Quick Peek

We are about to head out into the extreme cold in Arch to find some gifts to take home and a place that we have been told serves good pizza. I just thought I'd post one of the pictures we took just for sharing with others. You know, the ones of his hands. We got to spend all day yesterday at the baby home. I share more about that later.

We have permission and a funny mistake

We just got back from meeting with the regional adoption official. He was very polite and he smiled often. I noticed in the airport that no one would smile back at me, but he was friendly. He "introduced" us to our little guy and made sure we knew we would get more information when we visit the baby home. He signed our paper that gives us permission to visit the baby home. He asked us if we wanted to meet him and we said "YES!" Well, not so much out loud, but on the inside. We also got to meet Dimitri who will travel with us the rest of the trip to Kotlas. He also seems friendly and responsible. We were able to change money at the hotel. I got nervous yesterday at the airport when our Visa wouldn't work. It worked just fine at the hotel though. Maybe the boy at the restaurant ran it incorrectly. Now we have a few rubbles for just such an emergency.
I have to tell this funny story on myself before I rest a little. Our driver picked us up at the airport last night and he seems to know about as much English as I know Russia. I tried out my horrible Russian by asking, "How are you?" and when he said okay I said, "Si"!! I don't think he noticed, but I was so embarrassed. I would like to justify myself by saying that I had been awake for about 24 hours and I have several Spanish speaking students, but it doesn't make it any less funny. I am like Mr. Bean. Traveling the world and saying, "Gracious" in every country!

We Made It!

We are currently sitting in the airport in Moscow, Russia. We have actually been here for a few hours. Our flight from Atlanta arrived at 12:00pm local time and our flight out to Archangelsk doesn't leave for another hour plus. Our flights were pretty uneventful. Long, but uneventful. They had time to show three movies during the flight from Atlanta to Moscow. It was so difficult to sleep. We took Advil PM, but I think it only succeeded in making me more tired while being awake. Needless to say, we are exhausted now. We met up with another couple who are working with our agency and visiting the same baby home at the same time. It has been fabulous to have someone else in the exact same situation as us! We are all the unwitting Americans just trying to make this adventure work. I do feel very blessed! I know so many people are praying for us. Soon we will fly to Arch and hopefully get some much needed sleep. Tomorrow we will visit with the adoption officials for our little guys region and then fly, again, to the town where he lives. I'll try to keep posting, but I make no promises about my punctuality.

A New Adventure ( take two)

We made it to Oklahoma City. We will fly out tomorrow morning. The reality of our situation is finally
sinking in. After the I initial shock of getting our referral so quickly wore off I have been
less emotional, but I broke down this week. I picked out the book, "A Mother for Choco"
to read to my class. I thought it would be the best way to explain my week-long
absence. I had to wait until Friday to read the book because so many of my students
have been out with the flu. As I was reading about what Choco thought a mother would
do I started to cry. Of course I immediately had a captive audience. Adults don't cry very
often, so they were all trying to figure out what was wrong. I had to explain that the story
made me sad. It was that moment when I knew this was real. We are really going to meet
a little boy who, more likely than not, is our son! I am so ready for the biggest adventure
of our lives.

A Brand New Adventure

Sickness and Snow

Those are the two big things happening at our house. I have been sick since Saturday. I thought it was a bad sinus infection, but I was achy, hot, and just plain miserable. I am feeling a little more normal, but not 100% by any stretch of the imagination. I really need to get better quickly. We fly to Russia a week from today. JJ is not sick, which is a huge blessing. I stayed home from work today. I really did not want to use a sick day, but it seemed like a double standard to require parents to keep kids with fevers home and then go to work when I had a fever. Turns out a bunch of my students are sick as well. We did have a delayed start because of the snow, so JJ got to sleep in. That was good for him. I am not the sweetest person when I am sick. I pretty much told him not to touch me because he was making me uncomfortable. In my defense I couldn't find anyway to sleep because I was so miserable, so I gave up around 4:30am and tried to rest in the living room. Maybe he got some sleep while I was gone. I really wanted to do a test run by packing my suitcase this weekend, but of course that didn't happen. Maybe tomorrow.

What? Next Week!

I was thinking out loud today with JJ as my sounding board, which is pretty normal. He actually told me he has the ninja skill of walking away without being heard while I am still talking, which I did not realize was a ninja skill, but what do I really know about ninjas anyway. This particular conversation involved me trying to decide how best to explain my almost week and a half absence to my class full of three and four year olds. In the middle of expounding on my plan to read a picture book to them that might explain what adoption means I said, "I think I'll read them a story next week...next week?!!?". Are you kidding me? This is so fabulous and overwhelming all at once. Two weeks from tomorrow I will be flying to Moscow.

Speaking of fabulous, we have been blessed beyond words this Christmas season and I know now that we can afford our first trip and most of our second. I cannot express what this means to us and we cannot thank those responsible enough. We also have been blessed by those of you that prayed and continue to pray. Prayer is a gift that cannot be measured. We need it too. I try to keep it together, but I'm really full of so many emotions and plans and unknowns. I don't know how other first time expecting parent feel, but I often feel like my brain is running in twenty directions at once.

Well, back to work tomorrow, so I better get some sleep. Thanks for being another sounding board. I just hope none of you practiced your ninja skills and walked away from the computer. If you did, it is now safe to return. =)