This Date In History 6/20/07 - Our Adoption Story

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

After sending last night’s update, the plan was that David and I would go out for a walk. As I was finishing my evening’s correspondence and waiting for David to come downstairs for our walk, I got bombarded by two large, drunk, Russian men. They began speaking to me in Russian. I could only respond, “English, English”. They offered me a beer and I politely declined. These men thought that if they continued talking to me in Russian, I would magically understand what they were saying to me. Finally, David came down from the room. I thought these men would disappear, but they did not. They continued to try to communicate with us. With our lack of Russian and their lack of English it was hysterical trying to communicate with each other. But they were drunk enough to be persistent in their attempts and some how we understood each other. They were from St. Petersburg and were general contractors that were ship building in Astrakhan. We showed them satellite images of where we live on “Google maps” and they did the same for us. We finally took up their offer for a beer and shared a drink together. They even offered us a “snack” which was some type of dead fish. This is a “normal” snack in Russia as we’ve seen it sold in many places. We kindly accepted the snack and told them we would take it to our room. (Where we discretely disposed of it.) It was fun trying to communicate with these people but it did get old after awhile. These guys were drunk enough that they didn’t get the hint that we were trying to leave. It took another adoptive family to “rescue” us after about 2 hours. We did still end up going for a walk but it was not as far as we would’ve liked to explore because it was already dark by the time we escaped.

Today, June 20th, is mine and David’s 9th wedding anniversary. Because our coordinator is back in town and able to accompany us on visits, we were able to visit Madeline twice today. Both visits today went very well. David and I realized that Madeline is just like her Mama….a busybody! Our coordinator flew into Astrakhan with another adoptive couple from our agency last night. They (Karen and Huibert) are adopting a 3 year old girl from the same infant’s home as we are. We traveled with the other couple to the infant’s home and shared visiting time together with them and their daughter in the same room. Their daughter (Milana) has a very strong personality and Madeline watched every second of what was going on……just Like her Mama would’ve. During today’s visit, David also was lucky enough to receive the first “kiss” from Madeleine. Keep in mind, it was a toddler’s version of a kiss but nonetheless, it was a “first kiss”……which David reminded me of several times today. We will try to send the video of this “first kiss” as an attachment as we were lucky enough to capture it but we are not sure if it’ll go through.

Tonight is a beautiful night here in Astrakhan. A cool front rolled in and it’s actually pleasant out. A nice breeze is also helping to keep the mosquitoes away. This evening we went to dinner at the Krem Cafe for our anniversary with the couple from Lancaster, PA (Greg and Rebekah). They share not only the same anniversary date but also the same wedding year. We both got married on 6/20/98. We also went to dinner with Jonah and Andi from Illinois who are on their first trip and just got their referral and Karen and Huibert, who are working with our agency and are adopting from the same infant’s home. Karen and Huibert’s court date is tomorrow.

Nothing else new tonight…..we’ll try to send out more pictures too.

Until tomorrow….

David and Amy