Category Archives: Adoption

What is Reece’s Rainbow?

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If you have been around here for the past couple months, you have probably heard us talk about Reece’s Rainbow. They host our FSP (Family Sponsorship Program) page. That allows people to give to us with tax deductible contributions.
But if you didn’t come here through the Reece’s Rainbow community, perhaps that’s all you know. Reece’s Rainbow just put a new awareness video out and it’s great. But before I link to that, I want to tell you about Reece’s Rainbow.
Most people think of international adoption in one of several ways. They either think of sweet little blue eyed Russian babies, or maybe little girls with dark hair and eyes from China. Maybe even, you think of gorgeous Ethiopian toddlers. I can’t think of many people that haven’t said, “Oh, my cousin/sister/friend adopted a baby from ___. That’s the American view of international adoption. Most adoption agencies will tell you that adoptive families want the healthiest, youngest child with the shortest wait possible.
Where does that leave all the other children in the world? What about the little boy with the cleft palate? What about the little girl born blind? What about the child with the heart defect? Sometimes these conditions are repairable in the US, but in their home countries, there isn’t hope. And, the flagship of Reece’s Rainbow, what about all those kids with an extra chromosome? Unfortunately in many countries around the world, the education, medical care, and frankly, money, isn’t there to care for these kids so they are given up by their parents to live in understaffed and underfunded orphanages, and then later mental institutions because there aren’t social services available to integrate these kids into society.
Reece’s Rainbow finds these kids through their own advocates, through adoption agencies and through orphanage directors and photo lists them. What’s the big deal about a photo listing?
Well, let me tell you about a little boy named Hudson. I had the privilege of naming Hudson. It’s a boy name I love that he would never let me use. Hudson is almost two. He has blond hair and blue eyes. He lives in Eastern Europe. Hudson doesn’t have a mommy and a daddy just because he has cerebral palsy.
You skimmed over that right? You said, “okay, and ?” right?.
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Well, what if I show you his picture? Meet Hudson.
Your heart skipped a beat didn’t it? You said, “Oh my, he’s cute!” right? I did too.
Because Reece’s Rainbow has him in their photo listing he has a chance at a family. Reece’s Rainbow is the ONLY link this little guy has to finding his parents.  Without his picture, it’s not likely that ANYONE would ever adopt him. When he turns 4, he’ll be transferred to an institution. There he will live FOREVER. It doesn’t matter that Hudson is cognitively normal, he will be put in a crib and left alone for the most part to live out his life. How long do you think the sparkle will stay in his eyes?
I’m ashamed to say that I could have *read* Sweet Girl’s profile a million times and never stopped to think about her. I definitely wouldn’t have inquired about her. But I saw her picture and I heard God’s voice and now we are 8 days away from going to plead with the judge to let us have her forever.
Without Reece’s Rainbow, we wouldn’t have found our sweet girl and hundreds of other families wouldn’t have found their children.  It’s a ground breaking ministry that works to place special needs children in forever families. And they do it all for free.
If you want more information on Reece’s Rainbow, special needs adoption, or international adoption in general I would love to talk to you and tell you what I know.  Or you can click here: Reece’s Rainbow
If you want to donate to Hudson’s grant so that the financial burden is less overwhelming for his future parents, you can click here: Hudson (edited later to add that Hudson lives in Russia and Russia is currently closed to American adoption so Hudson’s grant is frozen).
And without further ado, here’s the video I promised. This video isn’t sad or depressing. It’s purpose is to celebrate and give hope.  Even though she’s not home yet, He and Sweet Girl are pictured – see if you can spot them – It’s one of my favorite pictures. J
 
 

