Retroactive Trip to Russia Blog: Day 2 (Monday, June 22)

picture: 

Regarding Day 1, I forgot to say, before turning in, we went for a little walk around the neighborhood of where our hotel was. We came upon this cute little park that had a beautiful little pond where people would gather and talk. I learned later that it's called Patriarch's Pond

The traffic in Moscow is pretty intense. Instead of pesky pedestrian crossings some of the larger main roads have these creepy underground sidewalks that would take you from one side to the other.

Our car picked us up at 6 am for the ride to Vladimir. The first thing I noticed was how light it was already. I didn't realize that the proximity of Russia on the globe, longitudinally speaking,  put it at about the same place as Northern Canad and Alaska. Basically, this mean very little darkness in the summer. I was too jet lagged to notice that the sun hadn't started going down until about ten or eleven pm the night before. I didn't mind so much. There appeared to be this extended twilight period that I found kind of relaxing in a way.

The drive to Vladimir was about four hours. Our driver Dmitry spoke very little English. The Russian countryside reminded me a little bit of Kansas. It was relatively flat. We finally arrived at the adoption agency in Vladimir. We picked up Lulu's passport and a lady gave us a huge stack of documents. The ladies at the agency were very sweet but they all looked kind of tired. We spoke with the main director. She said they place nearly 100 babies a year, all around the world.

Finally, we were off to nearby Alexandria to pick up Lorelei. The drive to Alexandria was very bumpy. I almost felt like I was going to get car sick. There were a lot lilacs by the side of the road. They made me feel a little better.

The orphanage was very quite. A sort of stern woman with thick glasses lead us into a room that had these cute little chairs that looked very Russian.

And then they brought her in. The first thing you notice about Lulu is that she is very engaged. She stares right at you with these big eyes and nice round cheeks.


After a couple of pics we changed her clothes and hit the road.

Lulu loves the car. She also loves looking at herself in the mirror. I guess when you're this cute, who could blame you.


She's not so crazy about socks. She likes to try and kick them off.

We got back to the hotel. It had been a long day and we were pretty tired. I didn't realized I was going to be such a proud uncle but whaddaya gonna do.

This blog originally appeared here: http://matthew-roth.livejournal.com/147915.html