A Series of Events, Some of Them Unfortunate

So, I'm not dead. Yay! There have been a couple of moments along the way where I thought I was about to become dead, but so far all's well. To date:
DC - I am officially in love. Sign me up to live there, eh? They kept us in meetings all day, so we didn't get to see much of the city, but we did manage some sight seeing after we got out - the monuments are pretty cool after dark.

Flights - fly SwissAir - don't fly Lufthansa. We were on a jam-packed 747 that hasn't been retrofitted with those fun little monitors in the seat backs - not a fun way to spend 8 hours. The controls in my row's seats didn't work until we started our descent into Frankfurt, so we couldn't even operate the lights. :-( And they didn't give us chocolate - like I said, fly SwissAir.

Petersburg - pretty cool, as always. I didn't sight see as much this time - we just walked around, which was plenty fun. The hotel hosted some big event for a company or something our last day there, so we ate dinner on the second floor and watched a bunch of drunk Russians dance - it was interesting, possibly educational.

Flights again - Oh, Aeroflot. My group got together at 3.30 the morning of our departure, only to discover that the bus didn't have sufficient space for our luggage - I spent the whole trip to the airport worrying that my suitcase was going to fall out of the overstuffed compartment. As it turned out, that would be the least of our worries...First flight, fine. Second flight, a little sketchier (2x2 with luggage compartments like a bus). The connection between flights was quick - they had to hold the bus to the airplane for our group (not that they wanted too...) Upon arriving in Volgograd, we discovered that our luggage hadn't made the connection with us. We had 23 people, 0 suitcases and a 6-hour bus ride to look forward to. Hurrah! (The suitcases came the next evening...)

Astrakhan - We were supposed to get in at 6 PM. We actually arrived at 10 PM, by which time we were all bone-tired, frustrated, and felt pretty gross. Thus, they sat us down to a traditional Russian dinner and let our prospective families watch us eat. Needless to say, not much was consumed... The folks at the university were very kind, and had assembled bags with toothbrushes and a change of clothes. My host family made me wear mine - an XL university shirt and an XL pair of drawstring capris. Super fashionable, no?

And now my time is up, so I'll leave y'all hanging. Soon: the rest of the story :-)