Thursday in the Land of Kaz

Our visit with Emma went by quickly today. We hadn’t knocked on the door yet when Emma came toddling into the room by herself with a big smile on her face. She enjoyed her cheerios and juice, but was disturbed by the baseball cap Dad was wearing for a while. We all wore each other out and Emma was snuggly right before our visit ended. Only four more visits and we can apply for a court date! We will need to submit a photo album before we leave with date-stamped photos of each of our 14 visits with Emma. This is shown to the judge to prove we complied with visitation requirements. As we’ve said, it is unfortunately a minimum of 30 days before we will go to court. I hope Emma remembers us when we return. It’s going to be hard, because even after court we have another 15 day “appeals period” to wait out before we get custody of Emma. So far so good, but we’re still anxious to get this process over with so we know for certain that this beautiful little baby will be part of our family. Someone said to keep a slight emotional distance, as about 5% of families will not be able to complete their adoptions. I don’t think that’s possible for us, so we just keep thinking positively and trusting that everything will work out fine and we’ll soon have Emma on the plane to her new home in the US.
This afternoon we had our driver drop us off at the Cathedral of the Holy Ascension. What a sight! We were able to go inside, but weren’t allowed to take pictures. The surrounding park was filled with people enjoying the day. It was fun to watch the bundled-up children chasing the pigeons. We wandered farther and found the Green Bazaar, an indoor/outdoor shopping area where people sold just about anything you could imagine. There were street vendors selling fruit, eggs, fish, candy, popcorn, soda and beer. There were street artists and street musicians as well as salesmen handing out pamphlets in very brightly-colored snowsuits. Nobody here seems to mind cold or snow. They just dress warmly and go about their business as if it were mid-summer.
Thin-skinned Americans that we are, we needed to warm up after about two hours of wandering in the cold. We found a fun restaurant near a movie theatre. Jim loved the poster of John Wayne outside the restaurant. The unisex bathrooms were a bit unsettling, but there really wasn’t a choice. At least now we know to bring money to the bathrooms if we want toilet paper. The meal was fine, and afterwards we headed back to our apartment to watch the Australian Open (a major tennis tournament) with Russian commentators. I have learned the numbers 15,30, and 40 in Russian quite well, so it’s educational too. Go Americanskis!