I am sharing my adoption travel journal. It’s quite a story. I hope to share it “daily” or at least post every other day. I’ll start the adoption story posts with an “*” so you can find them in the archives. I hope you enjoy it.
————————
We had a wonderful flight from Seattle to Moscow. I am so grateful we flew business class. We arrived without incident. So far so good! We got off the plane with expectations. Expectations that we would be met at the end of the ramp by the VIP service we hired from gotorussia. We paid a lot of money for the VIP service because they speak Russian and they can help ease us through the process. And since our agency wasn’t thrilled about us going through Moscow to Almaty we figured we needed the extra support. They wanted us to go through Amsterdam or Frankfurt but tickets were so much cheaper going this way. Even in adoption we are rebels!

But guess what? There was no VIP service waiting where they told us there would be. Uh-Oh. So we kept walking. We saw a sign on a pole that said “VIP” (in English not Cyrillic) but there was no one there. It’s so disorientating to not know what the heck you are supposed to do in a country where you don’t read the language, don’t speak the language or know anyone. And yet you are on the most important trip of your life! We decided to go down the stairs to see if the sign was pointing us in that direction. Regular customs control was down there. They told us that if we got to regular customs, we had gone too far. So we went back to the VIP pole and waited a few minutes. Then I flagged someone down from INS who spoke “some” English. She called someone from VIP. They then took us on this long trek around the airport to the VIP lounge where we handed our passports to a uniformed guard and were told to sit down.

Stay with me here. Are you following still?

Well…. Something was wrong because I could tell someone serious (translate: uniformed and not smiling) was talking to the girl who brought us in. She came over and told me “You need to pay us 30 rubles each”. I replied that we had already paid for the service. I wasirritated at this point that the “pay through smooth VIP service” was no where to be found and I was getting concerned that we were going to miss our connection to Almaty. After some broken conversation back and forth… her in English, me in Russian (Me mostly saying “ya nyet Pan-nee-my-yoo—I don’t understand) I called the travel agency gotorussia in Moscow.

They spoke to her and everything got straightened out. Seems “their people” were looking for me. She told me go get the passports that were lying on the counter. I asked her if there was anything else we needed to do, she said no. At this point, I said to John.. I thought we were supposed to have another piece of paper from them…. But we were running so late and my Russian friend wasn’t liking me too much and she did say there was nothing else for me to do.

We left the VIP area where the “gotorussia” woman was waiting and she took us downstairs to our waiting luggage. We couldn’t find our driver. Now I’m getting worried because our flight leaves in less then 90 minutes and we have to transfer to another airport that is at least a 30 minute car ride away.

Finally our driver Vladimire finds us. He’s a kind older man and has a sign with our name on it. We walk outside and realize its REALLY snowing. By really snowing I mean we are in a blizzard. Very beautiful, and very cold. The temperature was close to zero. We hike it out to his van (why oh why did I bring so much friggin luggage?) and pile in. It’s about a half hour drive to the other airport.

We get to the other airport and it is REALLY coming down. Moscow is very pretty from what we could see in the dark. Vlad pointed out where the Russian army stopped Hitler’s troops in WWII. Interesting… Anyway… at the airport we learn that our flight is delayed because of the snow. We take this as a “welcomed break” because we only made it with 30 mins to spare. (traffic was good!)

Now to the interesting part of the story. We decide its time to go through customs. We go and low and behold we do not have the right paperwork. There were about 5 guards. One spoke English pretty well. He told us they wouldn’t let us get on the plane. We were detained. You see, we had all this cash and they were not going to let us leave Russia with it since it wasn’t declared. We were supposed to declare it on a piece of paper. And Russians are very big on pieces of paper and everything being all formal and stamped. What’s the big deal about extra money? As I could understand it, it’s that this money could be “Russian money” and they want it spent “in Russia”. All those American dollars help prop up their Ruble.

We had three options: 1. Leave the money (American cash) with them and go on without it. 2. One of us go, one of us stay. 3. Miss our flight and go buy “travelers checks” in American dollars the next day. 3 turned out to be our choice, but not until we conferred with our facilitator in Kaz that this would work. They had told us to only bring CASH. But I guess travelers checks would work in a pinch.

Let’s be honest. I tried everything to try to get through to these customs guards. I cried, I showed them pictures of my kids– I begged and pleaded. Nothing worked. They weren’t going to let us through. I was devestated. After all the waiting, all the paperchasing, all the glitches that are just so part of the road to international adoption.. I was going to get held up in Moscow only hours before I was supposed to hold my children for the very first time. It was emotionally devestating. I am sure they got a chuckle out of the distraught American crying to go get her babies. Babies she hadn’t even met yet. So much for sympathy because I didn’t get any.

So here we are in the Moscow Marriott Grand. It’s a beautiful hotel. We hope, God willing, to get out on a flight tonight and will see our babies tomorrow. I was hoping to be able to send this out … the hotel has an ISP but we are having trouble connecting. I am assuming its because we have win2000 and they want Win95. Cutting edge technology is going to be the death of us. Ironic huh?

So that’s our last update for a little bit…. We’ll write more when when get to Almaty, Kazakhstan. I can’t wait to see it.

Related posts:

  1. *Kym gets sick in Moscow February 28th Evening/March 1st morning
    2.    This will be a short post. I just wanted to...
  2. *Day Eight — Orphanage Lessons on Food
    3.    This is the continuation of my travel...
  3. *Day Nine - Morning Passport Pics
    4.    This is the continuation of my travel...