It's been a long few days. I say "few days" because at this point I'm not really sure exactly how many days it's been. We lost a day during the flight so I'm thinking we just finished Friday and you all are just beginning it. The flight was long. 3 flights over 16+ hours with stops in Minneapolis and Amsterdam. Coming back we can look forward to 22 hours, which should be a great time. :) We arrived in Moscow around 6:45 in the evening and met the coordinator here on the Russian end. He speaks very fluent English with little accent(yay!)and reminds us of the guy on Ratatouille. Very informative and much more clear on exactly what this process entails here in the country and region. The town we are in is about halfway between Moscow and St Petersburg. it reminds me a lot of the UP of Michigan and Northern WI where my grandparents live, except with giant vegetation which I totally didn't expect. To Natasha-you like aspens. You should see these. Huge. Whatever the biggest Aspen you've seen in the States is, double it. Same goes for our normal cedar. Lots of undergrowth and these big flowers over 6 feet tall with huge, table size leaves and dinner plate size clusters of white flowers. Those grow in their own mini "forests". Lots of water with the Volga coming right through this area. The drive from the airport to our hotel was about 3 hours even though it's relatively close. Traffic is...entertaining. But having Thailand to compare to keeps it in perspective for us! They do not have lanes but rather a road all vehicles have in common. However many you can fit is how many lanes there are at any given time. If you are making a turn you just inching into oncoming traffic until a gap opens up big enough to shoot through. Traffic moves fast and there is no such thing as pedestrian right aways, even though buses stop in the middle of the road and traffic to let passengers out and pick up new ones! The roads are in fairly bad disrepair with a lot of potholes so if you do get a relatively open stretch of road the cars go through the potholes like a slalom course. Our hotel is nice, pretty Americanized and seems to cater to adoptive parents (since there is little tourism in this area, adoptive parents are one of the larger groups of foreigners this town sees). We ate breakfast in the hotel, which was, well, not your normal continental breakfast. Meatballs, sausage, crepes stuffed with the meatball mixture, some squares of cottage cheese mixture with, as far as I could tell, mayo (apparently a very common condimen/ sauce here), tomatoes, cucumbers and fruit along with a milky hot dish I would guess was a variation of porridge. At 9 we met our coordinator, Andrei, to begin our day. We had several small steps that needed to be taken before our visitation at the orphanage - meeting with the lady in charge of the Dept of education which includes the database of orphans and picking up the social worker who needed to be there for the first visit to observe us with the child and will later report to the judge her opinion of how we treated her. So not at all intimidating. The first stop we got to find out a little more, like her birthday, and officially file for the referral here in Russia. If you're still reading, chances are it's just to get to this point. :). How do you even explain meeting a child that can't speak your language while being observed by a room full of people? I think at one count it was us and 4 other adults in a tiny little room. We had been cautioned several times by Andrei that she was very shy, very attatched to a couple of caregivers and that she had cried and wouldn't go near the other lady. We had to wait a few minutes while they dressed her (much fancier than normal clothing). Just to keep us guessing and apparently to work with us to impress everyone, she came to us with no hesitation at all. We were told later that this really impressed everyone as it was very unusual for her. We spent about a half hour under observation and then the social worker gave us more specifics on her case and the orphanage doctor came down to answer any questions (which were very few as the other lady who had met her asked many, many questions of several doctors which was passed on to us). At that point someone decided we were good and we ushered outside with her and abandoned. :) What do you do with a kid who can't understand a word you're saying? She was very impressed with the book (thank you Grace!)of photos of her brothers (brats in Russian, pronounced like the sausage, not the naughty kid). She was very interested in the social workers purse so we played a rousing game of empty and taste everything in mom's purse instead. As a side note, just after she came into the room she chucked her toy at someone. Bryan said his first impulse was to apologize for his kid's behavior just like she was one of the boys. Nastia ("a" as in "awe" - while her given name is Anastasia, they call her this nickname) was very active. Outside was much more conducive to really interacting with her. We jumped off the curb, threw sticks and got to see a little more of her personality. Let's just say, to anyone who said she would need to be tough to deal with 4 brothers, I think she can hold her own. She is very tiny and you would guess from her size and development that she is just over a year, rather than over 2 yes old. Our visit was probably a little over an hour til she needed to go back in. We ran and grabbed lunch and a short nap before going back for a much more informal visit - as in, here's the kid, just don't leave the grounds. We had a fairly long amount of time and at some point someone had mentioned that she loves music so Bryan pulled out his phone and put a little Burlap to Cashmere going. She was fairly hesitant of him (they see very few men), right up til then. It took about half a song for her to decide that Burlap to Cashmere rocks ( which they do) and that a tiny portable device that plays music may be the single coolest thing she's ever had. Most of the remainder of the time she rocked out (literally...the boys may have to assign her as drummer in the band...) and pitched a massive fit (feet kicking, screaming, bloodcurdling crying and a death grip on the phone) when the song stopped (as songs do) or we tried to touch the phone. The coordinator popped out to check on us and tried to touch it just to see if we were really serious. He thought it was pretty funny. Like a true American child, she spent most of the time with the cell phone held up to her ear. We were able to stay at the orphanage for much longer - I'm thinking close to 2 hours. We had heard many people talk about only seeing the child once or twice or a few minutes before they completed the adoption. This region works very differently and the judge will specifically ask how many times we saw her and likes it to be a lot. That being said, since we are here on a weekend (unusual due to the vacation in July beginning Monday - the judge is coming in to meet with us to do the initial interview on what's technically her first day of vacation), we actually get a day extra of visitation, so we should see her twice tomorrow and Sunday for those same lengths of time. We were not prepared for that and next time will bring more busy toddler interactive toys since rocks and a refill of new items in the purse and the cell phone got a little old! Tomorrow we hope to have a little more downtime to walk around town a little. Meanwhile it's 11 here and in a bid to fight the jet lag I should probably get to bed. Prayer requests: for my allergies to behave - the amount of vegetation in much larger form of trees and grasses we have in Gillette is not helpful for my asthma and I'm getting really severe side aches from it. Pray also that paperwork on Monday goes smoothly and that our meeting with the judge goes well. :)