We touched down in Kemerovo, Russia which is the capital of the region where we will go to court tomorrow. When we landed, they said it was -36 degrees--we think that is celcius, but let me tell you it's mighty cold!! Our coordinator, Anna, met us at the airport and took us to the Hotel Azot in downtown Kemerovo. So far it looks like Kemerovo is a much nicer town than where we were before in Novokuznetsk. The hotel is an old hostel that was just recently remodeled. We have a living room and bedroom and bathroom. It's the Taj Mahal compared to where we stayed before. We got to the hotel around 8 AM. We were so wiped out with the jet lag, that we just slept all day. We did bundle up and walk down to the grocery store to buy some water and drinks. It's just about 2 blocks away, and boy is it cold. We slept some more and just ate peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches at 2 am and watched a DVD til 4 am. We had to get up early at 7 am to get ready to go to court.
We went to court this morning and everything went off without a hitch. The judge made Haylie legally ours. We will drive for 3 hours tomorrow to pick her up at the orphange.
I will write later in more detail about all the court events. They dropped us off at the internet cafe for just a few minutes. But they are waiting on me now, so got to run. But, had to let everyone know we are legally and officially parents!!!
Monday, January 14, 2008
Saturday, January 12, 2008
We're Back in the USSR!!!
We'll we've made to Moscow!! And so did our bags!!! They were almost the last ones off the plane and I had visions of our last trip without any luggage. It's about 24 degrees here with maybe 1-2 inches of snow. Oksana, our coordinator here said it had been much colder in the past week but is supposed to warm up a little in the coming week. When we took off from Atlanta last night, they told us it was 0 degrees here (course it was 1 am here at the time). Our flights from Lexington to Atlanta, and then from Atlanta to Moscow came off smooth as could be for a change, for which we are very thankful.
To back up a little, we weren't even sure we would be able to come right up to the last minute due to our visa situation. Since the Russian consolate was closed for New Years until Jan 9, we had to go right to the wire to get our visas in time to travel on the 11th (see previous post for more details if you are confused already). Anyway, the plan was that the consolate in NYC was to open on the 9th, process our visas and ship them out overnight for us to receive on the 10th. Well, just our usual luck, the consolate sent them to the wrong zip code and they ended up in upstate New York. Needless to say, I was a little stressed out. You cannot enter Russia without a visa. I tried to call the travel agent who had helped me with ordering the visas, but she never returned my calls (turns out she was off sick!!) I finally got thru to DHL Shipping, who confirmed indeed that it was in New York at 1pm on Thursday. The lady said "there is no way it will get to you today." So I had a little melt down and tearfully told her I HAD to have this package delivered because we were supposed to leave Friday morning. Guess she felt sorry for me, and after about 20 minutes on hold she came back and said they could ship it to Cincinnati and then drive it to Lexington and deliver it at midnight. So, that is what happened, and in fact it actually arrived around 9:30 pm. I felt like a new woman once that package finally arrived. It's been a crazy week but FINALLY everything fell into place, and here we are.
We have a 12 hour layover in Moscow, so they took us to a hotel near the airport for a "daystay" where we checked in at noon and have to check out at 6pm tonight. It's nice to be able to crash for a little while, take a shower, etc. However, our bags stayed in the car that will pick us back up so we can't really change clothes since we just have our carry ons with us. The biggest bone of contention for Rich on this trip so far is all of the luggage. I just HAD to end up packing 3 bags because of all the junk we had to bring for 2 weeks for the baby and the both of us. He only wanted me to bring 2 bags but there was just no way. I was up till 4am last night trying to get everything packed and still ended up with 3 bags. One was over the weight limit with Delta and we had to pay $50 for overage. I'm sure it'll cost even more on the next leg of the way. When we got here and finally rounded up all the bags and were walking out, some man said to me and pointed at my bag, "you are dripping" and sure enough the littlest bag which has off of Haylie's stuff was just drip, drip, dripping. I couldn't go thru it right then, but when we go into the hotel, turns out a plastic bottle of pedialyte had busted and leaked all over everything. Don't know how it leaked since I had everything in ziplock bags, but leak it did. Nothing really ruined though.
