLY GRAND IF YOU WOULD MAKE ALTERNATE TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS. Okay, so I made everything up after the word vehicles—but that is what it implied.

So now the UK is behind us and Kaz lies ahead. Terri and I are anxious to see the boys and are curious as to what their reactions will be when they first see us. Hopefully they will not be too angry with us—they’ll have plenty of time for that over the years. We have heard it usually doesn’t take too long to get back to the point of where you were before you left so we will hope for the best. I am sure Aidan will stand the best chance of being unhappy with us whereas Liam probably has not fully grasped the whole space/time continuum yet. So in a few hours we will have the joy of going through customs again and then staying a day in Almaty before heading to Ust.

Tune it next time for the next exciting adventure.

Here are a few more pics from London...