Wait a minute, if we were in Russia 1 month ago, and we went back again... Oh who am I kidding, you all know we are adopting. But I had to keep quiet on the blog all this time. Child protection laws prohibit sharing information about orphans until you are the legal gaurdian. So, rather than dance around the line in the sand I just didn't say anything on the blog. Which means I basically didn't blog. So now that we've been to court and we know this is really happening, it's time to make up for lost time and blog to my heart's content!
That being said, I still can't share pictures of our precious little one until the final court decree is filed in 30 days. But I do have lots of pictures about our trip. And I promise to make up for lost time with pictures of 'Baby J' in large quantities later.
This time we had less time in the orphanage and an abundance of time to kill over the weekend. So we decided to walk all over the city and see every piece of history we could find.
Parks and fountains are common... and beautiful.
I loved the color scheme on this building. It is a Mosque just a block or two from our hotel. Red, white, and turquise. Perfect.
This is the Church of Mikhail Tverskoy. It's a teeny little church right on the river. It is a very popular place for wedding photos. We saw at least 4 wedding parties at this location at the same time. The bridges leading to the church are used for a joining cerimony (kind of like a unity candle). The newly married couple attach a padlock (usually heart shaped) onto the bridge rail.
We stopped in a park for a snack and noticed this protest going on. You will notice the apple flags representing the Russian United Democratic Party and the red Communist flags. When we returned to our hotel we saw on the national news this was a protest all across Russia. Cool.
Sunday we were able to attend church. There was a teeny branch in our area (it sounds like there are only a handfull of regular attendees... like maybe 3). As we were walking to where we thought the building was we noticed couple who looked like they were also dressed for church. We followed them thinking they would know where to go. Just before they went inside the woman turned to us and asked in Russian if we were American and if we spoke English. We said yes. She happily switched gears to cherry English told us she and her husband were the senior missionary couple serving in Moscow (from Idaho) and they were thrilled to have us as guests. It was a great service. Just like home... only in Russian.
The young missionaries told us there was a McDonalds near the rail station and it was "better than home". We had to find out for ourselves. So we walked the 2 miles to the rail station and found the McD's. It was good. But, sorry guys, not better.
Right next door to McD's is the Russian version of Chuck-E-Cheese called 'Chicken House'. There were birthday parties going on inside with a bunch of arcade games, play equipment, and charaters. All of the charaters were recognizable as characters we have here in the states... only Russian. For example, here is Buzz Lightyear and Shrek. If you can't see the Russian-ness click on the immage to get a closer look. We got a kick out of this.
Each day we found new statues, memorials, and churches. This one was interesting because it was labeled on our map as The Nunnery. It is a gorgeous building. But for some reason the label "nunnery" made us chuckle.
The purpose of this visit was to appear in court. We spent 3 separate days in the court room presenting our paperwork, being interviewed, and hearing various social workers, the pediarician, the prosecuter, and judge give thier recommendations and positive determinations.
In 30 days we go back to bring our precious baby home forever. The count down has begun...
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