Retroactive Trip to Russia Blog: Day 1 (Monday, June 20/21)

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I met my sister at Kennedy airport. She was connecting there from Orlando. We had a sandwich at the airport. This was going to be the longest flight I'd ever been on. 10 hours. Luckily, we were in the front row of our section so we got lots of leg room. I was kind of bummed that they didn't have the individual movie players. I had to watch a very bad Adam Sandler movie and then an even worse one staring Vince Vaughn. When you think about everything involved in making a movie it must feel crummy to see them turn out so shitty. I guess the millions of dollars they make helps soften the blow.

The flight went quicker than I thought it would. Unfortunately, we arrived in Moscow around rush hour. So the drive to the hotel was a bit stressful. Traffic in Moscow is pretty crazy and people pretty much just floor it until the next time they have to stop.  I was surprised at how similar the airport and highway looks to things in the states. A guy named Michael, form the adoption agency,  picked us up and took us to the hotel. He reminded me a little of Dr. Evil from Austin Powers but we was actually a very sweet guy. The Hotel was called The Peking. It's an old Russian hotel that someone told me had Mafia ties at one time. It was very beautiful. Sherry hit the nail on the head when she said the halls reminded her of The Shining. The Room was quite nice. The whole hotel had a kind of weight and atmosphere to it. It was hard to describe but cool. We were feeling pretty out of it at this point. I had made arrangements to meet up with Vera and Sasha, some friends of Jack and Jeff Lewis, for dinner but I had to cancel because we fell asleep at 6pm and the next day we were picking up Lorelei at the orphanage. We had to leave very early at 6 am so we made new plans to meet them on Friday. The adoption agency that helped my sister was located in a town called Vladimir which was about 3 hours outside of Moscow. We had to go there first take care of some paper work and get Lulu's passport. The orphanage was actually in a very small town about an hour from Vladimir called Alexandria. We grabbed a couple of Czech beers from a little deli/store on the corner and passed out watching CNN, the only English speaking channel we could find on the TV. After a nearly 5 month process and 4 trips to Russia my sister was finally taking her baby girl home. I was proud of how collected she was.
(This blog originally appeared here:
http://matthew-roth.livejournal.com/147227.html)