Angela's Notes . . .

Nizhny Tagil

Nizhny Tagil (NT) is where the orphanage it that Camryn & Courtney are at. The trip from Ekat to NT is about a two and a half hours thru a forest. We had hoped that there was somewhere to stay that was closer to NT but there isn’t. The drive is so long for Katy. It has been starting to get to her a little bit. We don’t leave Ekat until 1:30 and by the time we get there we don’t get to spend much more than two hours with Camryn and Courtney. Then we don’t end up getting back home until almost 8:00 at night. The drive is not bad once we get out of the city traffic. The trees are already turning colors of yellow and red. When we took our first drive there most all the trees were still very green. I am sure that they will change much more during our time here. I think we have about 22 days left if everything runs smoothly and no more dates change.

I really haven’t seen too much of the city but what we have seen looks very poor. All the buildings are old and you don’t see development every where like we see in Ekat. They do have a nice grocery store that seems pretty new. The houses there are kind of interesting to see. I was telling Lori that they kind of remind me of the houses on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory but she has never seen the movie. I can not believe she has never seen it! When we get home I told her I am going to find it somewhere so she and all the girls can watch it.

As I was looking up how to spell the name of the city I found some thing that I thought was interesting about the city on the Wikipedia web sight. They say that the copper on the Statue of Liberty may have been mined there.

Lori had some meetings the past few days so Katy and I have been staying in Ekat. On her trips without Katy and me she has driven around more of the city and says there is lots more to Nizhny Tagil then we had seen. She says that it seems to be a really interesting city - just not very developed.

CAMRYN & COURTNEY

It was so nice to finally meet the girls. They both really have good personalities. They seem to be strong willed (but I hear that most kids from orphanages are like that). They are both really sweet, they have big brown eyes and adorable little smiles.

Camryn I think is the more dominate twin. She likes to have us chase her around the room and starts hysterically laughing when we do. When we are feeding them snacks she wants to be the one holding the bag, and if she gets a hold of it, it is almost impossible to get it away from her without everything in the bag flying everywhere. Camryn is very strong. That is a good thing though because hopefully she will have a better time catching up developmentally with her gross motor skills. She also seems to be the more stubborn one, possibly even more stubborn than Katy is. I keep telling Lori that I think they might even each other’s stubbornness out once she gets them home.

Courtney seems to be a little calmer. She has a stubborn personality too but seems to be persuaded to do things easer. She seems to like being held, or sat with. Although neither of them are quite sure what to do with their bodies when you do pick them up. They don’t really grasp on to you - they just kind of hang there - the carriers we brought for the trip home should be a big help with that. I think that is just from lack of being held by someone.

Both of the girls seem to really enjoy playing with Katy. She is very sweet with them and all she talks about are things that she is going to teach her sisters when she gets home. She wants to teach them specifically how to swim and dance.


SOME THINGS LORI WANTED ME TO WRITE ABOUT

The nice guy at the airport in Moscow: So during our two hour wait at the airport we sat in our seats and did not really talk to anyone. We really couldn’t have even if we had wanted to seeing as we don’t speak Russian. Plus, every one we did try to talk to laughed at us so we were kind of over even trying. We had a lot of bags as I talked about in my other blog and it was kind of hard to get them all to where we were trying to go. Lori had warned me about Russian people being kind of serious people and you don’t get any help from anyone. So we really were not excepting anyone to help us when this man that had been sitting across from us during our wait walked up and tried to take one of the bags when we were reorganizing them on our way. I shook my head and said no thank you and pointed to where we were going to show it wasn’t that much further. I didn’t want someone running off with our bags. But he insisted on helping us or he just didn’t understand what I was trying to say. Lori was completely shocked that there was some one nice enough to help us. We were very thankful for his help.

