We have arrived safe and sound

It is about 3:30 in the morning here on Sunday and 11:30 back home on Saturday. My internal clock is obviously messed up, but I am anticipating having plenty of time to nap. We are in a safe area and feel very comfortable (don’t worry mom and dad and all our wanna-be moms and dads); however for the simple fact that we are foreigners in another country we will not be able to go out at night and our agency rep and interpreter would prefer us not to go too far away from the hotel during the day. We are so fortunate that there are several adoptive families here right now - all of which are on trip number two. Some have their children with them as they are waiting out the required 10 day period for all decisions to be final. They are so incredibly helpful and informative. There is a room upstairs at the hotel called the White Rabbit room. This is where many of the families go around 5 or 6 to hang out with other English speaking families and debrief about the day’s visit to the baby home or to take a break from the four walls of the hotel room. This is a gold mine for us. There is better advice to be given than from those that have just completed the process that you are about to begin. Even though we have read book, blogs, internet sites, etc… nothing is better than a heart-to-heart with the experts.

Speaking of experts, another family from our agency is here right now as well. They are the Pittman family (their blog is linked on the left). They have adopted 3 siblings. Becky and Eric have taken us under their wing. In fact I think we are going to have to ask CHI to transfer part of our travel fee over to them! :o)

Today or tomorrow (however you look at it - Sunday) we are hoping to get train tickets to go downtown to look around. We have been told by the other families that this is completely safe to do. The hotel clerks will write us a note in Russian with our information so that if we get lost or anything we can show it and they will help us return to the hotel. Today will be our only chance to do this since our visits start on Monday and we will return too late to get downtown and back before dark. Hopefully it all works out and I will have some pictures to show you of Vlad.

Tomorrow, Monday, we will be picked up around 10:30 a.m. to go to the Department of Education to get our official invitation to meet ‘a’ child. We will then go to Artem (Artyem) to gather as much information as possible, and then finally meet this lil guy. We are beside ourselves with anticipation, anxiety, and excitement.

I promised Brady and Maddie that I would try to put pictures up everyday so they can see different things that have happened. I haven’t had much of a chance to take many pictures, but here are a few.

This is the four of us at the train station in Macomb on Thursday morning.


This is the Vlad Inn




And for a little humor… I am the gadget queen (no comments Tim or Corey!) and so here is a look at the mess I created when my darn blow dryer blew a fuse in the converter thingy we were using! For those future travelers – just get a European style hairdryer and forget the converter all together! Luckily we can us the adapters without the power converter for our other electronic devices so I did not have an anxiety attack!