Weary…

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This has been a very hard week on the adoption front. I’m growing weary. At a time when the end is in sight and I can see the finish line, I just can’t seem to find the strength to get over these last few hurdles.
We got a court date for August 31st. We leave in 10 days. We should be jumping up and down, we should be so excited, but we can’t, because once again, there might be one simple piece of paper that’s missing that could bring it all come crashing down. I feel like for every single document, for every step of this process, the burden has been on he and I to fight for our Sweet Girl. Nothing has come easy. Nothing has been simple. After months on end of EVERY DAY having to fight for something, we are drained.
I can’t wait for the judge to ask if I will treat this child as my own, if I will love this child. I want to tell him that beyond a shadow of a doubt she is already my child. I already love her as my daughter. I want to look him in the eyes and tell him that every day of this journey I have fought for her and I will not rest until she’s sleeping in her bed, in her house, with her mommy and daddy saying prayers with her and telling her stories.
As I was listening to the radio in the car on the way to work this morning, I was thinking of how of course I won’t give up, of course we’ll keep going. I suddenly realized that this is what God does for us every day.
He fights for the souls of his children.
Through war, poverty, hunger, and more, He battles for us.
Yet, He’s never grown weary and He’s never thought of giving up.
So when today, we grow more weary still by the battles yet to fight to bring her home, I will remember, that I don’t have to be strong, my Father is already strong for me.
Until she is in our family pictures, we won’t rest.
Saving a spot for you Sweet Girl…

A Thousand Years.

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In between the milestones sometimes it feels as if this is a dream. It feels like we never met her and she’ll never be ours. Then, the milestones hit and I read the words… court dossier registered… and then in a rush, the reality sweeps over me and my fingers get tingly. I catch the breath in my chest and I can’t focus. I can’t remember what I was doing 5 minutes ago.
The next several hours pass in a blur as my imagination goes crazy. What will the date be? When will we leave? Does anything have to be rescheduled? Then more, does she miss us? Does she remember us? Does she know how her life is to change?
Then, even more, I hope she’s home by Halloween to see her sisters in their elephant costumes. I wonder if she wants to be the ring leader or another animal. I wonder if she’ll be sad not seeing as much snow this winter. I wonder if she’ll like my cooking. I wonder how she’ll be as a teenager, as a young woman. I imagine her as a mama.
No matter how far my brain takes those thoughts, I am always brought back to the first minute we saw her. So many people have asked what it was like to see her for the first time. Her groupa leader led this scared little girl into the room, dropped her hand and left. She stood standing there for a minute with big tears just waiting to fall as she looked around at us. I instantly had tears in my eyes for her and rather than rush to her and attempt to comfort her, I let a more familiar person go to her.
A sweet fellow adoptive mama, posted a song online today. As I read the lyrics, my breath caught again and there I was. Watching her watch me. Willing her to know.

“Heartbeats fast
Colors and promises
How to be brave
How can I love when I’m afraid to fall

But watching you stand alone
All of my doubt suddenly goes away somehow
One step closer
I have died everyday waiting for you

Darling don’t be afraid I have loved you
For a thousand years
I love you for a thousand more
Time stands still

Beauty in all she is
I will be brave
I will not let anything take away
What’s standing in front of me

Every breath
Every hour has come to this
One step closer
I have died everyday waiting for you

Darling don’t be afraid I have loved you
For a thousand years
I love you for a thousand more
And all along I believed I would find you

Time has brought your heart to me
I have loved you for a thousand years
I love you for a thousand more
One step closer
One step closer
I have died everyday waiting for you

Darling don’t be afraid I have loved you
For a thousand years
I love you for a thousand more
And all along I believed I would find you

Time has brought your heart to me
I have loved you for a thousand years
I love you for a thousand more

-Christina Perry “A Thousand Years”

My favorite lines: “Beauty in all she is. I will be brave. I will not let anything take away what’s standing in front of me.”
Now the judge has 10 days to issue a court date or request more documents. Even if he requests more documents, he can just request that we bring them when we come for court so we don’t have to wait for a court date.
My Sweet Girl, I have loved you for a thousand years and I will love you for a thousand more.

Yardsales, Court Updates, and More!

