I should change the name of the blog to dublinfi now because, despite the best efforts of russian bureaucracy, we all made it home in one piece last night. We had a few last minute panics with our visas. when we got our visas back on thursday we realised that the intelligent being who processed them had stamped them SEVEN TIMES (the stamp is all important in Russia!) but had forgotten to actually sign them! So a mosey down to our friendly passport office and three hours of waiting later they finally managed to find the guy who processed them and got him to sign them. We were on our way...or so we thought.

11 o'clock on friday morning, just as we were getting ready to leave for the airport, we realised that our migration cards, seemingly unimportant little bits of paper that you fill out when you enter the country and forget about, were still in college because they had taken them off us on the first day. These cards are ridiculously overimportant if you ever feel the need to leave the country. Cue a panicked dash into college to be told that they couldn't find them and that they were only a formality anyway (without formalities and needless paperwork Russia wouldn't be able to function!!) Anyhoo, we headed out to the airport, determined to play dumb and priming ourselves to turn on the tears if necessary (shameful I know, but very effective!) First hurdle;overweight bags, solved by checking in seven of us all together and hiding the big pink elephants that were the slightly big-boned bags. Second hurdle; passport control, surprisingly easy for those of us who were without migration cards, still not sure why. Not so easy for sinead who was told that there was a problem with her visa and when she returned with it to Russia she would probably be deported, nice!! They let her through after much humming and hawing and we were on our way!

Once we got to Prague, the quietest airport in the world ever, we were in the EU and nobody could touch us dammit! Arrived in Dublin last night and were dropped into the shameless overconsumerism that is the city at christmastime and the joy of an overstuffed fridge and mammy cooking! Its good to be home. I'll probably be dying to get out of here in about a week...

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!