Our 1st Day

We made it to Russia safe and sound. Our flight was actually very nice. We cannot say enough good things about Singapore Airlines and their staff. The flight was only 10.5 hours total. We left at 6pm Sat. night, US time, and arrived in Moscow at 1:30pm, Sunday afternoon, Russian time. We had a little hiccup at first trying to figure out where to go and what exactly to do. We stood in the passport verification line (which was super long) just to find out we failed to fill out our immigration forms. No biggie though we just rolled with the punches, filled out the forms and waited in line again. After going through customs we met our driver holding a sign with our name on it. That was super exciting.
Our driver did not speak English and of course we don't speak Russian so the 3 hour ride to our region was pretty quiet. They drive like maniacs here. Not sure why they have lines on the roads because they don't use them at all. They whip in and out of traffic and cut other cars off like crazy people.
We finally make it to our region to meet Nadia our guide and translator. Thank goodness, we can now communicate with someone other than each other. She is very nice and helpful. She took us to our room and then took a walk around the area showing us where we could purchase items we needed, and places we could eat. We went to a cafe called The Wall and treated her to ice cream. We asked a ton of questions and she was very helpful in answering them. Nadia gave us some history on the area as well. She will be going to the orphanage with us each day. We make our 1st trip to see Bradyn tomorrow at 1 then again that evening. We will get to see him at the same time each day until Thursday when we will have to go back to Moscow. Nadia said the head dr. at the orphanage is very helpful with the children's medical information. She will answer any questions we may have and we can ask anything.
We will do our best to update videos after the 1st visit tomorrow. We don't know how much down time we will have because it's the 1st day and we have to speak to the dr. there then get the information back to our dr. at Vandy.
Scott and Mel