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(written by him)
7/28 was our big fundraising yard sale for Sweet Girl. Before I get into how that went, its been a while since we had a blog entry so let me fill you in on all thats been happening… its been an odd feeling since returning from our first trip and meeting Sweet Girl.
Now there is a person attached to the name and an understanding of her personality and some fond memories. I find most of my time contemplating what the return visit will be like. Will she remember us? Will we pick up right where we left off with big hugs and flying leaps or step back to square one with caution and timidness? Sweet Girl’s orphanage appears to receive missionary visitors on occasion, so I’m sure she’s used to new faces coming into play with her and her groupa, but she probably never has experienced the same faces returning, let alone returning just for her. I continually wonder if she realizes we are her parents, that she ultimately will be leaving with us to start her new and loving life, or if all the excitement is centered around having new attention from outsiders. But either way, I’m comforted by the thought of seeing her smiling face again, no matter the reason.Last time, once we got back from eastern europe, it took some time to readjust to our normal schedule and become reintegrated with the life we left on hold. The twins were thrilled to see us! Both their grandmother and school informed us they had become increasingly more curious and wondering where we were as the week went on and our few Skype interactions brought out the biggest smiles in them.

We had returned just in time for July 4th holidays. Our family has made a tradition of spending this holiday unplugged and relaxing in the NC mountains with close friends and family, so we barely got home and settled before packing up the entire family to head for an extended weekend away. Because we had just returned from a weeks vacation traveling to meet Sweet Girl, we weren’t able to afford any additional time off from our respective jobs for our annual trip. Thankfully my job occasionally offers me the flexibility of working remotely where I was able to remain in the mountains with the girls, while she unfortunately had to put on some extra miles and return to town for work on Thurs and Fri. The girls enjoyed the thin mountain air and getting to experience the lake. We couldn’t help but imagine Sweet Girl joining us for our very next July 4th celebration… what would be her reaction getting to experience mountains for the first time?

After returning from the holiday weekend, we finally got settled back into our normal routine and an eerie silence. Since we had worked overtime leading up to our first trip, we had completed our court dossier in addition to our registration dossier and were able to travel with it and hand it over to our facilitator before returning home. With so much excitement and activity, its odd to be sitting still, not having to gather some document, signature or stamp. Since leaving country, we had been waiting on some documents our facilitator had requested to come back from the capital before she would be able to complete our court dossier and register us for a court date. With summer vacation, this took almost a month.  Just as things appeared to quiet down, we got word that our faciliator had received the waiting documents and spoken to the courts in Sweet Girl’s town… we would be allowed to formally submit our court dossier on Aug 8th! I’m not sure the reason for the delay, I believe it is a customary time for officials to take vacation around this time of year, so that might have had something to do with it. But at any rate, we had a date to look forward to that was less than 2 weeks away. To keep us occupied during that time, they mentioned some additional, non-standard documents that the courts in her region would require… we needed to collect 3 more. After collecting dozens and dozens, it seemed hardly a challenge. But we took several weeks and sort of ignored the not so fun part of adopting (paperwork and fundraising). We took our time and collected those and they went off to the facilitator and to be apostilled on Friday.

For some time since before our first trip, we had been collecting items from friends with the intention of holding a yard sale fundraiser. This would be our second large fundraiser after our online giveaway contest. We had several items around the home to sell and figured we could collect enough other items from friends and family to hold a yardsale. As our garage started to fill up with donations and the reality of traveling and expenses started to set in, it was time to pick a date. We hardly felt ready or prepared, but decided that picking a date would motivate us. Being that July was filling up fast having just returned from trip 1 and July 4th holday and August was starting to hold promise of our 2nd trip, we picked the last weekend in July, our 6 year anniversary weekend, giving us about 2 weeks notice to put together the yard sale. So we bought an ad in the local paper and locked us in. There was no turning back now!

