Birobidzhan

It is now Thursday, November 23, 2006 - American Thanksgiving Day.

Arrived in Biro early afternoon and immediately went to our appointment at the Ministry of Education. This was what I thought was a very important meeting, but it lasted all of 5 minutes. I signed some paperwork that allowed me to meet the kids at the orphanage. The only surprise was that the children are at two different orphanages and I was under the impression that they were in the same one. Also, found out that I would not meet them until Friday, I was a little disappointed, but we were so tired after the flight and time change that all we really wanted was to get something to eat and go to bed.

After the meeting with the MOE, we were taken to the Hotel Vostok to check in. You need to know, that neither Gail or I are "granola girls" and despise not having simple luxuries in life, but being that this is my trip of a lifetime, I was prepared for just about anything. Now I was told in advance to take my sense of adventure and also my sense of humor, well that was completely an understatement! The Hotel Vostok was unlike any hotel/motel/campground you could possibly imagine. From the outside it doesn't look too terrible, but once we were taken to our room, that was another scary story! The room consisted of a foyer, a bedroom with one small double bed, a kitchen area that had a hot pot, a table with banquet seating and a small refrigerator. Now the bathroom was a whole different story! It had a bathtub, no shower curtain, a pedestal sink with a faucet that swung from both the tub to the sink, a hand held sprayer and a toilet. It had two towels that we were expected to share! The toilet paper was like sand paper, Gail, praise God, pulled up her supply of Charmin. Thank God Gail and I both brought flip flops, as there was no way that I would let my feet touch the ground in that place. Gail and I also had to share the small bed, thank goodness we're sisters and we like each other!!! Although she clung to her blanket all night afraid I was going to steal the covers and she would freeze to death. Our translator ordered lunch, dinner and breakfast for us before she left. After we settled into our room, we went to the restaurant for lunch; a salad, bread and Pepsi light. Well after they brought out the salad, all this other food started showing up, only to figure out they were bringing us all our meals at once! We had no translator, and with our limited Russian, we could not explain what they were supposed to do, so we finally gave up and left with most of the food still on the table, I'm sure they were not happy. After our late lunch, we went up to our room to take a nap, which turned into a 12 hour nap and finally woke up early the next morning, ready to go and meet my kids!!