Dun, Dun Duaaaaa....

That's supposed to dramatic entrance music, in case you missed the reference.

So now that everyone is sufficiently freaked out. Thank you, Ukraine. Let's throw a little perspective on the geographical situation at hand.

Accurate and Sensible questions:

Isn't Belarus awfully close to Ukraine??

Yep part of it. Ukraine makes up the southern boarder of Belarus.

Didn't they just shoot down or otherwise crash a civilian plane there?

Yep.

How close is Belarus to where the problems are?

Good question, for this answer I will refer to this lovely map that I made to demonstrate. (Thanks, Google Earth!).

Look for the little White arrow. When you find it, that's Belarus. It's there, but it's hard to see.

Ahhhh, a little closer still look for the white arrow. it's pointing to Belarus.

Katie and Igor in Zaslonava (green arrow) or Minsk (red pointer guy), wayyyy far north of Crazy Town.

Now all this to say, that, Yes we are still planning on going on our vacation. Yes, I have already registered with the US Embassy in Minsk (there is an online system were you can file the details of your trip and they send them to the embassy closest to where you are staying). Also for some added piece of mind, I have included below the flight path and link to Lufthansa online flight route guide for you to make sure I'm telling you the truth of how the flight goes. If things start getting more spicy then of course we will re-assess, but let's hope that this cools things off over there instead of heats things up.

 http://lufthansa.innosked.com/(S(5d04gl55r30pszfgejfy3lzj))/Default.aspx?lang_id=en&country=uk