We still have two more days before we get home, but it has been great!  We signed papers today.  It was all in Russian, and our interpreter read it to us.  It was an official petition to adopt.  We wrote “We accept” and signed our names.  It is why we came.

The time with the boys this week was just too short, and we enjoyed all the time we had with them!  Lana our interpreter (but that isn’t quite the right title for her) told one of the boys that we would be back when the snow was gone and the grass was green.  I can only imagine he will be waking up each day waiting for the snow to go away.

I call Lana our interpreter, but she was far more than that.  She interpreted, but she also got us to the right places, knew where we were supposed to be, how to get there, where to sign, the process of adoption and the nuances in different cities and the differences between baby houses and orphanages.  She and Irena made the trip work so smoothly, and I am just grateful they were both here to help us.  We really couldn’t have done it without them!

So to sum it up, these are some of the things, outside of meeting the boys, that made our trip to the Russian Far East so special:

• We got to see how deep the Russians’ love for official stamps really goes.  We knew it was deeply ingrained because everything we had signed had to be notarized and apostatized.  But the menu at the hotel restaurant had each page stamped  and signed-in ink- that it was approved by the hotel president.  Every page of every menu.  No kidding.
• We got to see a beach that was completely frozen-including the water.  And we walked on the Sea of Japan.
• We got to drive through snowy mountains that were really beautiful.
• We saw it snow every day.
• We rode with drivers who drove on the right side of the road but the wrong side of the car.
• We exchanged dollars for rubles from a car window (we were told it was perfectly normal, but don’t do it without one of them with us).  (The exchange rate was pretty good, by the way).
• We saw more missing bumpers per capita than anywhere I’ve ever seen before-by a long shot.
• I described a location we had stopped to exchange money as “Well, we went though a big intersection with no stoplight and curved to the left,” and before I could say that we stopped at a white truck with a missing bumper and a dollar sign in the window she said, “Oh yes, I know.”
• We saw four cars at a time making left hand turns.  And people making left hand turns in opposite directions, yet passing one another on the left, with a car or two passing through the intersection from the other street-all at the same time.  I can’t even describe it, yet they pulled it off.
• We heard Eric Clapton’s Greatest Hits more times in a week than we ever have in our lives.
• We ate a quesadilla in a Canadian Restaurant in Russia.
• Learned Russian from a 3 year old.
• We saw more traffic accidents in a week than we ever have.  But I have to say… they are some excellent drivers.  There’s no way I-or most American drivers-could have gotten across town.  It is incredible beyond what I describe that we saw as few accidents as we did.
• We travelled 10,000 miles to meet two 3 year old boys.

So we leave for Moscow tomorrow afternoon.  It’s still a solid 2+ days before we get home.  But “We accept.”  We have 30,000 miles and three months to go.  I am starting to see the light, and now that I know them, it only makes it that much harder!