[Previous entry: "It's Done!"] [Next entry: "Another day in Khabarovsk"]

12/25/2004: "Merry Christmas!"

Hope everyone back home had a great Christmas! Ours was quiet, but fun. Leigh is teaching me to knit, so that took up much of yesterday. For dinner, we had the front desk arrange for us 2 cabs (since there are 6 of us total with the Blaylocks and the Stichweh's) to take us to the Amethyst Hotel Restaurant for dinner. We had fried scallops with frenchfries and they were so good!!!! We were the only people in the small restaurant and the waiter spoke just a little bit of English. He was so nice! It was quite comical when we asked him to take our picture and he held up the camera and said very seriously (but smiled afterward) "Cheese" We all giggled. He was so funny. His name was Vlad. He took good care of us and we had a great dinner. We walked out and our cabs were there waiting for us. They brought us back to the Mar Kuel and we met in Brian & Alicia's room to watch a Christmas movie. After that, we came back to our room. Adam called his parents and I crashed. I am still not quite adjusted to the time change. I wake up at either 4am or 6am each morning. Once I have been able to go back to sleep (yesterday) but not usually. Hopefully I will get adjusted soon! This going to bed at 9:30 thing makes me feel old

It's around 7:15am now. It is Sunday. We won't be able to visit Lidia again until Monday. I was a bit disappointed not to visit her on her birthday, but at least we were able to see her before.

Today I think we are going to do a Matrix movie marathon! (We have enough trilogies and such between all of us to last us several days!!) This has been very fun. We all keep saying how glad we are that we are here together instead of alone. It really changed the mood of the trip.