Third Day in Astrakhan

It’s Tuesday, our third day in Astrakhan. It seems like much longer. We haven’t spoken much about the city here. It’s very different than what we’re used to. Most of the buildings here seem to be very old, and many have had little updates over the years. There are wood sided structures that look like they have never had paint on them. There are wires and pipes running everywhere on all the buildings, and from building to building. Many roofs are of plain corrugated metal with makeshift downspouts. There are many sheds made of heavy gauge plate steel everywhere that look like they can be lifted into place with a crane. We’re told that these are mostly garages, (they’re about the size of a parking space) but some people use them for storage or even to live in!

There really doesn’t seem to be any concept of landscaping here. The ground is either covered by buildings, paving, or just left to be whatever grows there, so it’s a combination of bare dirt and weeds. There are many trees but they don’t seem to get trimmed, so many buildings have a kind of overgrown look to them. We’ve seen a few places that have flowers planted, but they’re usually just mixed in with all the other vegetation.

They have central heating plants so there are above-ground heating pipes that run everywhere, mostly along roadsides. There are usually at least one pair of roughly 16” diameter pipes, crudely wrapped with insulation, held on with ropes, along every street. And the pipes extend to every building in the city it seems. Not sure why they don’t put these underground.

The main roads are mostly asphalt while the minor roads are just dirt. There are no lines on the roads anywhere. They just use the right half (roughly) to drive on. If there is no oncoming traffic, the street just kind of becomes one-way. Scary. Without lanes, the cars just go kind of go everywhere and are literally inches from each other most of the time. Cars and small vans cut in and out of traffic with no apparent rules at all. Surprisingly though, we haven’t seen many accidents. We both decided that we would never want to attempt driving here. We have a driver that takes us to the orphanage and anywhere else we need to go that is adoption-related. Otherwise, we’re pretty much on our own.

There are LOTS of stray dogs and cats roaming around. Apparently, not many Russians keep pets like we do, so they treat them more like just wildlife, kind of like we would treat squirrels.

We visited with our child twice today, first in the morning for about 40 minutes. It went reasonably well. There was some crying, not at first, but after about 20 minutes. We think it’s just because we’re strangers and she’s not used to us. She especially doesn’t like it when I (Greg) hold her, probably because there is only one male at the orphanage, a doctor who only works the night shift. Kyley has been holding her and I have been holding the toys or books, etc. And most of the time, she seems content with that. After our visit, they took us to a store to buy a few toys for the child and things to keep in our refrigerator for our lunches. It reminded us a little of a Sam’s Club. Except for the restaurant in the hotel (it’s kind of like a restaurant, anyway) there really are none nearby. They’ve told us we probably shouldn’t venture out on foot after dark so we’ve been somewhat confined to the hotel in the evenings.

Our second visit with the child seemed slightly better than the morning visit. It’s hard to tell, but she seems to be warming up to us a little. She seems to really like it when Kyley sings to her. She liked the little musical lion we bought for her at the store. We almost got her to smile today, but it’s not quite there yet. Toward the end of our visit, she seemed very tired (rubbing the eyes) and cried quite a bit. That signaled the caregiver to come take her and end our visit. We only get to see her in a meeting room. They don’t let us see where she sleeps, probably for the privacy of the other kids.

We’re waiting for our pediatrician to email us back her comments from the medical information we sent her yesterday. They tell us that we should make a decision on whether we want to adopt her by tomorrow which includes selecting a name for her. We don’t want to make our decision until we hear from the doctor though. Wow, this is a lot to process all at once.