Long Time No Post...

Last week flew. Chris and I were very busy with work, home, school and adoption errands. It was a good week as far as the adoption was concerned. Russia was celebrating the Christmas holiday on January 7th but it sounds like the party started before then, and lasted a few days after the fact. In any case, our agency was very diligent getting in touch with the Moscow representatives and had them review our trip schedules.

We now have the trip to Perm approved. Chris contacted the travel agency that our agency recommended, purchased the tickets yesterday and we got them today. I guess we are supposed to have paper tickets instead of electronic ones - not sure why, but we are just going with the flow. Last week we also received a package from the agency with lots of information about the first trip. They sure walk you through everything, step by step - there were lots of pages about traveling tips, do's and don'ts while in Russia and information on what to, and not to, bring on our trip.

We sent our passports with the Russian Visa applications and expect to get those back next Monday or Tuesday. We were a bit concerned about having to send our passports but there was no other way. The visas have to be stamped on one of the pages of the passport so we just have to cross our fingers and hope UPS gets those back to us in one piece.
Other than that, we are pretty much ready to go; we even have our wardrove picked-out and our warmest clothes dusted-off and ready to just be packed. We were told to travel light but that's hard to do when we are bringing winter clothes, gifts, laptop and some food.

We leave home on a Friday around mid-day and get to Perm at noon on Sunday. We will be meeting with Perm officials on Monday morning but don't know much after that. We are assuming we will be able to visit the orphanage every day but we are not sure about any of the rules or details just yet. I'm sure we'll know shortly after we get in. We know now the true meaning of 'going with the flow' :)
The agency here has been phenomenal, and sounds like the people in Russia are very well prepared for our visit. Our agency tells us that they will have a driver and an interpreter waiting for us in Moscow. They will help us through Customs and will transport us from the international airport to the local one to catch our flight from Moscow to Perm. This was a nice surprise as we thought we were on our own; the bad part is on their end; we get into Moscow at midnight and don't leave to Perm for six hours - that means they too, will be up all night to ensure we make our flight. There will be another representative waiting for us in Perm and the agency also told us he was wonderful!

We are so excited and so ready!!! And...Oh boy! Are we going to have some stories to tell our little one?