We arrived in Russia, and....
it was in single digits temperature-wise, in Celsius that is. So far it's been 9 C for a high and it was 1C this morning when we left for the region that the orphanage is in. All I know is that whatever the temperature is -- it is d*** cold! Left my palm pilot back home so I can't convert metric to standard units.
The flights to get here were long but mostly uneventful. The problem with booking on short notice is that you tend to be in the back of the plane and tend to board in a later group. So on the first leg from DFW to Cincinnati there weren't any more overhead spaces for my rolling carry-on. Crunch time, with about a dozen ticked-off passengers around, and we had to decide which bag to gate check and it ended up being mine, as Michael's had the Gladney documents that needed to be hand carried. Then Delta told us that they couldn't gate-check my bag, they needed to check it through to our final destination. YIKES! I said way more than a few prayers that my luggage would arrive on the other end. I had not expected to get separated from my bag, so hadn't cross-packed with Michael. Believe me, with our very tight connections, I was super relieved to see all 7 pieces of luggage arrive in Moscow. We even had a 30 minute delay de-planning in JFK to get to the Moscow flight, then we sat on the Moscow plane for another 35 minutes waiting to leave, late. I told Michael that God was trying to make sure the luggage made the flight too! We also lucked out on the long flight & got a row of three seats with an empty middle. Gave us stretching room that just made the sardine space tolerable. We were surrounded by Russians on the flight with not much English being spoken. (First sign we weren't in Texas anymore....) As we got closer to landing and we had to fill out an immigration/migration form on the plane, I did get a bit panicky when the only version of the form was in Russian. One of the flight attendants translated for the token Americans, and I was part way through the form filling it out in English before I realized the folks on the receiving end wouldn't be able to read what I wrote. So I wrote half out in English & half out in Cyrillic. Naturally the guards took the Cyrillic half....
Navigating out of the airport was also interesting. I remember the alphabet & some vocabulary, but I am no where close to fluent anymore. Still, I managed to navigate us past passport-control, immigration checkpoint, and customs to the meeting point to wait for our host. To say that we feel like "fish out of water" is an understatement. Nothing is legible to Michael, guards are everywhere, the weather is cold, grey & very overcast. I'm picking up more language as we go, but I still can't carry on a fluent conversation with adults. If nothing else I'm experiencing a refresher course of culture shock and have a better appreciation for how Masha must have felt when she came to the USA.
The first day the jet lag just knocked us out. Fourteen hours later we were awake & raring to go. Toured the Kremlin Museum, the Russian armory/treasury, and the outside of St Basil's. We had to get creative to get back to our host as in between the time he dropped us off to our tour guide and the time we met back up, Red Square got closed so that Putin could make a speech. Some garbled directions, creative detouring though the GUM department store, and walking completely around St. Basil's we finally met back up with German, our host. Seeing as how we had originally walked across Red Square, I was a bit turned around but quite relieved to see German.
Some general impressions thus far: we can't believe how ubiquitous American brand names are. There is literally a McDonald's and a Coca-Cola stand on every corner (I'm in Heaven!). It's disconcerting to look at a Coke bottle and the name is in English and everything else on the bottle is in Cyrillic. And it's like that for food, make-up, household products, etc. There are Fords, Toyotas, Hondas, tons of BMW's and a horrific amount of traffic everywhere. The further we got out of Moscow today, the more the Russian brands of cars predominated, i.e. Volga's & Lada's. In Moscow, however, we did get passed by a Cadillac Escalde and by a Lexus LS300 in downtown Ryazan! The pollution is fairly bad in the big cities. People don't really bother to wash their cars because they'd need to daily. People don't smile very much, and they look at you funny if you walk around smiling. It's a fairly serious place.
That being said, today we've had one break of good luck after another. All those prayers are working -- keep it up! I was very very stressed about meeting the inspector today. Last night we were told that the usual inspector was on leave and her boss would be meeting with us. Then this morning, once we arrived in Ryazan we met with the Minister in charge of the adoption database. The Russian language doesn't even have a word for adoption, it's "Children without Parental Care". We met with that minister for about 4 minutes and apparently were approved for step #2. We went to go meet the regular inspector's boss and she apparently was too busy to meet with us, so we skipped the "inspector" step entirely. Went to the orphanage & met with the director for a bit & then we got to see Masha! She recognized us before we recognized her, dressed in a coat, hat, boots & some of the most out-landish leggings ever! Michael took a running hit from her & she was demanding to be picked up before we even realized it was her. When all of us went back to the director's office, via the translator, she let us know that she "was very happy to see us, and what took us so long!" She also wanted to let us know she's ready to get back home and back to the cats! Apparently the Erwin indoctrination took!
We were able to visit for about an hour total and then had to leave for a few hours to not disrupt her schedule. We went back in the late afternoon & got to visit with her and most of the other kids in her group. Got tons of pictures, but as we're at an internet cafe place, uploading pictures is a bit iffy at the momnet. Maybe tomorrow. All told, we're THRILLED that she was as happy to see us as we were to see her! More tomorrow.... Hugs & Purrs to all!
