Back in Moscow!

Well, we left our home at 7:00 a.m. Sunday morning. Thank you again, Sean, for taking us to the airport. Our plane landed in Moscow at 10:00 a.m. on Monday. It’s now 7:30 in the evening. We went for a late lunch and a short walk. Now, we’re ready for bed! Neither of us could sleep on the plane, so we’ve been up for over 30 hours straight! I don’t want to go to sleep now, because I’m afraid I’ll wake up at midnight and be up the rest of the night. (Greg is snoring away!) So I thought I’d catch up on the blog. Let me go back a few weeks, since I haven’t had a chance to post since we received our court date.

Life has been hectic! My school is going through many construction renovations this year. My classroom was completed gutted and started over. At the end of the last school year, I packed up my classroom and most of it was moved out to pods in the parking lot. So on August 22, we were allowed back in our classrooms to unpack and get ready for the school year. Teachers started back to school on August 26 and there are weekends in there, so that really didn’t allow much time to unpack and get organized. For most, it was a real hurry, but a lot of boxes could be put in a closet and slowly unpacked as the school year began. BUT I wanted my room all unpacked, so that it would be easier for my guest teacher (God Bless You, Megan!) to find things! Needless to say, I’ve been working in my classroom from the time the building opened in the morning until they kicked me out at the end of the day. I was able to get all of the boxes emptied, but I can’t promise that I’ll remember where I put everything! Anyway, I have a relatively organized classroom and I had four great days with my first grade students.

Thank goodness that we had all of our documents completed for this trip. With all of the time that I was spending at school, I never would have had time to complete all of the running around it takes to gather documents.

On Saturday, August 30, Greg’s sisters had a shower for us. And on Saturday, September 6, my aunt Janice had a shower for us. Thanks again, Julie, Diane, and Janice! It was so much fun to get together with friends and family. As my aunt Janice said, it truly takes a village to raise a child and the support of our family and friends makes a beautiful village for our little girl to come home to.

We have also been working really hard getting her room ready. My friend, Jacqueline, painted my childhood rocking chair and a bookshelf to match. They look so cute. We have the crib (thanks to my parents) and matching changing table all set. For our anniversary, my parents bought us a rocking chair to rock our little girl in. And, of course, there are all of the bunnies. We're up to 50 something! There are still some details to add to the room, but it's pretty close to done.

So now we’re in Moscow and staying at the Holiday Inn Lesnaya. It’s not as new as the Holiday Inn Sokolniki that we stayed in last time, but it is fine. We’re too tired to do too much sightseeing, but it seems to be a lot closer to the heart of Moscow. When we return to Moscow at the end of September, I’m sure we’ll spend more time looking around.

Our flight to Astrakhan leaves tomorrow (Tuesday) at 3:15 p.m. We’re waiting to hear what time the translator and driver will be picking us up to take us to the airport.

I think that pretty much brings us up to date. Next post will be from Astrakhan!