We Are in Moscow!

Cyndy, Olivia and I (Glen) are sitting in the lobby of the Marriott Grand Hotel in Moscow, our rooms are not ready (it is 10 AM) and Scott, Terisa, Haley, Amanda and Lyndsay are off doing adoption stuff at the hospital and embassy. They have wireless internet access here at the Marriott Grand, so life is good!

The over-night train ride from Penza was tolerable, thanks to a little pill called Ambien! We slept well, and are more refreshed this morning. It is raining in Moscow and we left Penza NOT in rain gear. So, we are a little damp right now.

This is an American Hotel, so it feels more like home here. Everyone speaks English, which helps these ugly Americans who don't know very much Russian!

Cyndy and I are missing Yulia and Gena a LOT. Olivia has a bit of a crush on Gena, so she has been asking about him. I'm sure the Clark girls are missing Yulia, especially Haley and Amanda. We haven't decided yet on if we are going to change Yulia's name, but Gena is happy with Samuel. Now we're just trying to decide on Sam, Samuel or Sammy! We have discovered that "Gena" is prounounced "Gyeh-nah." All the kids call him "GEE-ehn" since they shorten all of their names: Marina (Haley) is MAH-rin, Elena (Amanda) is LEE-nah, Yulia is "YOOL" and Oksana (Lyndsay) is OHK-sahn. It is very cute!

Our camera is packed away and I can't get to it to post some of our new pictures. But I'll try to find something to put up for now. We are excited to be in Moscow, missing our kids, missing Nathan and all of you. But we are only here for a few days, so we want to make the most of it. Thank you for all your prayers and support. When we get home we will (hopefully) have a date for the home study visit and be able to finish the paper work for our dossier. We want to have it ready to go to Russia by May. That means we will need a lot of money between then and now, since filing the dossier costs about $8000! But we know that God has put us on this path, so we are confident that the funds will be there when God's timing is right.

Well, that's all for now. We'll post more frequently now that we have broadband access. I had forgotten how S-L-O-W dial-up is!

Blessings,

Glen and Cyndy