We leave tonight at 10:30 pm to fly to Kemerovo in Siberia and because of all the time zone changes, we arrive at 8 am, even though it is only a 4 1/2 hour flight. We will stay there for 3 nights before returning to Moscow with Haylie!! Court is scheduled for Monday morning the 14th. We will then drive to the orphanage on Tuesday morning and pick up Haylie and she will be ours for good--I can't wait!! We come back to Moscow on the 16th, and Oksanna just told us we go straight to the medical clinic where Haylie will have her medical exam and HIV test. We will then check into our apartment Wednesday afternoon. She also said we will go to the American Embassy on Thursday for our interview there. Seems like it will move even faster when we get back to Moscow than I had orginally thought.
I don't know if I will have any internet access while we are in Kemerovo, so I may not be able to post again until Wednesday, but will try if possible. We have free unlimited internet access at the apartment which will be great.
We already miss everybody and home.
To back up a little, we weren't even sure we would be able to come right up to the last minute due to our visa situation. Since the Russian consolate was closed for New Years until Jan 9, we had to go right to the wire to get our visas in time to travel on the 11th (see previous post for more details if you are confused already). Anyway, the plan was that the consolate in NYC was to open on the 9th, process our visas and ship them out overnight for us to receive on the 10th. Well, just our usual luck, the consolate sent them to the wrong zip code and they ended up in upstate New York. Needless to say, I was a little stressed out. You cannot enter Russia without a visa. I tried to call the travel agent who had helped me with ordering the visas, but she never returned my calls (turns out she was off sick!!) I finally got thru to DHL Shipping, who confirmed indeed that it was in New York at 1pm on Thursday. The lady said "there is no way it will get to you today." So I had a little melt down and tearfully told her I HAD to have this package delivered because we were supposed to leave Friday morning. Guess she felt sorry for me, and after about 20 minutes on hold she came back and said they could ship it to Cincinnati and then drive it to Lexington and deliver it at midnight. So, that is what happened, and in fact it actually arrived around 9:30 pm. I felt like a new woman once that package finally arrived. It's been a crazy week but FINALLY everything fell into place, and here we are.
We have a 12 hour layover in Moscow, so they took us to a hotel near the airport for a "daystay" where we checked in at noon and have to check out at 6pm tonight. It's nice to be able to crash for a little while, take a shower, etc. However, our bags stayed in the car that will pick us back up so we can't really change clothes since we just have our carry ons with us. The biggest bone of contention for Rich on this trip so far is all of the luggage. I just HAD to end up packing 3 bags because of all the junk we had to bring for 2 weeks for the baby and the both of us. He only wanted me to bring 2 bags but there was just no way. I was up till 4am last night trying to get everything packed and still ended up with 3 bags. One was over the weight limit with Delta and we had to pay $50 for overage. I'm sure it'll cost even more on the next leg of the way. When we got here and finally rounded up all the bags and were walking out, some man said to me and pointed at my bag, "you are dripping" and sure enough the littlest bag which has off of Haylie's stuff was just drip, drip, dripping. I couldn't go thru it right then, but when we go into the hotel, turns out a plastic bottle of pedialyte had busted and leaked all over everything. Don't know how it leaked since I had everything in ziplock bags, but leak it did. Nothing really ruined though.
We leave tonight at 10:30 pm to fly to Kemerovo in Siberia and because of all the time zone changes, we arrive at 8 am, even though it is only a 4 1/2 hour flight. We will stay there for 3 nights before returning to Moscow with Haylie!! Court is scheduled for Monday morning the 14th. We will then drive to the orphanage on Tuesday morning and pick up Haylie and she will be ours for good--I can't wait!! We come back to Moscow on the 16th, and Oksanna just told us we go straight to the medical clinic where Haylie will have her medical exam and HIV test. We will then check into our apartment Wednesday afternoon. She also said we will go to the American Embassy on Thursday for our interview there. Seems like it will move even faster when we get back to Moscow than I had orginally thought.
I don't know if I will have any internet access while we are in Kemerovo, so I may not be able to post again until Wednesday, but will try if possible. We have free unlimited internet access at the apartment which will be great.
We already miss everybody and home.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
We're Going to Russia!!!
