Trip 2, Day 11

The "new" of Krasnoyarsk has faded. The days are getting really long. We've started to adjust to the time change, and we're able to sleep to around 7:00 in the mornings now. We'd probably sleep longer, but the workers start scraping and shoveling the ice then, and it is quite loud. They use shovels made entirely out of wood. I have a picture, but our 3G internet (I'm starting to think it may by a lower case g...) doesn't have enough get up and go to post pictures any time except Sunday mornings. There are no blizzards around here. It is too cold to snow very much. They get light dustings quite often, but that is about it. Our American friends said they will get a big snow at the beginning of winter and again near spring when the temps start to stay around only freezing. So, they workers actually sweep the snow off the sidewalks with these witch's brooms or scrap the packed snow which turns to ice with their shovels.

The excitement around here is enough to set my hair on fire. Our typical routine consists of getting up, fixing our instant coffee (thank the Lord I brought powdered creamer from home), and reading some. We shower and then wait for Lena to call about 9:45 to say that she is downstairs waiting for us. We head to the orphanage and usually get back around 12:30 or so. Lena drops us off somewhere, we eat lunch, and usually just go to the grocery store to grab water and stuff to munch on, and then head back "home." We use the afternoon to read, email, blog. We usually eat supper around 6:00 or so (instant soups, spaghetti, etc) and about 7:00 we begin watching a DVD we brought from home. We've watched everything we've brought, so we are now on reruns. We Skype our girls either in the morning or evening--whenever we have the best internet connection. We then are off to our bed in the town of Bedrock. Did I mention everything in our apartment is Flintstone quality? My rear is numb from sitting in our chairs; our bed/pillows are made from remenants of cement. Surely our Marriott hotel in Moscow will have big fluffy pillows and comfortable chairs. And that folks, is about as exciting as it gets around here. Doug thinks this reminds him of college. I think it could be worse. I am so grateful of our new American friends who got us out of this monotony for 3 days this past week. I will say though that as bored as we are and as much as I miss my girls, I am thankful that we have been here. Our little boy is getting used to us before he is turned loose with us, and I can't imagine trying to deal with the jet lag associated with a 13 hour time difference and handling him at the same time.

I was getting tired of waiting on Doug to get dressed this morning...he's worse than a girl sometimes, and he looked at me and said, "We're in Siberia. Does 10 minutes really matter?" Point taken my dear.

It is freezing cold here today. The cold from Moscow has finally arrived, but today called for shopping as we don't have many free days left. We went back to the children's clothing store and got our girls some beautiful knit hats. We then headed for the ice slides. I have a picture of Doug going down it, but it's not Sunday, so you can't see a picture of it yet...By now my fingers are so frozen they are throbbing in pain, so we go into our favorite bar/restaurant to eat lunch. Our next stop is the souvinier shop. We realize we got taken big time on our first trip when we bought some stuff at the airport--it was like paying $10 for a hotdog at a ball park.

Saturday is the big day! I can't tell if the judge counted the weekends in our 10 days or not. Do they count the day of court as Day 1 or not? Do they count "pick up" day as day 10? The Krasnoyarsk court system doesn't have a suggestion box, but if it did, I would suggest moving their adoption court cases to Thursday or Friday--that way the parents wouldn't get caught on the weekend. Even though we pick him up on Saturday, we are in limbo around here until Monday when we can apply for his passport.