Here We Are!

Well, after a tearful goodbye to the hubby and kids and a very long day/night in airplanes, airports and a car,  we're here and ready to get this party started!

Katrina commented that it felt like April Fool's Day, though. What a day!

The fun started when my luggage lost one of it's wheels coming out of the airplane in Chicago.  Then, when we were flying to Frankfurt, I opened my brand new portable, rechargeable DVD player that we bought for Anya's plane ride home and when I turned it on, saw that the LCD screen was shattered. Oh, boy. Another $125 down the tube.

When we arrived at the airport, our driver came to pick us up, then took us to a bank (??) that was a few blocks away from the apartment we would soon be checking into. We needed to exchange our dollars into rubles.  Wow, that was an experience in itself. You have to go into a private little booth with armed guards watching you while you do the exchange. It felt like we were doing  a dirty deal of some kind. 


Anyway, as we were walking back to our apartment (right in the hub of the city) we noticed something was missing. 

Katrina: "Um, where is your car?"

Driver: "I think the police took it"  But I don't know why.

Oh, man. We could only hope it was the police who took it. We envisioned the worst. Some of our luggage was plainly visible on the back seat and it would have looked enticing to a theft!


There were lots of other cars parked on this street, so our driver had parked like the rest of them.  Well apparently, there was a new sign posted that was only a few days old, further down the street, that said "No Parking."

The problem was that his car held not only all of our belongings that we had with us, but also some incredibly important documents that we had been gathering for the past year to give the US Embassy, along with some POA's that we needed for tomorrow morning.

Our poor driver had to walk probably a couple miles to the place where they were holding his car for ransom.  He had to pay the police officer triple the amount of money in order to get the car out today, as opposed to 3 days from now, when he was supposed to.

It was a pretty tense 2 hours as we waited at the apartment. We both wondered if we would ever see those Embassy Packets again. Without them, we would have had to go home without our children. YIKES!

It all turned out A-OK. We're back on the road again. Pwew!

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like we'll get to see our children tomorrow because there is too much paperwork stuff to do.  Maybe Friday.  The plan for now is to apply for their passports Friday and get them out of their orphanages on Monday.  Hopefully the passports will come Tues or Wed and we'll be on our way to Moscow to finish the process.

Time for some sleep!  We missed a whole night's rest and we have to be up bright and early!  Can't wait to see Anya again and squeeze the heck out of her.  Soon!