Right up to the day before the yardsale, we were both unsure of how it was going to turn out. We had collected some items, but items didn’t really start to roll until there was less than a week left. It seemed every night the week of the event I was driving my truck to a new location to pick up donated items, a definite blessing, but frenzied all at the last moment. Then trying to source a substantial number of folding tables, clothing racks, and hangers to display items on was another challenge. Thanks to the Johnson’s and the Voigt’s for helping us out. We couldn’t have done it without them. And thanks to her mom for letting us have the yardsale in her front yard. It was an excellent location! All in all we raised about $1600!! Our goal was $800 so this doubled our expectations! It was a definite blessing, but reminded us that fundraising is tough and not for the meek! We took the camera, but never got a picture we were so busy!

We now have two last fundraisers:
1. A Christmas in July Auction – Yes, it’s August now, but this started in July! This is a joint effort of several families adopting from Sweet Girl’s country. You can see the items up for bid here: http://www.facebook.com/ChristmasInJulyAuction

To bid, just comment on the picture with your bid and at the end we will announce the winners and tell you where to pay. Then the person who donated the item will ship it to you! It’s loads of fun – like ebay for a good cause! The auction ends 8/12.

2. One of my friends from school has graciously set us up an account at indiegogo.com. We are understandably a little fundraised out, but we are excited to use this as our last push. There is a really awesome video of our first visit over there which is worth a look! You can see it here: http://www.indiegogo.com/Sweet-Girl . There are some great incentive’s for donations too!

AND, most importantly, pray for Vita this week (Wednesday or Thursday) – she is presenting our case to the judge and he will do a preliminary review of the documents and hopefully assign us a court date. I have talked to the only two other families who I know have adopted from this region and they both got about 2 weeks notice for court. This means that we could possibly travel as soon as 8/26!

 

How did we decide to adopt?

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I think it’s pretty common knowledge we had some struggle conceiving Cranky and Happy (ironically the treatment we pursued has a next to 0% multiples rate – ha!). But finally I was pregnant and I had a blissful 2 weeks basking in the knowledge. And then the morning sickness hit at 5w5d. And then at 5w6d we found out it was twins. And then, I had a rough go of a high risk pregnancy. And then we had a rough go of it in the NICU when they were born premature and Happy got rushed into emergency surgery. And then we had a rough go of it for the first few months while we all adjusted to our new normal.When we were just finally getting into our groove, it happened.

I was still barely sleeping and stress and money worries (holy moly 2 infants in daycare!) were still hanging out.

We said, NO MORE KIDS UNTIL THE GIRLS ARE 5!

There was no way we could afford another in daycare and still protect our financial future.

And then..

I saw her..

(We were not able to share this picture before we met her)

I wasn’t expecting it. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I’ll never forget where I was or what I was doing. But I heard Him plain as day. “She’s the one.”

“The one what God? The one I’m to pray for? The one I’m to advocate for? The one? What does THE ONE mean??” I knew my questions were futile. I knew exactly what He meant before he answered. “She is your daughter,” He whispered to me.

Without thinking, I fired off an email to find out more.

I emailed 2 friends her picture. They were confused. Honestly, I was confused.

I said, “But God, I have 2 babies! Special needs! This is too much! The time! The money! – I have to tell him!”

And then I wanted to passout.. oh my goodness.. I was going to have to tell him.

The next day, I emailed him her picture. I didn’t have the guts to tell him in person. I simply said, “Can I have her?” He didn’t answer so I clarfied, “I’m serious. I want her.” (That’s the actual words from my G-Chat transcript). He’s heard crazy things from me before, but this might be the winner.

I got another picture.

She’s just over 2 here. This is the earliest picture anyone has seen. The fact that she wasn’t smiling in this one either strengthened my resolve.

We talked through it for a couple days. I tried to forget her. She was all I could think about. I spent hours researching everything I could – about her, about adoption, about Reece’s Rainbow. The thought of having to live without her overtook me. Within a month we jumped in head first. They estimated the process would take 12-18 months and $35,000. I couldn’t imagine the thought of either. The estimated budget is now over $50,000 and while it’s a large sum of money for sure, it now represents LIFE. Her LIFE. I will pay anything to show her that she is precious, she is ours, she is valuable, she is LOVED.

