Angela's Notes

While I've been updating this blog, Angela has been posting to her "myspace" and she's included all the travel trials, etc. Here are her postings regarding the trip so far . . .

10:08 PM - RUSSIA TRIP Current mood: adventurous
Okay this is for everyone that has been asking how it is here in Russia & about how the trip has been so far.
I am going to subtitle stuff so that if you only want to know about some things you don't have to read it all……
Oh, and for those of you that don't know, I am here helping a friend bring home twins that she is adopting.

THE FLIGHT, AIRPORT IN MOSCOW & ARRIVING IN EKATERINBURG

We left LA at 6:30pm Monday the 8th. Entering the gate area we had to present passports so Lori gave the guy Katy's Russian and US passports. He stared at Katy's Russian passport for a long time comparing it to the US one and finally said that something was wrong with it. There was a K or something missing! The Russian passport is written in the Russian alphabet so there was a lot more than a missing K - once we explained that to him he let us through. The first flight went well Katy did really well especially for being 3 years old. Our flight from LAX to Moscow was 12 hours and then we had a 6 hour layover (not as bad as it sounds), we only spent about an hour and a half actually waiting.

First we got to Moscow and had to go thru some passport thing to be signed into the county. we stood in line (well if that's what you would call it as there are no actual lines for anything here in Russia. People just kind of herd around and push and shove to get to wherever they need to go. Standing there for like an hour we got no where. It was getting a little frustrating and Katy was getting a restless. There was another area that was just for Russian citizens to go thru and a man behind us suggested that we go there to see if they would let us thru because we had a child. Luckily they did let us thru (who knows how long we would have had to wait). So we got our luggage, met up with our translator (Jane) who drove us to a different airport.

At the next airport we found some seats and Lori and Katy sat. Jane took me to exchange some money and explain how we check into out flight and how we can tell if it is our turn to go thru security (it is very different in Russia then in the US). Jane left after everything was explained. Lori, Katy and I just sat and waited for about an hour and a half.

Finally it was our turn to go thru security. It took about 5 minutes for the security lady to figure out our tickets and we moved on to the next step - actually getting thru security with 5 checked bags and about 4 carry-on bags and a kid (we don't travel light). Not knowing exactly what to do, Lori and I are trying to get everything on this belt to be x-rayed and no one was helping. They just looked at us and smiled as we looked like "idiots" (and we probably did) because we don't speak Russian. Finally we get thru there and move on to actually checking our luggage and getting our boarding passes. Not an easy task because one, we don't speak Russian and two, Katy has dual citizenship. We don't know what passport to show the lady to check us into our flight, so we just show both. She started looking around for a fourth person to be with us. Although I am pretty sure that when I handed them to her I showed her both US and Russian passports of Katy's and pointed to Katy. Then I showed her mine pointing to me and Lori's pointing to her. Once the lady figured all that out, I told her we were checking 6 bags (we decided to check one of our carry-ons). She looked at me like I had four heads and put up six fingers and then counted all the bags to make sure she had it right. So all in all it took us about 30- 45 min just to get thru security and check in our bags even though there was no line or wait. Good thing we had a red eye and the airport was pretty empty.

All checked in finally we found our gate and sat and waited for our flight to board. Katy fell asleep when we were waiting for our boarding passes and I was getting really tired. I had not slept any of the flight and had at that point been awake well over 24 hours and we still had a two and a half hour flight to Ekaterinburg (Ekat). Even though Katy was awake all of that flight, I got to sleep most of it :o). We got to Ekat at 5:30 am Wednesday the 10th, came to our flat at about 7ish, ate (airplane food is horrible not that you already didn't know that) and slept until two in the afternoon. :o)

BEING COLD


Mostly it is cold. We really were not thinking it was going to be this cold but we have enough layers to keep ourselves warm enough to not be freezing. There is no heat in our building. We are told that each building has its own central heating for the whole building and the government controls when it is turned on. Yeah, kind of weird. One of our translators said that they start turning on heat in different parts of the city on the 15th of September. Different parts have different priority and we must be in the part with not a very high priority. We have been to quite a few shops in different areas of the city that are heated (maybe they're just trying to get people to shop, who knows).

LORI'S COURT DATE AND COMING BACK HOME

Originally I had been telling people that the court date would be 9/24. Yesterday we found out that the judge moved it to 9/26 because of meetings that she has on 9/24. She doesn't want to be tired and cranky for Lori's hearing so that is why she moved the date. Good and bad. Good because hopefully she will be easier on Lori about why a single parent with one child is adopting twins (Courtney & Camryn), however , this is also bad because it prolongs the knowing if we get to bring the girls home with us or not. There is a 10 day wait after court between getting the go ahead and actually taking the girls from the orphanage.
With court on 9/24 we would get to pick them up on 10/7 so with court on 9/26 we should not be able to pick up the twins until 10/9. More good news, they do assure us that we will still get to pick the girls up on the same day as if court had been on the 24th. But who really knows if that will be the case until it actually happens. So as scheduled we should be home by October 15th, if all goes according to plan.

….More to come later - it's about 12 at night here and I am tired