More Travel Information

We had our conference call with our agency case worker today. She went over all the big details of our trip; what to expect at court, our basic itinerary, paperwork for the embassy in Moscow, expenses, etc. We had decided sometime after we got home from our first trip that we want to make this last trip into one long stay instead of two shorter trips. With flights and visa expenses it wasn't too much different to stay in country. Oh it will be more expensive, but worth it. We learned today that our judge does not count weekends as part of the ten day waiting period. We had planned to stay in Kotlas for most of the ten days to help the transition we will all be facing as we bring our little guy home into a totally new world with new strange people. With this new information, about the essentially fourteen day wait, we've decided to spend the first week in St. Petersburg to experience more of Russian culture and the second week in Kotlas with our son. It was going to be difficult to spend two weeks in Kotlas. It is not a place foreigners come to visit, so it is not a town with accommodations for foreign guests. The biggest disadvantage from our perspective is the lack on communication. We could not get access to the Internet nor did we have a way to make phone calls. We did not want to be without a way to communicate with our families for two weeks. This new plan will still give us a week to spend as much time as possible with our son. Then we will take him with us back to Archangelsk for the start of his paperwork. We will finish his paperwork in Moscow and fly home on June 9th.