Out and About

Just a brief message today as we pack and prepare for the midnight train to St. Petersburg:

Still cold. Still pink. Still foreign.
Still traveling by metro. Still fascinated by stiletto heels in the snow.
Still jet-lagged. Still enjoying receiving your messages. Still waiting to bring Syevinch home.

The less-abbreviated version:

On Friday, we again braved the wind chill and the subway to visit Syevinch. The route through the suburbs of Moscow is now quite familiar and we no longer need to pay attention to our original markers: cross the street at the "StarDogs" vending cart (ask Renee what she thinks of this); turn left at the construction site; right when you see the three smokestacks of the power plant; and left again where they're tearing up the street. In fact, the most challenging part of our trek to the orphanage now is avoiding the snapping doors of the carnivorous elevator in our apartment building.

We had another nice visit with Syevinch, more laughs, fewer tears. She is still quite reluctant to have me hold her, but she's engaging more than before. She melted down a bit in the last 15-20 minutes of our visit and we had difficulty determining what was happening for her. Renee believes that she's teething, but having had a finger caught in her mouth, I know she's pretty, darned teethed! We also see her just before her afternoon nap, so it may be that our timing overlaps just a bit too closely with when she'd prefer to be back in her crib. Regardless, it was a nice time overall and we were sad to return her to her caregivers when we left an hour-and-a-half later.

After returning to our neighborhood, we hoofed it down to the closest (at least as far as we know) supermarket for a restocking of our little kitchen, including the missing necessities, such as instant coffee (a necessary evil), olive oil, rice, and cookies (an unnecessary blessing). After returning home, we napped for just a bit before heading out to search for an Indian restaurant, Tandoor, which we had seen advertised in the guide book. It was a bit further away than I had thought, but relatively easy to find, and it was great to have some good, ol' American food—tikka masala and lamb saag.

Today, Saturday, was another early-afternoon visit to Syevinch, so after a slow start, we headed out on our quite-familiar route to the orphanage by foot and metro. It was warmer today — a solid 32° — but there was a threat of snow, so we still had to remain bundled.

The visit at the orphanage was a bit manic. Because it was a weekend, most of the workers were not at the orphanage, so our usual visitation room was all locked up, and we wound up sitting on the floor of a tiny, little waiting area sans toys, sans space, but also sans distractions. Syevinch, at first, was very happy to see us, and even reached out for Renee when we entered her room (a wonderful image). We had a good 45 minutes or so, but then she got fidgety and we couldn't figure out what she was needing, and at one point, she went into arched-back mode accompanied by tears and wailing. Of course, we were armed with the all-powerful Cheerios, which worked to bring her back to a less-volatile state. This worked two or three times before she became immune to them and we wound up taking her back to her room a few minutes early, as it was becoming increasingly clear that all she really needed was to start her nap early.

So now we're back in the apartment. After several hours' sleep, we're both now packed and killing time as we wait for our driver to pick us up and drive us across town to the train station. The train departs just before midnight, arriving in St. Petersburg at 8:00 a.m. We've got a hotel room booked, but will need to get our bearings and figure out the town before we can check in later that morning.

I'm not certain whether we will have internet access or not, so this may be the last posting for a bit. We'll be back on the midnight train Tuesday night in time for a visit Wednesday afternoon to our favorite, little Moscow orphanage.

Best wishes,
Larry & Renee

P.S. Now I've got Gladys Knight stuck in my head: "And I'm leaving ... on that midnight train to Moscow...." (Probably not the original lyrics.)