Happy St. Patrick's Day!

These next few posts I wrote while we were in Russia. I didn't have the patience to try to post from the tiny little keyboard on Jeff's Blackberry so I wrote them out the old fashioned way to type later. 

March 17

Happy St. Patrick's Day. It's 2:30 in the morning? Can you guess what I'm doing (besides journaling)? If you said sitting in the bathtub at the Moscow Raddison playing Sodoku, you're right. In the last 36 hours I've had about 5 hours of sleep. I was going to take a Sominex when we got to the hotel, but I thought surely, after 19 hours of travel, I wouldn't need any help falling asleep. Well I was right. I just forgot about the staying asleep part. When I woke up, I started thinking about seeing our son for the first time today, and that was the end of sleep. 

We were blessed with smooth travel. I was nervous about making all the connecting flights, especially our last one as we only had an hour and a half layover in Poland, and our plane left Chicago an hour and a half late. By the grace of God, they were just starting to board the plane for Moscow as we got through the last security check. 

I have decided that transatlantic travel does not hold the same joy for me that it used to. I thought I would go crazy on flight from Chicago to Warsaw. I had the middle seat (Why does that always happen to me?) that seemed to grow smaller as the flight wore on. It didn't help when the large man in the seat next to me fell asleep and started spilling over the arm rest. Now I know it's common for travelers to complain about airplane food, but I'm convinced that no one has earned the right to complain until they have flown Polish Airways. What little food there was, was horrible. We were starving by the time we reached Moscow in the evening. We hadn't eaten a real meal since lunch the day before. We might have perished if not for the candy bars the Lees sent with us. We we too tired to go forage for food so we splurged and ordered room service. It is no exaggeration to call it a splurge. Moscow is considered the most expensive city in the world and the falling value of the dollar does little to help matters. It was $52 for two cheeseburgers and french fries. I wanted a milkshake too but that would have been another $16. I don't know if it was our extreme hunger or the cost of the meal, but that was one of the best burgers I've had in a long time. We are heading out to our region today, so that should bring some relief from cost of staying here. 

We were expecting to see our son on Tuesday, but when we arrived, we were informed that we would see him today. I am so excited and nervous. There are so many uncertainties like how will he react to us, what will his personality be like, and the dreaded question - will there be anything that would prevent us from proceeding? We just need to leave things to God's plan. He has caused so many doors to miraculously open so that we would not miss this opportunity. I suppose the lyrics of a Caedmon's Call song are appropriate now.

"And I know the plans that you have for me

And you can't plan the end and not plan the means

And so I suppose I just need some peace

Just to get me to sleep."