Day one: (Friday Jan. 28th)

What a whirlwind of emotion and stress and excitement. Things obviously started off stressful cause I only had 2 ½ hours of sleep Thursday night and I never finished packing and my bags were over weighing. So I got up and everyone was a help. My mom, dad, and Jessica were all trying to help and gather things to get me going. At four we left for the airport and away I went!! Got to the airport at 5:30 and met the ILP director and he gave me all my info and sent me to check in. I got through check in no problem dropped my bags off and thought I could a have like twenty minutes or so to say goodbye to everyone, nope the security line was so long I had to jump right in. As I was standing there I realized the lady had printed me the wrong tickets with someone else’s name. So I had to rush to the counter and butt in front of everyone and tell her what she did. Do, do, do no big deal she just printed off a new one and I was back to security. I really wished I could have said goodbye more, that was hard to be rushed and stressed. But I got through and sat at my gate till we left. I got through to Chicago fine and when I boarded they did the side check luggage thing cause they were out of overhead room and I thought no big deal, they said it would be in Moscow when I got there and then I didn’t have to worry about it. Got to Washington and on the plane, no big deal and sat and waited for it all to hit me that I was gone. And it did, as I watched the sunset and realized I was leaving home (America) for a long time I started to cry and miss everyone. They kept telling us to put away our phones but I didn’t want to, I just kept saying goodbye and couldn’t let go. I let myself cry for a minute or two then I pulled it all together and just watched the luggage being loaded. I was happy because I saw all three of my luggage pieces go on the plane so then I just relaxed and waited for the 10 hour plane ride!!  I only slept like 3-4 hours which was not good.  I should have slept more. They served us dinner and a light breakfast along with as many sodas or waters we wanted. So that was nice. And then we landed in Moscow at 10:00am their time and snow just covered the ground and it was 20 degrees outside. And so ended day one very long, stressful, emotional and hard, but I had made it!!