To Do List for Moscow

My other posts have focused on the little girl for obvious reasons! We have a bit of time this morning before we return to the baby home so I thought I would post some general stuff.

Our journey over was made more exciting by the fact that we got to hand carry over our friend, Jules', dossier. Here is 'Dmitry'ready to board the plane to Moscow.

On our way to our apartment from the airport, we dropped Dmitry off to be translated. Here he is awaiting his turn to get out of the car to meet the translation team. We have missed Dmitry since dropping him off but know that he is being well taken care of by the Moscow team. He promised to work very hard for Jules' family so that they can bring their little girl home soon.

Last night, we celebrated with our expensive bottle of champagne that we bought in the Munich airport (yes, that pile of papers in the back is my 20+ pages of questions to ask the orphanage doctor plus growth charts, how to take a dot photo to diagnose FAS, etc.). For those of you that will be coming to Russia after us and want this to be a part of your celebration when you find your child, my suggestion is to bring it with you. There aren't as many selections of bubbly as there used to be here. The Sovietsky Champagnsky comes in sweet or ucky. If you like sweet champagne, the Soviet sweeter style may be for you. If you like really yummy stuff, you might want to bring a bottle with you as carry on. The better French stuff is very expensive here. (Yes, Nathan had already decided by the time we were dropped off at our apartment that she was the one. Me ... well it took a bit longer ... we had to chart - twice, look up FAS signs, look up teeth delay, research Tajiks, review popular names on babynames.com, call Jan, call Dr. Pomeranets ... okay, I'm sure there's a word for me or rather a diagnosis but I prefer to think of it as being thorough :)

After finishing our fabulous 2002 Vintage Veuve Cliquot, we head off to old Arbat street which is short walk from our apartment. We walked to the end to visit the Hard Rock Cafe. They have some great gifts so we picked up guitar key chains for future gotcha day gifts along with a Rock Angel t-shirt for a future gift for our daughter. We sat and had a drink and noticed two families with babies with them. Now who goes to Moscow with a baby unless you're adopting? It's always nice to see newly created families walking about Moscow.

We headed back down Arbat in search of our favorite souvenir shop. It's located at 37 Arbat and is a three story building. Upstairs, we quickly located a toy chest that will be a future gift for the little girl. We bought one for Sasha on our first adoption trip. These hand painted chests are beautiful and the little ladies that work in this shop can disassemble in record time creating a flat package that can easily be carried and can fit in the bottom of a suitcase. Our plan is to pick up another one on our next trip so that we can ultimately have one of our own to keep. Downstairs has music boxes, jewelry, Father Frost figures, Russian toys, etc. We chose a couple wooden toys, a carved pencil, a St. Basil's music box, a hand painted jewelry box, a Father Frost for moi (I collect Santas and this one has the Snow Maiden painted on the front of his robe ... very appropriate), a pull puppet toy and handpainted eggs. That makes eight Gotcha Day gifts and this year's Christmas ornament (I have an ornament box for each child and each year give them one ornament that's special for that year so that when they have a place of their own, they will have special ornaments for their tree. I got this idea from one of our good friends and thought that we should do this too).

After shopping, we headed to one of our favorite restaurants in Moscow, Eastern Quarter. This is an Uzbek restaurant and I highly recommend the Uzbek plov (has lamb in rice with stuff .. very good), the lamb shashlyk (which is a kabob) & the lamb, onion & tomato samso (which has minced lamb, tomato and onion baked in a bread). They are located right around the corner from Mu (which looks more like My My in Russian and has a big cow in front of the restaurant). The address is: 42 Ulista Arbat (Arbat Street but it really seems like it's on Plotnikov Street). So .. it's in between Mu and the Plotnikov Pub. Very good but make sure you bring cash as they don't accept credit cards. For a feast for two including drinks, it's about $70. (We brought breakfast items and lunch items with us so that we could do nice dinners every night).

After dinner, we popped by an expensive grocery market and then went back to our apartment where David, our apartment guy, was waiting for us. He took copies of our visas and our 'white' slips that you get when you come into Russia to get us registered. If you stay in a hotel, they will handle this for you. If you stay in an apartment, make sure that your 'landlord' handles this. This must be done within three days of you entering the country. It will cost additional Rubles so just be prepared.

Today, we are planning on asking Vlad to drop us off at Red Square after the orphanage and the notary. We'll sign a document stating on intent to adopt Moon-ee-song and have it notarized. We're then going to pop by Red Square. Now you may be thinking that we're going to see the sights but alas .. you would be wrong. We're actually going to be getting our 900th geocache today. We worked like mad to get to 899 last week so that we could get our 900th milestone cache in Russia on the day that we accepted the referral of our daughter. For those of you not into geocaching, I think you would love it if you were to give it a try. Check it out: www. geocaching.com. Our geocaching name is: tamaranathan. Good fun. We will also go to dinner at a special restaurant known for northern cuisine as in Siberia. It's called Expedition and sounds like a lot of fun. If you're planning on making a day of Red Square, we would also recommend a restaurant known as One Red Square which has good food, ice cubes and air conditioning. We have photos of us dining with Meg, Tim and Finn in our July 2006 entries. Good times, good times. Ooh Meg .. when you were in Red Square you partook in standing in the compass that was in front of the gates to Red Square and tossing coins over your shoulder. I had the chance to ask our driver about this tradition. Basically, standing in the middle of that compass you are in the very center of Moscow. Tossing a coin over your shoulder is meant to bring you good luck (perhaps that's how you got Maeve and Finn) much as tossing a coin into a fountain is meant to bring you a wish. If anyone else goes there and sees this, you'll see the little begger women who scoop up the coins as they are tossed. Guess the blessing is two fold - we get good luck and the little women get enough change to have a meal.

Hmmm ... so other gotcha day gift ideas for the little girl - scarf, amber jewelry, a locket from the town where Sasha was born, a book on Moscow, nesting dolls, Russian traditional dress .. so I need four more ideas. I may buy them each a painting of St. Basils like the ones we have on our wall. I bought Sasha a copy of the March which we have hanging in our foyer. I thought the painting was beautiful when we saw at the gallery here and March was the month that we met Sasha.

Well .. the sun is firmly up and the cautions about the week of rain that we were supposed to have seem to be unfounded. Yesterday was glorious and today seems to be headed that way as well. Amelia (Mia) T.J. Christensen. It has a certain ring to it.