Leaving Tomorrow

I'm really going to try hard to blog A LOT during our trip. It seems that all too often we adoptive parents build up to this big moment and then completely fall off the face of the earth during "THE trip".

The problem is that my mind is going 1 million miles a second. It's like drinking 8 Mountain Dews and then trying to sit down to read. Not an easy task.

I look back at my blog entries during our first trip and I realize that I missed about 94% of everything that happened. I'm going to try harder this time. I'm also packing my video camera on my carry on (instead of the guitar). Point being: I'm hoping to post some cool videos during our trip.

Random factoid: If I'm reading things correctly, Wednesday's forecast in Novo is 77 Degrees. (Yes, that's Farenheit..... I suppose I didn't need to say that. Duh. Of coarse that's Farenheit. If that were Celcius, we'd all be dead.

Anyway, I'm thinking I need to pull out all the snow suits and pack my shorts!

Spring Break Siberia BABY!!!

"Charged" up to go

I'm laughing at how many batteries we have had to charge up this week in order to be ready for Friday's departure.

1. My cell phone
2. Katie's cell phone
3. The International cell phone that we rented from rangeRoamer (We'll let you know how this goes.
4. My laptop battery
5. My second laptop battery
6. My iPod Nano
7. Katie's iPod Touch
8. My video camera battery
9. My second video camera battery
10. My still camera battery

Court is one week from today. We leave in 3 days. We're totally packed. We could leave in 20 minutes if we had to.

While we wait, why not post another picture of our "little Pasha"?

Enjoy!

Factoids

Here's a picture of Novokuznetsk that I found on the internet:

Obviously, this picture was taken during the summer, but it continues to amaze me how much the terrain in Novokuznetsk looks like Iowa.  You would think that things would be much more different on the "other side" of the world.

He loves me.... He loves me not.

There is a little boy at our church who was born within a week or so of Zac. Over the past 10 months, I find myself frequently staring at him and daydreaming about Zac. I can tell that I must be sending "creepy vibes" his way, because he'll catch me looking at him with FAR TOO MUCH love in my eyes and then he'll usually hide behind whoever's leg he's standing by.

Today, I tried to be a little cooler when I saw him. I said, "Hey Austin! Can I have a five?" (holding out my hand) He simply shook his head and said, "No".

Oh. Well, I did ask him if I could give him a five - I suppose he has the right to say no.

I couldn't help but think about Zac and our first encounter. (for those that don't know, Zac didn't exactly warm up to us on our first trip) Will we pick up where we left off? or will he be a whole new happy kid?

I guess I'll just have to wait 1 more week to find out.

By the way, we leave Friday - We'll see him Monday - Court is Tuesday - Gotcha Day is Wednesday.... hopefully. Gotcha Day is subject to change.

Airlines

My latest and greatest worry:

Having our flights cancelled at the last minute and missing our courtdate. (Has anyone heard of someone missing their courtdate? What happens?)

With all this mahem about the FAA pulling entire fleets from service, I'm a little freaked out. (Until we have the kid home, I'm going to continue to worry.... I know I'm not supposed to worry, but that's just the way it is)

Anyway, I looked and we're taking a Canadair Regional Jet to Atlanta and a 767 to Moscow. To my knowledge neither one of these fleets have been pulled... yet. Once we get to Moscow, I'm not too worried about Russia cancelling any flights on account of safety.

In fact, I looked up what type of plane we're taking from Moscow to Novokuzenetsk. I was fortunate enough to find a picture of the actual plane.

See below:

Flag: Check

No epic stories today. (Sorry)

We're checking off just about everything on our "to do" list before we leave next week. (Yes, I said next week!)

Aside from the typical list, (tickets, reservations, visas, packing, blah, blah, blah) we did something kinda cool. We ordered a flag to be flown over the U.S. Capitol in honor of Zac. We debated as to which date to fly the flag: Court date, Gotcha date, Coming Home date.

We decided on the Court date (April 22nd) as everything else is contingent upon our 10 days being waved.

I just thought this was kind of a cool thing to do. Too bad we don't have a flag pole...