Trip 2, Days 6-11: After Court, In the Heat of Moscow

July 26th:

We were now officially the parents of Aleksander. There is no way to express how happy we were. After all of the paperwork, all of the stress and traveling, we could finally say that we were parents. From that point on, we would be counting down the 10 day waiting period, so we could go back and get our little Aleks. It was both exciting and frustrating.

After leaving the courthouse, we went to the pizza place we had ordered lunch from the past two days. There’s nothing wrong with pizza, and theirs was actually pretty good. But we were really hoping for something different.

After lunch, we returned to the hotel to change clothes and pack everything up. We went back to the orphanage for the afternoon, this time as a family. We decided to try the Baby Bjorn for the first time, worried about whether he would like sitting in it. Packing for three weeks left us with tough decisions to make, one of them being that we could not bring a stroller.

While he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it at first, Aleks seemed to like riding on our chest. He would kick his feet while we were walking, and his head kept swiveling to see what was going on. We realized 19 lbs would quickly get heavy, and we should practice ab crunches to strengthen our back muscles.

Leaving Aleks that night was not nearly as stressful as at the end of our first trip. Our parting was a celebration, knowing that we would return in just ten days. Unfortunately, the train ride back to Moscow sapped our strength quickly. The temperature had risen dramatically over the course of the day, so we were once again sweating profusely. We ate an unappetizing dinner in our room, and went to bed early, anticipating more heat in the days ahead.

July 27th:

As we awoke on the train, we were a bit unnerved by the fog outside our train. We should have felt the humidity for it to be that overcast, but all we felt was the heat. As we disembarked in Moscow, we could tell something wasn't right. There was a woody, smoky smell in the air. Alan asked our driver what the burning smell was, and he said "there are fires underground."

As our little train of 3 families, 1 driver, and a lot of luggage wound its way through the train station, we wondered how we were going to get to our destinations. This was answered as we saw another of the Frank Foundation drivers, Constantin, making his way towards us through the crowd. One family went with him directly to the airport, while the others piled into Ilya's car.

Ilya proved his worth that morning, getting us to our apartment located off of Old Arbat Street. It was only a few hundred yards off of the main road, but the pathway to get there was a literal maze. Cars were parked so unevenly that traffic could only go one way. Which way that was depended on A) how many cars were going in a specific direction and B) How determined the driver going the opposite way was to get through. Ilya was a very determined driver.

The apartment on Old Arbat was quite different from our previous apartments. It was on the ground floor, so the windows had security bars across them. We wanted to open them, but the heat prevented us. The living room and bedroom were a separate area, which was kept cool by the air conditioning unit. This meant that the kitchen and bathroom were stifling hot throughout our stay.

July 28th - 30th:

Unfortunately, there is very little story to our 5 days in the Old Arbat apartment. The previous all time record high in Moscow (with records dating back 130 years) was 93 Fahrenheit. Our first day there it reached 97. The next, 99. While we were out walking one evening, Alan saw a digital readout that said 41 (celsius), which is 106 F. The official temp that day was only 101, but it certainly felt hot.

In addition to the heat, the smoke grew progressively worse. Spending time outside quickly started to irritate our nostrils and throats, and we began seeing people wearing masks. They looked just as miserable as everyone else, so we didn't think they were doing much good.

The highlight of our time spent in Old Arbat was visiting with Cara & Gene. We met them on our first Russia trip, while the 4 of us were in Kirov. They were about one week behind us in schedule for the 2nd trip, so we were only in the same city for one night. We went to a very nice Ukrainian restaurant, eating and drinking for many hours. The tab was high, but it was well worth it.

We caught Cara & Gene up with our adventures of the previous days, and told them what they could expect going to court. It felt very odd to be the "experienced" couple. We were sad to part ways once again, but we promised that once our families had settled in, we would make sure to get together in either Houston or Minneapolis to celebrate completing our journey.

Coming up next: St. Petersburg, baby!