Opening Day. Let's Play Two

An assortment of images from the first day of the rest of our lives (sorry for the small size, but the Wifi cards here cost $8 and are used up pretty quickly when we post images. We've been going through nearly two a day it seems lately).

Among these pics:
- A photo of us with Yana in the square of Cherepanov, in front of a statue of Lenin. We're told nearly town in Russia has a statue of Lenin. So if the country has a love affair with their former dictator, why then change the name of his city Leningrad, to St. Petersburg?
= A photo of Ruslan in tears as he is getting dressed by Fran and being held by one of his caregivers at baby Home No. 2 before he left.
- Mom playing with Ruslan and Yana on the hotel room bed, which has become the play area, eat area, sleep area, changing area of the hotel room, since there is no other area.
- Yana smiling as she is getting dressed by momma prior to her prison break.
- Mom in the car, introducing Yana to her new Strawberry Shortcake shoes, which met with Yana's approval and therefore made this whole babysnatching thing from her home OK by her. Give a woman a pair of shoes, you can take them anywhere.
- Tea and cake in the office of the senior doctor in Cherepanov, apparently a tradition when parents show up to take a child with them from a home. either that or an excuse to get American couples to buy expensive cake for you. On the right are our agency rep Anna, and our agency contact who flew in from Seattle, Jamie.
- The pile of graft, er bribes, we gifts we had to pack up for our trip Thursday. Fran made gift bags for the chocolate and the coffe which went to senior doctors, assistant senior doctors, social workers, social studies teachers, caregivers, staff, the homeless people we passed on the way, the Kremlin, Gorbachev ... I think we bought something for everyone in the country.