The flights to get here were long but mostly uneventful. The problem with booking on short notice is that you tend to be in the back of the plane and tend to board in a later group. So on the first leg from DFW to Cincinnati there weren't any more overhead spaces for my rolling carry-on. Crunch time, with about a dozen ticked-off passengers around, and we had to decide which bag to gate check and it ended up being mine, as Michael's had the Gladney documents that needed to be hand carried. Then Delta told us that they couldn't gate-check my bag, they needed to check it through to our final destination. YIKES! I said way more than a few prayers that my luggage would arrive on the other end. I had not expected to get separated from my bag, so hadn't cross-packed with Michael. Believe me, with our very tight connections, I was super relieved to see all 7 pieces of luggage arrive in Moscow. We even had a 30 minute delay de-planning in JFK to get to the Moscow flight, then we sat on the Moscow plane for another 35 minutes waiting to leave, late. I told Michael that God was trying to make sure the luggage made the flight too! We also lucked out on the long flight & got a row of three seats with an empty middle. Gave us stretching room that just made the sardine space tolerable. We were surrounded by Russians on the flight with not much English being spoken. (First sign we weren't in Texas anymore....) As we got closer to landing and we had to fill out an immigration/migration form on the plane, I did get a bit panicky when the only version of the form was in Russian. One of the flight attendants translated for the token Americans, and I was part way through the form filling it out in English before I realized the folks on the receiving end wouldn't be able to read what I wrote. So I wrote half out in English & half out in Cyrillic. Naturally the guards took the Cyrillic half....
Navigating out of the airport was also interesting. I remember the alphabet & some vocabulary, but I am no where close to fluent anymore. Still, I managed to navigate us past passport-control, immigration checkpoint, and customs to the meeting point to wait for our host. To say that we feel like "fish out of water" is an understatement. Nothing is legible to Michael, guards are everywhere, the weather is cold, grey & very overcast. I'm picking up more language as we go, but I still can't carry on a fluent conversation with adults. If nothing else I'm experiencing a refresher course of culture shock and have a better appreciation for how Masha must have felt when she came to the USA.
The first day the jet lag just knocked us out. Fourteen hours later we were awake & raring to go. Toured the Kremlin Museum, the Russian armory/treasury, and the outside of St Basil's. We had to get creative to get back to our host as in between the time he dropped us off to our tour guide and the time we met back up, Red Square got closed so that Putin could make a speech. Some garbled directions, creative detouring though the GUM department store, and walking completely around St. Basil's we finally met back up with German, our host. Seeing as how we had originally walked across Red Square, I was a bit turned around but quite relieved to see German.
Some general impressions thus far: we can't believe how ubiquitous American brand names are. There is literally a McDonald's and a Coca-Cola stand on every corner (I'm in Heaven!). It's disconcerting to look at a Coke bottle and the name is in English and everything else on the bottle is in Cyrillic. And it's like that for food, make-up, household products, etc. There are Fords, Toyotas, Hondas, tons of BMW's and a horrific amount of traffic everywhere. The further we got out of Moscow today, the more the Russian brands of cars predominated, i.e. Volga's & Lada's. In Moscow, however, we did get passed by a Cadillac Escalde and by a Lexus LS300 in downtown Ryazan! The pollution is fairly bad in the big cities. People don't really bother to wash their cars because they'd need to daily. People don't smile very much, and they look at you funny if you walk around smiling. It's a fairly serious place.
That being said, today we've had one break of good luck after another. All those prayers are working -- keep it up! I was very very stressed about meeting the inspector today. Last night we were told that the usual inspector was on leave and her boss would be meeting with us. Then this morning, once we arrived in Ryazan we met with the Minister in charge of the adoption database. The Russian language doesn't even have a word for adoption, it's "Children without Parental Care". We met with that minister for about 4 minutes and apparently were approved for step #2. We went to go meet the regular inspector's boss and she apparently was too busy to meet with us, so we skipped the "inspector" step entirely. Went to the orphanage & met with the director for a bit & then we got to see Masha! She recognized us before we recognized her, dressed in a coat, hat, boots & some of the most out-landish leggings ever! Michael took a running hit from her & she was demanding to be picked up before we even realized it was her. When all of us went back to the director's office, via the translator, she let us know that she "was very happy to see us, and what took us so long!" She also wanted to let us know she's ready to get back home and back to the cats! Apparently the Erwin indoctrination took!
We were able to visit for about an hour total and then had to leave for a few hours to not disrupt her schedule. We went back in the late afternoon & got to visit with her and most of the other kids in her group. Got tons of pictures, but as we're at an internet cafe place, uploading pictures is a bit iffy at the momnet. Maybe tomorrow. All told, we're THRILLED that she was as happy to see us as we were to see her! More tomorrow.... Hugs & Purrs to all!
posted by T. at 11/09/2005 10:36:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home