Well, we have been going crazy trying to get the last minute paperwork for our trip together and make arrangements for planes, hotels, etc. We will probably be staying in an apartment while in Moscow--the best part of that is they have free international phone calls and free internet. We had originally planned to stay at the Marriott Grand. I had been watching the rates, and while it was pricy (as is everything in Moscow), when we went to make actual reservations, we were shocked to find the 8 nights in Moscow would cost us $8400!! No way Jose!! We tried the other Marriotts in Moscow and the cheapest would have been close to $5000 for 8 nights. We also checked out other hotels, all of which were comparably outrageous. So, we've decided to rent an apartment which is much more reasonable. The other nice thing is we will have a kitchen and washing machine, so we can save some on the food costs too.
We will leave Friday, Jan. 11. We're flying out of Lexington to Atlanta, then direct to Moscow from Atlanta on a 13 hour flight. We then have a 12 hour layover in Moscow (we will get a "dayroom" in a hotel near the airport to crash in for a few hours). Then, Saturday night at 10:30 pm we leave Moscow and fly to Kemerovo, arriving Sunday. We then go to court on Monday morning where if all goes well (and we get all our last minute paperwork done!!) the judge will declare Haylie forever ours. We then spend Monday night, again without Haylie who will still be in the orphanage. We will drive about 3 hours from Kemerovo to Prokopyvesk on Tuesday to the orphanage to finally pick up Haylie--so we will officially adopt her before we even see her again!!
Next we leave Kemerovo Wednesday, Jan 16 and fly back to Moscow. We will spend 8 nights in Moscow completing the paperwork, doctors visit, getting Haylie a passport photo taken, etc. It takes 5 business days to complete it all and of course since we don't get in Moscow until Wednesday, we will have the weekend to just kill time.
We ended up staying an extra day because the direct flight home wasn't available on the 23rd. So, we decided it would be worth it to stay another night, rather than have to take flights that took us to Hamburg, New York City (with an 8 hour layover there!!), Cincinnati, and finally to Lexington--this craziness was the only option on the 23rd. Changing planes so many times would just be too hard with the baby.
So we will be back into Lexington on the 24th of January, Lord willing. I just looked at the weather channel and it is currently -3 in Kemerovo with a low of -14 predicted for tonight (of course it is in Siberia!!!) It's a balmy 11 in Moscow with a low of 3 degrees tonight. The long range forecast calls for a warmup to 5 degrees in Kemerovo and 27 degrees in Moscow while we are there--yippee!!
We would appreciate everyones prayers that all goes well with safe travels, a healthy baby, easy court process, and actually getting our visas before we have to leave!! I'll try and post before we go to update you. Sounds like posting in Kemerovo might be a problem, but I'll definately post daily while we are in Moscow so everybody can know what is going on.
We will leave Friday, Jan. 11. We're flying out of Lexington to Atlanta, then direct to Moscow from Atlanta on a 13 hour flight. We then have a 12 hour layover in Moscow (we will get a "dayroom" in a hotel near the airport to crash in for a few hours). Then, Saturday night at 10:30 pm we leave Moscow and fly to Kemerovo, arriving Sunday. We then go to court on Monday morning where if all goes well (and we get all our last minute paperwork done!!) the judge will declare Haylie forever ours. We then spend Monday night, again without Haylie who will still be in the orphanage. We will drive about 3 hours from Kemerovo to Prokopyvesk on Tuesday to the orphanage to finally pick up Haylie--so we will officially adopt her before we even see her again!!
Next we leave Kemerovo Wednesday, Jan 16 and fly back to Moscow. We will spend 8 nights in Moscow completing the paperwork, doctors visit, getting Haylie a passport photo taken, etc. It takes 5 business days to complete it all and of course since we don't get in Moscow until Wednesday, we will have the weekend to just kill time.
We ended up staying an extra day because the direct flight home wasn't available on the 23rd. So, we decided it would be worth it to stay another night, rather than have to take flights that took us to Hamburg, New York City (with an 8 hour layover there!!), Cincinnati, and finally to Lexington--this craziness was the only option on the 23rd. Changing planes so many times would just be too hard with the baby.
So we will be back into Lexington on the 24th of January, Lord willing. I just looked at the weather channel and it is currently -3 in Kemerovo with a low of -14 predicted for tonight (of course it is in Siberia!!!) It's a balmy 11 in Moscow with a low of 3 degrees tonight. The long range forecast calls for a warmup to 5 degrees in Kemerovo and 27 degrees in Moscow while we are there--yippee!!
