Our First Trip to Russia

Adopting a child in Russia requires that you travel to Russia twice. Before you travel on your first trip, you have to fill out a ton of paperwork. Then you are matched with a child in your specified age range and gender. This is called "getting a Referral". After you get a Referral, you travel to Russia on Trip 1, to meet the child. If all goes well, you sign paperwork committing to adopt the child and return home. About 2 months later you return to Russia for a court hearing, which finalizes the adoption, and you bring your child home.

We left for Russia on December 13, 2004, and had a ball. The trip started out on a positive note when we got upgraded to Business Class. The seats were wider, and it was a flying 7 course gourmet meal. It simply could not have been nicer, and set the tone for our entire trip.


This is Sharron and Randall site-seeing in Moscow before heading out to Siberia. We've just exited the Kremlin, which is a large walled in fortress that contains a large number of governmental buildings, plus some beautiful churches with golden Domes. After spending a day site-seeing in Moscow, we flew to Novokuznetzk, a city in the Kemerovo Oblast, just 30 miles from Prokopyevsk, the city where our daughter-to-be lives. There are 49 Oblasts, which are administrative regions similar to our States, but I don't believe they have the same sort of Federal/State relationship.


Here's a picture of the Orphanage. It's called Destky Dom No. 6 (Children's Home No. 6). It's in Prokopyevsk, which is in Siberia. Note all that snow. It was actually colder in Moscow, which is further north. But the amount of snow in Siberia was impressive.

We met met our daughter-to-be on December 15th. She is wonderful. She's obviously quite inteligent, and very playful. At 8 years old, you can really discern her personallity. We feel she'll fit in quite well as a Moore.

Russian adoption laws do not permit us to share any information about our daughter-to-be until she's legally ours. But not to worry, the upcoming journal of Trip 2 will be replete with photos!

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