This sweet girl will never go without a mommy and daddy again.

 

6th 4th

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Another week has passed – where is the time going? I’m so happy that the weeks are passing quickly – it means it’s one week closer to when we get to see you again! It also means one less week to get ready for you!

The last news we heard is still no news. I tried to think of a creative way to skip our third trip and just take 3 total, but our facilitator said it’s just not possible. We are hopeful to hear something this week. We’re desperate to get back to you!

We finally figured out what you are going to sleep on when you come home. It seems like it should have been an easy thing, but it was hard! One day this week Papa is going to put your bed together and then we can work on the finishing details of your room. Mama has already made you a quilt for your bed. Now I just need to make a couple of pillows, your curtains and a pillow sham for your bed. And hang the artwork and print your name letters and hang those up.

On July 3, we went to Annie’s house for our annual July 4th trip. This is the 6th year we’ve done this – or the 6th 4th. Every year the cast of characters changes slightly, but it’s always a good time. And the best part! We just have to bring food so it’s free!

Here are all the pictures! Next year you get to come! Yay! And Taylor will be very happy she doesn’t have to play with “all those babies!” And Olive gets to be there next year too if Olive’s Mama braves the heat with a wee one 🙂 And hopefully other friends will be on the way to #2 too!

Packing List – The Other Stuff

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How about a little fun today?Here’s my list of things which are necessary for travelling to eastern Europe:
1. Lots of public restrooms didn’t have toilet paper (or seats even)
Travel Flushable Wipes  

  Travel Toilet Paper

2. A good travel pillow – Another adoptive couple recommended these. I’m debating if they are worth the money since we have travel pillows already. They swear by the design though!
The Travel Pillow

3. Supplies to eat in your hotel room – at least breakfast
Space Saving Camp Pot – has a pot and bowls and sporks that nest inside each other.

A Freeze Dried Meal (there will be one night you just don’t want to find food

Hot Pot (what good is the food you bring if you can’t heat up water) – pack this with your food inside to save space

4. Luggage organization
XL Ziplocs – We split our clothes into 3 bags each – one outfit in the carry on and split the rest into the two suitcase bags. This way if a bag was lost, we’d have a change of clothes. We love these bags to do that since you can put clothes in them by outfit or day and then squash the air out of it like a space bag to save space. It also made it nice and organized to stack in the luggage and protected our clothes should a toiletry (or all the vodka on the way back bust).

5. Technology
Travel Adapter – you can use a travel adapter for most electronics. Things which don’t operate on dual voltage will also need a converter. This one is nice because the plugs slide in and out and it has 2 usb ports (so you can charge multiple items at once on the same plug)

Kindle – to read books on the plane and in your room – our tv didn’t even work, but if it did, it would have been in a language we don’t speak.

MacBook Air – to watch movies on the plane, blog, surf the internet. Luckily he has one for work that we were able to take. Couldn’t afford this otherwise.

And.. once we pick up sweet girl here’s some things we’ll take just for her!
1. Travel Potty – In case we’re somewhere and can’t find her a restroom or in case she’s scared of big potties in the hotel or airport.

2. Picture Dictionary – In her language so we can attempt to communicate basic needs (we’ll also sign with her!)

3. Reusable Sticker Book – Dreading 10 hours on a plane with a preschooler already – hoping this helps!

4. Kids Headphones – So she can watch movies and listen to music with headphones that fit her!

Additional items I forgot or were suggested:
1. Hi-Country Beef Jerky
2. A GOOD Camera
3. A small camera – for backup to the big one and so as not to freak your new child out on minute 1 with a huge camera in her face
4. Unlocked iPhone (add a Russian SIM for free local calls and cheaper long distance)
5. Chase Sapphire credit card – I’m a credit card snob and up until this point had two credit cards. I broke down and got the Chase Sapphire card because 1. it has no foreign transaction fees 2. it has decent rewards for travel

 

Also, please note that these links go through my friends, The Dismuke’s, Amazon Associates page. What does that mean? It means that the price will be the same for you, but they will earn a percentage of the sale from Amazon. Why didn’t we set one of these up? Well, easy, it’s illegal in North Carolina.  


