Sunday - Walk Day!

Well, tonight is our last night before we go to the baby home and take our little one with us forever. Yes, tomorrow is “Gotcha Day”. If you’ve been following our blog, you’re probably thinking, “yes, we know that already”, but we like to say it just the same. And we’ll say it again tomorrow, but then we’ll be able to tell you how it went. It will be a huge change for our little girl who has spent the majority of her little life in the same place, surrounded by the same few people. We’re praying that we can make this as smooth as possible for her.

Tomorrow they pick us up at 9:00 AM to go get her birth certificate. That would be the one with our names listed as her parents. Should be exciting in itself, but then in the afternoon we go pick her up and take her with us. Finally! We’ll need to bring clothes with us to dress her in for her big adventure. Kyley is working on a perfectly matching outfit right now.

As for today, we walked a lot again. (We left the hotel at 11:15 a.m. and returned at 5:15 p.m.). After breakfast at the hotel, we went back to the souvenir shop by the Kremlin where Monica got a couple more things. Then we walked over by the courthouse, looking for a museum that Vala drew us a map for. We think we found the place, but it appeared to be under construction just like most buildings in the area. A nice woman who spoke very little English tried to give us directions to where the museum was now located. We did end up finding a museum, but we’re not sure it was the one she was referring to. The one we found is right across from the park near the Kremlin. We think it was the World War II museum that Jamie mentioned in her comment on our blog. It was pretty interesting, but with everything being in Russian, it was a little difficult to tell what things were. There was a very sweet older woman there who, even though we explained that we only spoke English, followed us around and described everything in Russian for us.

After that, we were getting a little hungry so we headed to the Megastore, which is close to the Victoria Palace Hotel. Its kind of a Home Depot meets Best Buy, with several floors of merchandise. On the top floor off the lobby is a Subway where we had lunch! You know, the sandwich shop just like back home. They didn’t have an English menu, but there were numbered pictures on the wall from which we could order. The BMT is called the same thing in Russian so that helped as well.

After that we walked along the river back to the big church with the green roofs and headed to the Astor Mall to pick up a few things, and then back to the hotel for about an hour’s rest. Then we headed out again, this time to Camilla’s for dinner, because we noticed that Amy William’s blog mentioned that they had an English menu there. It’s right along the river, close to the Krem Cafe. When we got there, we asked the gentleman that met us if they did in fact, have something in English. He disappeared for a minute and came back with a menu that showed both Russian and English for each item. However, they were having some kind of private party and he apologized but we would have to come back some other time. He spoke very little English, but we somehow figured out what he was trying to tell us.

So from there we walked to the Chocolate Café, one of our standard places, and not very far away. We had a nice dinner and when we tried to look over the desserts, our waitress brought out a really nice fruit plate with chocolate fondue that she said was on the house, because we were such good customers. So if you ever want a free dessert, just visit the same restaurant every three days or so over several weeks and you just might!

Tomorrow’s blog should have all the highlights from Gotcha Day! Hopefully we’ll sleep tonight but we’re not counting on it.