Privet from Moscow!

Hello from Moscow!

It is just now that we have had a chance to sit down and update about our travels to Moscow, what a whirlwind few days! The flight on Delta from Atlanta to Moscow was quite the adventure. Gail took it upon herself to change our seat assignments to what she thought was a great move, to an exit aisle with more legroom! Only once on the plane did we find out we were directly across from the bathrooms that all the drunk Russians started using within 45 minutes into the flight, nine hours later, you can only imagine the not so delightful smells surrounding us! Won't go too much into that, just use your imagination.

We were met at the Moscow airport by our translator, Arlena, a great girl about 25 years old who speaks fluent English and is a history/anthropology student at Moscow University. She has been with us every step of the way in Moscow. Got us settled into the Arbat Hotel which is located in the heart of the "bohemian" part of Moscow, lots of street vendors, musicians and pectopah's (restaurants). We ventured out on our first night looking for some great place to eat, only to end up at the Hard Rock Cafe, not exactly like the burgers we know, but passable. By 6:00 pm that evening, after being up for 24 hours straight (not much sleep on the plane with all the commotion around our seats) we were in our pajamas and asleep by 7:00 pm, thank God for ambien and xanax.

The next day, Monday, Arlena and our driver Nickolai picked us up for a tour of the Kremlin and all the hot spots of Moscow. We spent most of the day trudging around the Kremlin in less than great weather, read cold, damp and rainy. Saw beautiful cathedrals, the hermitage travelling collection, religious icons and more religious icons and very pushy people. The people here are very dour, do not smile and love to push to the front of lines, must be years and years of ingrained communist rule. We wanted to treat Arlena and Nicolai to lunch and felt the need to try some of the Russian cuisine. Arlena took us to some restaurant, not able to pronounce it and ordered us a lunch of mushroom soup with some kind of meat filled dumplings, periogis and baked salmon, not bad, but not the tastiest.

Yesterday, Tuesday, we were supposed to see Lenin's tomb, but unfortunately when we got there, we found out he was re embalmed, apparently something they have to do every so often! So we were not able to partake in that tour, neither of us were all that disappointed. Arlena had heard us mention that we might like to go fur shopping, so she took us to the most incredible flea market where all the buyers go to shop for furs for there shops. Well, Gail and I thought this would be bargain hunting galore, but much to our dismay all we heard was "Malinka, Malinka, Malinka" Too small, too small, too small! After three or four hours of this, we were malinkaed out!!! The market was incredible though, anything and everything you could ever possibly want, from furs to vacuum cleaners could be found. By this point all we wanted to do was get to someplace warm and dry so we told them to take us back to the hotel, where we met up with a few other adoptive families and partook in the famous Russian tradition of drinking lots of Vodka!! A great time was had!

Today, Wednesday, we are packing and getting ready to travel to Birobidzhan. We have met several families here at the hotel that already have their children from Biro and are now back to the states. The kids are beautiful, one adoptive single father has met and raves about the little boy I am to adopt, I am now soooo excited, I just can't wait! I could do without the plane trip on "Dalavia Airlines"! some obscure airline here in Russia that probably has some WW II era planes that have been refitted for passenger travel. If we could only take the train, but that is a 7 day trip! So needless to say, I'll be downing the xanax and hopefully will be oblivious to the flight. Okay, Gail's chopping at the bit to get on here and say her piece, so dasvadanya to all! (goodbye)

Ya tibia blu,
Jane