‘What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men …… That is what love looks like.’ - St. Augustine

Monday, May 23, 2011

Good Morning, Moscow!

I'm home again! In Mother Russia and so very happy. Our getting here was the most ridiculous comedy of errors I've encountered since our September paperchase fiasco in Siberia. I honestly doubt you'd believe the chain of events, had I not three witnesses who had to suffer then firsthand, too! From being sent to the wrong terminal by British Airways and having to lug our 450 plus lbs (that is not a typo!) of orphanage donations to through elevators, across busy airport taxi lanes and onto a bus over to the RIGHT terminal, with minutes to spare.....to having the befuddled agent forget to print out boarding passes for the 2nd leg of our journey....to learning the terrible news that the Russian authorities had mispelled the translation of Nastia's name in her new Russian passport...to paying 'name change' penalty fees of $100 in London...and it only gets more crazy from there.


But we survived -- on patience and humor. I provided the hard-won patience that I learned in my Siberian exile, and Kim provided the humor. And the end result is, we made it!


I'm sitting in my bedroom overlooking an incredibly noisy lower Tverskaya Street in Moscow. It is 7am local time, and the seven hours of sleep I just got feels like twenty! Everyone else is asleep. Before we went to bed, we walked up to my favorite market and bought breakfast items and some snacks. Watching Bridget stroll around the store taking it all in was wonderful. Nastia stayed by her side, chirping the names of things in Russian over her shoulder. We walked home and ate a great many Russian specialties we had missed, and then went to bed. Just before I climbed into my room, I snuck a peak into the girls' room. Bridget was out on the balcony in the dark looking down on a lit-up Tverskaya street that reaches all the way to Red Square. She had one arm slung behind her, and grasped the railing with the other, and her head was cocked upwards. She looked positively awestruck. Perfect end to a long day for me:)


PS: Apologies for typos ahead of time. Between my jetlag and blogger's broken spell-check, I can only imagine what you'll find above!

3 comments:

  1. So great to hear you bubbling with happiness and excitement! What an incredible time for Bridget as well. Looking forward to the photos.

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  2. I don't know how you do it in the first place and then all those mistakes that were made would be the last straw. Just know that you are truly appreciated by many. I admire you.

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  3. So glad to hear you made it safe!

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