Transfer at Domodedovo

I am writing this post from the Domodedovo Airport in Moscow, Russia.  My group arrived about an hour ago safe and soundly.  We departed on Wednesday afternoon from Washington, DC on a Lufthansa flight.  Everything went relatively smoothly, except our flight from Frankfurt to Moscow was cancelled.  Luckily, there was another flight an hour later that could accomodate the approximately sixty American students and their minders.  

It is exhilirating to be back in Russia.  I am amazed at how much more I understand now as compared to this point last year.  We are waiting now to depart for Tomsk on S7 airlines.  This is one of the new private Russian airlines that has emerged since the fall of the Soviet Union.  Unfortunately, the flight does not leave for another seven hours.  I will try to get some sleep and purchase a European current converter, something I neglected to do back in the States.  

I have had the opportunity over the course of the trip to meet a little more with my fellow participants.  They are really quite an interesting bunch.  For instance, I sat next to someone involved in the slow food movement.  She explained to me some of the intricacies of this philosophy of cuisine - eating simply, organically, and sustainably.  It seemed to me to be a jolly good idea.  I understand the one (rather large) drawback is that it can be quite expensive.  Another participant lives adjacent to the Holy Trinity Monastery in New York.  Conversely, there is a young man from Brigham Young University who spent two years as a Mormon missionary in Russia.  His Russian is excellent and I enjoyed speaking with him about his experiences abroad.  My room-mate from Washington is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Washington University, fluent in Chinese and a few Central Asian languages to boot.