Josh and Becca Thrap and Family

So here’s the deal, we have over 1500 photos from our two weeks in Russia, and honestly, they don’t even begin to capture the fullness of everything that we experienced, and I’m just not sure what will interest those of you who will bother to look at this. So for the next few days of our journey, I have chosen several pictures to tell of what we did–they may not be the best ones that I have, but Josh will be in every single one of them! Try to spot Josh! It will be a lot easier in some than in others but I promise he is in every one! (Except the very first one which I will describe.)

I don’t have a long time to write now, so this vacation story may get broken up more than I’d intended but I don’t want to keep putting it off. I hope that I don’t bore you, but I kept no journal on this trip so this written record will be for my memory also. When Lena and her boyfriend Albert took us to the airport for our flight to Mineralnye Vody, just before passing through security where they could no longer follow, she told us that her cousin Roma would be picking us up at the airport and taking us straight to a wedding! We thought she was joking around with us. The airplane was small and cramped and it was too dark to see the mountains we were approaching, and then when we finally did arrive disaster struck! I headed to exit the plane and knew that Josh was right behind me, but when I made it down the stairs onto the tarmac and looked around he was NOWHERE to be seen! I stood there watching everyone else depart instead of boarding the busses waiting to take us to the terminal. The first bus left. I waited longer until finally a woman from the airline came to usher me onto the last bus so it could leave and I said I couldn’t find my husband and she said “well, he’s not on the plane, it’s empty.” PANIC Panic the entire bus ride to the terminal. Worrying about Josh who doesn’t speak a lick of Russian, and what my next step should be to find him! But as soon as I got off the 2nd bus and headed into the building I found him. Looking slightly less panicky than myself. Apparently he had been ushered by a stewardess on the plane to the front exit and made it off the plane before me and went straight to the 1st bus and thought I’d seen him do so. So, together again, we collected our luggage and headed out to see who would be meeting us! Lena was not joking. Roma explained that everyone else was at the wedding and that we had to stop and get some flowers and then we’d go straight to the wedding too! (Which, on the one hand, was great for Josh to be able to have the experience, but, on the other hand, we felt incredibly self-conscious because we had been traveling and were in jeans and sneakers and probably smelled weird etc. not to mention that we didn’t know the couple or have anything for them and our arrival was fussed over and we were given lots of attention.) The quick stop for flowers took a ridiculously long time, but we showed up with a beautiful big bouquet of white roses. We were greeted and seated and fed all kinds of good food, but we were still just very self-conscious about crashing in our jeans etc. (maybe me more so than Josh). So here we are fresh from our travels. And unfortunately it isn’t a great picture, but at least we did get to hear Boba play with his band! (Boba (pronounced VO-va) is our host “father” and he plays the saxophone professionally!)