The loud music: Our first two nights here in Russia we stayed in a flat that was brand new. I don’t even think that anyone else had stayed there yet. It was very nice but it had no hot water and no internet and didn’t have a call box either so we could not keep the keys because anyone coming to pick us up didn’t have a way to let us know they were there. The third night we moved almost across the street to another flat that is just a few years old. The very first night around 11:30 someone started playing this very annoying Russian music very loudly. At first we were just like "humm, it’s a Friday maybe they are having a party". The music went on and on until 2:00 in the afternoon the next day - it was horrible. Lori got no sleep at all. I heard it kind of sleeping on and off all night. Of course Katy slept right thru it. The worst part was that they would only play the songs with a fast beat and if a slow song came on it would come to a screeching stop and then either the same song that was on before would come back on or they would skip until they found another song with a fast beat. To say the least, Lori was not happy at all. So after unpacking everything the night before, we took everything and packed it right back up the next morning. Lori was insistent that we were going to leave and go to the Park Inn - a “westernized” hotel that she stayed in on her first trip. Lori called Olga and told her that we wanted to go to the Park Inn and that someone was playing horrible music all night long. Olga seemed shocked and said that she would see what she could do. Later that day we went to visit the girls and on our way home the translator that was with us said that Olga had called her and said that Lydia and Olga (the Olga that owns the flat we are staying in) were going to come over and go to see if they could find the person that was playing the music. They were going to tell them if they did it again they were going to call the cops! Apparently, they have a noise curfew here. Lori and I were not really thrilled with that idea. One because the music was not playing any more so they were going to accuse someone of playing their music very loudly and not even know for sure that it was really that person. But, most importantly, we didn’t want some angry Russian coming and yelling at us because we had complained. Olga (the owner of the flat) assured us that this has never happened before and that if the music did come on again we could call her anytime of night and she would come right over and take care of the problem. Lori and I really thought how they were dealing with the problem was a little silly but figured we would be better off in a flat then a hotel because we could cook our own food and ultimately it would be better for Katy. So we stayed another night and many more since, and there has not been any music. We secretly think it was really the owner of this flat playing her music really loud. The night that all the music was played she had asked for all the money upfront to pay for the flat for the whole time we were staying here. She said if we didn’t end up staying that long she would refund Lori her money. Lori only had enough rubles to pay for two nights because no one had warned us that she needed to pay all up front and we had only exchanged $300 at the airport. We had not found a bank to exchange any more money yet. But all said and done we are happy where we are and there has been no more music. :o)

The water and heat:

So I was talking about how they have central heating thru out the whole city by hot water (from factories apparently) that runs thru pipes in the flats. The pipes run above ground through the city and countryside. Driving down the two lane highway to NT, the pipes are above ground and they go straight up, across and down again over street turnoffs. Well, they finally turned on the heat in our building. Which is nice but they didn’t tell us that we would have no hot water for three days. I guess when they finally turn on the heat they have to pressurize the water and they turn off the hot water to do that. So, as nice as it is to have heat (that, might I say, is not even that warm) it was not very fun taking cold showers. But now we have a somewhat heated “house” and our hot water back so I guess I can’t really complain that much.

Last night we got to go to dinner at the Park Inn - after walking down 10 flights of stairs in an unlit stairway with uneven stairs since the elevator in our new building was not working. Lori had met some people on-line that live in LA who are on their first trip and just met their little girl. We went to dinner with them at the hotel restaurant. It was really nice to actually be able to talk to some other people that are from the states and speak English fluently. For dinner I had a Greek salad with chicken. Yes, I actually ate some chicken. I know I told every one that I wouldn’t be eating any type of meat here but it really was not bad. The only weird thing was that the “salad” didn’t actually have any lettuce. It was all vegetables but they were very tasty. Especially since pretty much all we have been eating is noodles and brown rice with cheese. Jon had a hamburger and french fries that looked good but he said it was "very seasoned" meat. I think everything else was okay. Lydia showed up to pick us up after a couple hours with papers for Lori to sign and then sat in her car until we were ready to go. Lori felt bad about that but it was a good evening anyway and, we were all relieved to find the elevator working when we got back.