Well, as usual I'm up at 4 o'clock in the morning. But today its for different reasons. We traveled a total of twenty or so hours yesterday between going to the Airport, waiting, flying to Atlanta, waiting, flying to Moscow (9 hours), driving into Moscow, waiting to meet the others to get an apartment key. Once we got settled into the apartment, we were starved and I mentioned before we went to McDonalds. It was Sunday in Moscow and we were starving....not too many choices.
After that we went to the PRODUCTI, not spelled like they do...but enough. We took a walk after sitting so long and found a small grocery with all the basics that we needed. I'm pretty proud that my relearned Russian allowed me to read necessary signs and passable to ask where the milk was. Andy, of course, bought some good looking cookies to try out. We have fresh bread, yogurt, and other goodies for Breakfast and bottled water for today.
Our guide is an amazing little pistol. She comes up to about half way up my chest with bright reddish hair. A couple on my Yahoo group shared a pictures of her with me so we spotted her immediately when we came out of the airport. We slide through the passport control and customs with zero problems. The customs guy was so flustered with the crowd and took one look at our 5 bags and just waived us through. Seems he didnt' want to mess with it.
We have a driver who has a nice smaller SUV. He doesn't seem to speak much English but he's very nice. These two will be our leaders throughout this trip to the orphanages and speaking to officials. Very important for us.
The plan today is to get up this morning, eat breakfast, and shower. Our guide is coming to get us at 9:30am so go over to main office here in Moscow. We meet with her about things and then head to the Ministry of Education (MOE) where we meet officials about our referral. This is the big meeting. From there we will head to whatever our orphanage is and finally meet our child! I mean meet our child! Meet our child!! MEET OUR CHILD!! Oh my goodness....sounds so weird...exciting....YIKES!!
I'll just leave you with that becuase it's about time for me to eat breakfast and start to get ready. I want to take a walk outside before the day really hits. I'm going to be sitting a lot again today. It's about 33 again today and overcast. There's been snow but it's only piled about 6 inches and all the sidewalks and roads are clear. As long as the wind isn't too high its not too bad.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
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So excited for you guys....I'm so ready to be where you are, and thank you so much for sharing your trip with all of us. Praying for you about the MOE and all that happens today. Glad to hear you had good luck with the shopping and with making all connections there.
ReplyDeleteRadost'!
Just wanted to let you know that Svetlana is going to give you a big speech on how there are no perfect children, blah, blah, blah and you have to be open to no perfect children...
ReplyDeleteDon't let it freak you out, just nod your head and agree. She gives everyone the speech and at first it scared us and we were worried that we were going to end up with some three eyed kid but in the end we got the most perfect child for us.
Our driver/translator was Pasha and Artem was from Fryazino where Tamara was the director. If you see either of them please tell them Randy, Susan and Artem say hello.