Our flights over were all smooth and on time. We managed to pass the 5+ hour layover in Philly. We ate supper on the flight to London, it was good but Maria chose to eat the tuna I packed in my carryon. She did decide to try the chocolate dessert AND the chocolate bar on her tray! The only negative was the American in front of me who took FULL advantage of the free red wine with supper. I don't think he was used to drinking that amount on an airplane. He had to leave the plane in London in his PJs and socks with his other clothes in a plastic bag - YUCK!
The London airport was truly not what I expected. I thought London - ok big, nice airport. No, actually it was a little run down and confusing. We had to board a bus to take us to terminal 1 from terminal 4 where we landed. I was concerned at one point because it seemed we were completely leaving the airport. We pulled up to terminal one and Maria and I hopped off and headed back inside to find our gate. What we discovered is that London doesn't like to post gate numbers until 30-40 minutes before departure time. So we got close to the international departure gates and sat down in this huge common area. Basically everyone was sitting and staring at this big board waiting for their gate to be posted. The Bucharest gate posted at 9:12am for the 9:40 departure. Even though we were on 5 hours of sleep at this point and it was 4am our time at home we took off for the gate. I had told Maria that we would need to move quickly to our gate. It was all I could do to keep up with her! Talk about a girl on a mission to get to her Daddy. :0)
Maria and I arrived in Romania yesterday to hear Daddy calling our names over the noise as we cleared customs. I can't tell you how great it was to hear his voice!
We came to the apartment dropped off our bags (minus one that was left in London - it'll arrive today) and jumped on the metro. The older gentleman at the ticket counter fussed at me for not having a hat on Maria (it was around 30 degrees F and windy). I told him I was working on it - we had just arrived. After we walked down to the metro this young guy came chasing us down. The worker was concerned we would take the wrong train and had sent the younger man, who spoke english, to help us. After getting to Cora, the big grocery store, we ate at McDonalds. Talk about culture shock. We never eat there in the states! ;) We also got some fornetti. This is a romanian food - a croissant type pastry with all types of stuff inside. We tried apple and sweet cheese last night. By this point I was fading fast so we headed back to the apartment.
We were in bed by 8pm exhausted. We actually slept until 6:30am and feel good this morning. Hopefully we'll be busy today and sleep good again tonight as we make this adjustment. It's 7am now here and midnight in the SC. Heh heh, I haven't been up this late in a while! :)
I made my list last night of things we need to make the apartment feel more like home for the year. Steve was excited to see me making a list when he got in with the milk and water late last night. We'll head out today in the car to get some of the things I want.
Thanks to those of you that prayed us over the ocean and into Daddy's arms! We could feel your words paving our path and it felt great!
We'll post again later with photos. I haven't dug out our camera - I did good to find PJs last night!
We love you all!!!
Dana
