We're starting to have "the talk"

One of the things kids from orphanages (and adopted kids in general) can struggle with is the questions of How and Why: Why was I in an orphanage? How did I get there? How did I wind up in this family? Why me?

Those aren't just questions of curiosity; at the root are two important questions: What did I do that made this upheaval in my life happen? and Will it happen again?  Those aren't silly questions at all: if you've gone through a traumatic upheaval in your life, it's natural to suppose something similar might happen again.  Moreover, it's human nature to ascribe responsibility to yourself for events completely out of your control: the concept that you might deserve things that occur from random chance.

Because these questions are important, it's important that kids ask them, rather than chewing on them in private, and so it's important they know that these questions are OK to ask.  We try to signal to Elena thatasking questions about her past is OK - we share stories about us visiting her, and we often page through her picture book containing the pictures we took in Russia.

We let her know that she's staying with us, and not going back to Kotlas - an idea she often repeats back for confirmation.  At first I wasn't sure if she was repeating the idea because she felt it was important, or only because we seemed to be attaching importance to it, and she was picking up on that. But now it's pretty clear that it's important to her. (more after the cut)

Strolling through Russia

Yandex apparently re-enabled their "panorama" view, which is much like Google's street view.  It's pretty neat, in that you can see a street-level view of most streets in Russia's major cities--those include St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Arkhangelsk (but not, unfortunately, Kotlas).  The pictures are pretty crisp; you can pan around 360 degrees by dragging your cursor (as in Google's street view), "walk" down the street using the arrows, and zoom in using the telescope in the upper left, getting a high level of detail.

Here's a few panorama images of the places we were:

St. Petersburg
Right outside the Brothers Karamazov Hotel where we stayed in St. Petersburg
Moma Roma Restaurant, (Italian/Russian/pizza joint) where we ate a few times
Tres Amigos, the South American-Mexican restaurant with the American pop music-ballet floor show
The end of the Gostiny Dvor shopping plaza on Nevsky Prospect
The Hermitage, looking across Palace Square
The Russian Museum
The iconic Church on Spilled Blood
St. Isaac's Cathedral (You can stroll inside the cathedral in Panorama view--pretty cool)

Moscow
The Hotel Peking where we stayed in Moscow
The 24-hour supermarket around the corner from the hotel
Patriarch's Ponds (a park)
Heading down Tverskaya Ulitsa toward Red Square
The corner of the Kremlin
Entering Red Square (this one's kind of fun to "stroll" along)
In the middle of Red Square (St' Basil's Cathedral is in the distance; Lenin's tomb is to the right if you spin)
The New Tratyakov Gallery. We walked here in the rain.

Arkhangelsk
Pur Navolok Hotel where we stayed in Arkhangelsk
Bobroff Restaurant
Central square with the statue of Lenin
Regional Court where we petitioned for parental rights
Dom Knega (book house)
Chumbarova-Luchinskogo Street with its wooden buildings
Supermarket

Our Russian Travels

For those of you following along at home, here's a map of Russia, with place tags in all four cities we visited: St Petersburg, Arkhangelsk (where the court hearing was), Kotlas (where Elena lived), and Moscow.

Or click here to view our travels in a larger map.

The interactive map here is fun because it gives a sense of scale--there are hundreds of miles between each of the four cities, but within each city we walked around to see the sights.

We're hanging around in Arkhangelsk

We've got a vouple days here in Arkhangelsk to kill, so we're exploring parts of the city.  We spent a couple hours at the city's History Museum.  All the exhibits were labelled in Russian, so we weren't able to understand everything completely, but the exhibits were grouped well enough both thematically and chronologically that it was suprisingly interesting for foreigners like us.  A few of the docents didn't quite belive in our inability to speak Russian, so we got some pretty detailed explanations on local fauna, of which 99% was beyond our Russian capacity.

Some of the more interesting displays were from the early Soviet era.  Here's a couple closeups of a carved bone chess set from the early 1930s.  The evil capitalist bourgeousie:

 And the good hard-working proletariat:

Peter the Great designated Arkhangelsk a center for shipbuilding in the late 1600s.  As far as I know, they still make ships here.  The museum has a pretty extensive collection of craftsman's models of ships of many different ships from different eras.  The flat-bottomed craft at the top is (I think) a river barge.  The longer ship at the bottom is opened up to show the inner construction.

We also did a little shopping.  We found a fairly large bookstore with kid's books and games, and picked up a couple puzzles and a couple books:

Clockwise from the top, the items are: a large insect-themed 1-10 number puzzle, a wooden telephone puzzle (bolshoi to malinki sized), the book of happy vegetable rhymes, and a "what do animals eat for lunch?" book.

The view out our hotel window

We're staying in the Pur Navolok Hotel in Arkhangelsk.  It's right on the Dvina River, but we've got a "courtyard room," which is a nice way of saying the rear parking lot.

