Amber Beach

On Friday, Alyssa and I joined a group of ladies going to Amber Beach. It is a beach that amber washes up onto. We looked in the sand and sea weed for the little sparkly amber pieces. Alyssa loves shiny things, so she was awesome at finding them. Maybe after a few more trips, we will have enough to make a bracelet.

A local boy brought us some neat things: small starfish, dragonfly, butterfly, and jellyfish.

There were seals off in the distance on rocks barking and swimming.

Then our bus got stuck in the sand when we were leaving....very amusing. All the ladies were pushing the bus trying to get it out, so luckily no pictures of that part. After 30 minutes of digging and pushing and yelling in Russian, a truck came along and towed the bus out.

Traveling to the other side of the world

Alyssa made friends with the Continental pilots. When we first boarded the plane in Houston, they invited her up to see the front. So she went with Pilot Jill while I found our seats and got our backpack and books and gum and stuff ready for the flight and went up to check on her. Alyssa was sitting in the front chair with a pilot hat and had the 4 pilots laughing at something... She ended up staying up there for 20 minutes or so and even got to press some buttons! What a great start to a very, very long flight, 12.5 hours to Tokyo. Pilot Jill even came to visit during a break and passed Alyssa some extra snacks. We watched lots of movies and played video games and ate awesome food (in Business Class). Alyssa was able to sleep a few hours, but Bryan and I stayed awake.

When we finally arrived in Tokyo, we had to make sure Taylor (our dog) made the transition to the Russian plane. After confirmation, we had a couple hours to stretch until our next flight on Vladivostok Air--not quite as nice as Continental. Alyssa and Bryan slept this whole flight (since it was midnight to us), but I was still awake.... Amazeingly, all our suitcases plus dog crate plus booster car seat made it to Yuzhno. The Yuzhno airport looks more like a concrete prison and the people are not very friendly at 11pm Russian time, but we got through visas and customs and made it to our awaiting bus and then to our townhouse. The wives in the Welcoming Commitee here are so nice and already had sheets on our beds and food in our fridge. We showered and slept and Alyssa and Taylor woke us up at 6am the next morning!

We've met lots of great people here and Alyssa is running from house to house with friends. Some ladies have taken us shopping and I'll write about those experiences another day. Quite a culture shock when in town.

Our Adventure Begins

The Wandering Wesleys departed Houston, Texas on Wednesday, August 17th, 2011 and flew to Tokyo, Japan and then onto Yuzhno, Sakhalin, Russia. The long flights were a bear!! We landed on-time and safely with all our suitcases and Taylor in her dog crate and a booster carseat!

We are getting settled in to our new home in Yuzhno, Sakhalin, Russia. We arrived late Thursday night at 11pm and just got internet yesterday, so trying to catch up on everything.

We have started quite an adventure. The compound is lovely and the people are very friendly. Alyssa is fast at making friends and is running from house to house already. The weather here is glorious, high of 75F and everything is lush and green.

Going into town is quite a culture shock. Yuzhno is an old, run down city. The drivers are aggressive and squeeze 3 lanes of traffic into only 2 lanes and turn right in front of you. I am glad we are not allowed to drive here. So far our experience with the drivers has been fine. Some ladies took us shopping for food and they helped explain where/what to get and can speak good enough Russian to get by. I took my first Russian language lesson yesterday morning, so hopefully I will pick it up sufficiently.

I am new at writing a blog, so I still need to figure out how to make it look pretty and download photos and such. unfortunately, I signed up the blog here in Russia, so the instruction text is in Russian!! I need to fix that......