Greetings from Yaroslavl

I've been in Yaroslavl for 20 hours, now. I've slept for about half of that time. We left Dulles airport at 5 pm Eastern Time and flew to Frankfurt. After the 7 hour flight we had an hour to catch the flight to Moscow. The 8 of us made it was ease, but not all of our luggage did. My luggage arrived in Moscow safely but we had to wait until the next flight from Frankfurt for the luggage from two of my companions to arrive.



Three of us took the train to Yaroslavl. We had been warned that the journey from the airport to the train station was difficult - it certainly was with luggage. We took a train from the airport to the Metro station on their "circle line." Then we went up and down lots of steps to get to our subway line. We took the subway to the train station - lots more steps. Fortunately we had two guides from American Councils to help us.



The head guide, Olga, was terrific. She had taught Russian at Bucknell Univ for three years recently. She learned that I had graduated from there and we shared our experiences.



Liz, Lena and I shared a small compartment on the train with a Russian man who spoke some English. Mostly we shared the compartment with our luggage. The trip was just over four hours and we were met by our respective hosts in Yaroslavl.



Alexey's wife Olga speaks English. A friend of their's had a car and he drove us (and my luggage) to their building north of the city. They have a 3 room flat on the third floor. Olga's mother-in-law lives there.