We would appreciate everyones prayers that all goes well with safe travels, a healthy baby, easy court process, and actually getting our visas before we have to leave!! I'll try and post before we go to update you. Sounds like posting in Kemerovo might be a problem, but I'll definately post daily while we are in Moscow so everybody can know what is going on.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
We Have a Court Date!!!
We finally got the word today that we have a court date to finalize Haylie's adoption for Monday, January 14, 2008!!!!! We are soooooooooo excited, but didn't get much notice to make travel arrangements. We will leave next Friday the 11th. We had wanted to leave the 10th which would have given us a day of rest in Moscow before flying on to Kemerovo where court will be held. But the Russian Consulate is closed for the holidays and doesn't reopen until Jan. 9. So now we have to pray that they will overnight us our visa on the 10th so we can leave on the 11th. Please say lots of prayers for us that all goes smoothly and safely. We've been waiting so long, but now that we actually have a date, of course we will be running around like chickens without their heads to get everything together to go. I'll post more details later--just wanted everybody to hear our big news!!!
Friday, December 14, 2007
STILL No Court Date after 12 1/2 Weeks!!
Well, it looks like Haylie will have to spend Christmas and New Years in Russia. We still haven't heard anything about our court date, and today was the cut off to be able to get it done before the New Year. The Russian government shuts down from December 28 - January 15 for their New Year's and Christmas celebration, so it will now have to be after January 15. I'm so angry that we couldn't have gotten her before the holidays. Mainly because that is just another month she will have to spend in an orphanage without anyone to love and care for her. But I'm also selfish and really wanted to get her back by the holidays and before Rich has to go back to work on January 3. Especially considering other couples who traveled for their first visit at the same time and even after we did are already home with their babies. It just doesn't seem fair.
AA says there is no problem, we just must wait till the judge appoints a court date. Normally that happens within a few days of getting the release letter (which we got 8 days ago), but because of the holidays it will take longer. As a result of this delay, we had to redo our medical forms which are only good for 3 months. The current ones would expire Jan1, 2008. When we did them originally in October, Alina said "there is no way these will expire before you go back"--HA!! Luckily, I work in the medical field and can get these done easily and cheaply. I feel sorry for those other folks out there who would have to make another appointment with their physician, for another physical exam and more blood work, none of which is usually covered by insurance. We also now have to do MORE notarizing and apostilling, and shell out more money for that of course.
Oh well, I'll get off my soapbox now and quit complaining, if only for a short period. I'm posting some pictures of all the documents we've done and aspostilled for our dossier, and now will add to.
These are only about half of the ones we had to do for our original dossier before we even got our referral.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Pictures of Russia & We Have Progress After 11 Weeks!!!
St. Basils Cathedral, Moscow
Homes in countryside on way to orphanage
Countryside near Novokuznetsk
Prokopiesk Orphanage where Haylie is living
Red Square, Moscow
Red Square in the rain
Gardens near Kremlin
Park surrounding Kremlin, Red Square
GUM Department StoreI just heard from our Adoption Ark coordinator that our release letter has been received finally. This was the last step needed before the judge could set the court date, and for some reason our release letter had kind of been MIA. I was soooo discouraged yesterday after I spoke with Alina. I kind of felt like we were getting the run-around. She just kept telling me they didn't know where the release letter was and all we could do was wait for it to get back into the region from Moscow. In the mean time, the people we went on our first trip with as well as at least 2 other couples who traveled after we did already had a court date. In fact Dave and Stacy are in Moscow as we speak and already have finished with court. Alina said yesterday that she didn't think we would hear anything now until after the first of the year....needless to say, not what I wanted to hear.
So when she called today and left a message that she had just been notified about the release letter, I was shocked. I do feel much better, because having the release letter indicates all of the needed paperwork is in order and we can proceed to court. I still don't see it being possible to get a court date before the end of the year since things really slow down with the holidays. The US Embassy will close from Christmas to New Years, and then the Russians celebrate their Christmas holiday from December 28 until January 15. But at least we can see light at the end of the tunnel!!! I'll keep you posted.
In light of this progress, I thought I would post some of the pictures of Russia we took on our first trip. I had forgotten I had never posted any pictures. In September, Moscow was georgeous (even in the rain) with beautiful flowers everywhere. I just looked on the weather channel website and the current temperature in Moscow is a high of 12 degrees, low of 0 with snow showers predicted all week. So we probably won't be able to get out and sightsee too much, especially with a baby.
Monday, November 26, 2007
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