Hopefully I’ll keep adding to this page as I remember more!

+7 days

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It’s been 7 days since we left your country. 10 days since we kissed your cheeks and said goodbye.It feels like it’s been a year, or more.
It feels like it was a dream, or maybe more appropriately, a nightmare. Where we got a wonderful week with you just to be ripped apart against our will.
It feels like we’ll never get back to you.

Our next trip will be for court. We’ll only get to see you 3-4 days for this trip too. We feel blessed that you live in the capital of your region so when we go for court we’ll get more time with you. We don’t know when court will be. We are hoping for August, but we’ve heard that lots of judges in other regions are taking August off.

I haven’t blogged all week because it’s painful. It’s hard to take myself back to you in my mind but know that it’ll be so much longer until we can come see you again.

I started selling little necklaces to help us raise the last little bit of money to bring you home.

Well, it doesn’t feel like a little bit, but compared to the whole total, it’s less. We started off thinking bringing you home would cost about $35,000. Wow, lots of money right? Well, when we got into it, we thought the total would be more like $45,000. But, now since we’re trying to bring you home in the summer, it’s going to be $55,000. Blah. Mama and Papa have wiped out all the easily accessible cash they had. And so many friends and your family have been trying to help too. We’ve come up with about $40k. We still need to find out where we can get $15k more. That’s only 600 necklaces 🙂

Since 600 necklaces is unreasonable, we’re also going to have 2 yard sales. One at grandma’s house and one at our friend Lesli’s house I think. I think we will try to do them on 7/21 and 7/28. We have had a few people give us some great stuff to sell, but we need lots more! Mama and Papa need to go through all their closets too and get more stuff! I’ve thought about going to the goodwill donation trailers at night and taking the donations people leave on the steps, but someone told me that was illegal. I don’t know where else to get donations of things to sell. It’s frustrating asking people for help when I feel like I am guilting them into helping.Maybe the yard sales will help us raise about $1000. Down to 560 necklaces, but I have a few more ideas of things we can try and sell. It’s hard to put myself out there for you when no one but your mama and papa love you this much. I’m so afraid I’m bothering everyone and they will love you less because your Mama and Papa harassed them for fundraisers. 


In other news..

On Tuesday night, Mama and Papa and Happy and Cranky are going to the mountains to see Annie for the 4th of July. The V’s are coming and so are the J’s. We hope to spend lots of time at the lake and eating good food! And it doesn’t hurt that all we have to bring is food and everything else is free.

See how much fun it looks! (Pics from last year)

Okay, well Cranky doesn’t look like she’s having fun here, but when we weren’t trying to get her into the water she loved it!

If you come home in September, then we will try to take a day trip to the mountains so you can see the house and the lake too. We have decided though that until at least Christmas we won’t have you spend the night anywhere but in your own house. We want you to feel secure and comfortable before we ask you to sleep in another bed.

Missing you sweet girl….