We've got a corner room, which is nice, but the view out our hotel window seems a little on the non-picturesque side, doesn't it?  The best view of the Dvina River we have is a little slice between a stand of trees and a few buildings.

 Well, the view is actually more interesting than you might think.  The obscured dome in the picture above is actually this building, part of the Gostiniy Dvor:

The Gostiniy Dvor was built back in about 1680, when Arkhangelsk was Russia's major port city, and served as the area's cargo trading center.

Not so many places in the US where one's hotel room overlooks a building quite so old.

We're waiting a bit longer...

...but only a little bit.

We're in Arkhangelsk, after flying in this morning from Moscow.  There's paperwork to do, but not very much of it.  We had thought we'd be able to pick up Elena on Tuesday, or Wednesday at the latest, but it turns out we'll have to wait until Thursday.  So we get to cool out heels in Arkhangelsk for two-and-a-half days or so.

Souvenir Magnets

These magnets show the official seals of Arkhangelsk and Kotlas.  A favorite local character of Arkhangelsk is the tasty Halibut (called Paltus locally), and The city of Kotlas loves the Red Star train that used to go to Moscow in the Soviet days.

Dvina River Geology Lessons from the Plane

You can see thousands of years of the Dvina River's history written in this beautiful succession of meanders and oxbows.  This is near Kotlas where the baby house is --400 miles from Arkhangelsk and the White sea.

Little towns nestled within the many channels of the Dvina River.  The river is even bigger further north 50 miles or so, where the delta expands and empties into the White Sea.

You can see why fresh fish is on the menu for every meal in the area!  YUM!!

Some Pictures from Kotlas and Arkhangelsk

The plane flights from Arhkangelsk to Kotlas are only twice a week.  I like the "porthole" windows on this vintage plane.  You load your own luggage on and off the plane in the small Kotlas airport.

While in Kotlas we use some of our time to get ready for court

We saw this spectacular, folk art inspired car in Arhkangelsk.  These flower motifs are usually painted on wooden bowls.

After the stress of court it was nice to relax for a while during a good meal.  The waitresses were patient with our limited Russian vocabulary.  The ikra and piva were excellent!  (caviar n beer) Then we got on a plane to Saint Petersburg.

A wedding custom in Arkhangelsk is to put a special lock on the bridge to the church.  You can see the couples' names and marriage dates.  There are hundreds edging the bridge.  I like the log cabin lock best.

The Emergence of Lenin

Lenin emerges from a block of stone in front of the Arkhangelsk City Hall.

What happened in court

After a week or so to digest it, let me tell you what exactly happened in the courtroom last Friday.  Remember this was the formal decision on whether or not we could adopt Elena, so even though the judge and other participants tend to be relatively kindly disposed toward us, it's still pretty momentous and nervewracking.

Luckily, we were able to meet with a representative from the Russian Department of Education (who oversees the orphanages in the area) a few days before the court hearing.  He was surprisingly jolly (surprising only because we had the preconceived notion that Russian government officials were going to be pretty dour).  During this meeting, he went over the court procedure, what we were expected to say, and gave some example questions the judge might ask.  He also gave us a written "crib sheet" that suggested what we might say in court.  Invaluable.

Our court appearance was 11:30 on Friday, and the whole thing lasted until nearly 1:00.  The courtroom was relatively small, with the judge seated in front and the petitioners (that's us) seated facing him.  Our interpreter was seated next to us, and the other people involved (represetatives from the Dept of Education, the orphanage, and a "prosecutor" representing the state) seated to one side or behind us.

More after the jump:

We are officially satisfactory

The Russian judge pronounced us "satisfactory."  I can live with that.

Here we are, in all our satisfactory glory, standing outside of the Arkhangelsk courthouse.

Embrace the satisfactoriness.

The Judge Said "Da"

That's "yes" in Russian.




We're glad we're done with court and looking forward to being parents.  Now we need to learn more Russian.  Quickly.

PS: the judge was incredibley serious, and never cracked a smile...except when Teresa asked, in Russian, if anyone (meaning, theoretically, Elena) had to go pee-pee.  He didn't ask a follow-up question to that.

T+A

Archangelsk and St Petersburg webcams!! Watch the world go by from afar...

You can watch the activity on busy streets in the cities of Archangelsk and St Petersburg Russia.  The time is 8 hours ahead of Michigan's time, and the weather zone is up near the arctic circle (like Alaska).  I noticed that most of the cars are silver or black.

St. Isaac's Square in St. Petersburg (the scene in the pic above)

Multi-angle views of St. Petersburg

Nevsliy Prospect in St. Petersburg

Arkhangelsk

The Coat of Arms of Arkhangelsk

The Archangel Michael is the protector of Arkhangelsk.  Thus the name (Arkhangelsk = Archangel), and the cool coat of arms shown below, where Michael is smiting a demon.  Smite, Michael, smite!

Kotlas has its own coat of arms, but as a more modern city (founded in 1917), the images are decidedly more modern. "Котлас" is "Kotlas" in Cyrillic.