Da Svidaniya! (Trip 1, Day 7)

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(posted by him)
Day 6 -6/23-  Our final day in country before starting the long travel home. We woke up this morning around our usual time to meet Ilya out front of the hotel. But something was different this morning. We had said our goodbye’s to Vita the night before as there were no more trips to the orphanage and no more visits with Sweet Girl. Instead, we would be traveling back to the city where the airport was located in preparation for departure… a day of mild sight seeing in attempts to take in some of Sweet Girl’s culture as the orphanage doesn’t permit visitors over the weekend. It was a somber feeling leaving her hometown, being so close to her knowing that tonight, when we laid our heads down, we’d once again be in different cities and the distance between us growing.
The drive to the airport was 3 hours. We had somehow gotten accustomed to the driving… bumpy, narrow pothole filled roads, aggressive driving, mounds of traffic… but we were in good hands with Ilya, who we have grown to admire.. and the drive went surprisingly fast. Even without Vita present and though Ilya spoke little English, we had reached a comfort level. Before we knew it, we were pulling up at our hotel smack in the city centre and quickly unloaded. We presented Ilya with the gift we had brought him. He seemed genuinely surprised and motioned for us to wait while he ran back to his glovebox. He returned and presented us with two coat pins… propoganda from his nation’s past… muttering in broken english “very old” and “history”.  We were touched by this gesture, he will be missed, and we hope he is our driver in the future.
After saying our goodbyes, we were alone once again. It was noon, but we went to try and check into our hotel anyway. We were pleasantly surprised to find the staff speaking english. We were told no rooms were ready yet, so we asked that our bags be held as we set our on an adventure… a few hours of light sight seeing in the city centre. Our first mission, navigate the local subway system to get there. Luckily, she had done a little research ahead of time and I had a tourism book that already came with a local subway map and translations of the stops. We found a station not far from our hotel and mapped out a route to get there, now to execute. Buying tickets proved far less challenging than initially expected. We found our line, only challenge was to make sure we’re heading in the right direction. We made our choice and hopped on a train. Unlike NYC, the subways lacked any sort of helpful hints for foreign travelers. No maps of the stops, no LED boards showing the next stop, stations were barely marked. The driver would simply come over the intercom and verbally announce the stop. Luckily we were able to correlate with our map, make sure we were on course, and count the number of stops to our destination. When we surfaced from the train, we found ourselves in the middle of a mall, albeit generally where we intended.
The Great Wall surrounding their nation’s “white house”.
Where we surfaced from the subway. Seemed as though some festival/concert was either setting up/tearing down as there was lots of mobile fencing diverting the flow of people and coordinating off certain areas.
We decided to walk around not knowing exactly where we were going. Most of the streets seemed to be closed to traffic. Not sure if this was due the event, normal for the weekend, or what. Pictured on the right turned out to be a very large and extravagant mall we discovered.
One of the most famous Cathedrals in all the world. Of course the crowd control barriers prevented us from approaching at all angles, so we simply had to admire from afar.
The barriers prevented us from entering a square that would be normally teaming with thousands of people, but today was only filled with empty sound stages and crew techs.
The great mall from the front and an empty beautiful square.
To enter the subway, you had to swipe your paper card in front of these scanners. We had only purchased 4 trips, 1 for each of us out and back, so we were careful to make sure to enter the right station/line. We bought ourselves no second chances.
The subway arriving. Not much different than NYC subway in terms of comfort, though I did miss the little LED navigational boards that lit up as the train hit each stop.
Our hotel for one night, a much different experience than the hotel we had been in all week in Sweet Girl’s hometown. This hotel is from their countries history, and is very large, extravagant and somewhat Americanized by comparison to where we came from.
Grand entrance way where we were greeted by multiple English speaking staff.
View of the city from our room on the 9th floor.
As we had such little time here and our thoughts were still with Sweet Girl back in her hometown, we had little time to enjoy it. For tomorrow we would be waking up early to start our journey home. In place of Vita and Ilya, we had Boris and Irina who would be picking us up from the hotel and escorting us to the airport. We had yet to meet them, but they would be our guides in the big city. That night, we recieved a call from Boris to the next morning. We would meet him at 7:00am to head to the airport. Even though we were in the city, the drive to the airport would take 45mins – 1hr due to horrendous traffic. We look forward to returning home and seeing Cranky and Happy, but can’t stop wondering when will we see Sweet Girl again and will she remember us and our short journey. Until then, Sweet Girl….
-Papa