A day of sightseeing...

I am glad to hear that you all like all the details in my posts! But, if you don't, feel free to skim through or just look at the pictures. If you double click on a picture, you should be able to see it in more detail.

My day, unfortunately, started about 5:15 AM! I was awake for a little while and started thinking, I wonder what time it is. The sun comes up on the other side of our building, so it is a little hard to tell if it is morning yet. I got up and found Ryan's watch and took it into the bathroom to see what time it was. I couldn't believe it, it was 10:45 AM! I was worried we were going to sleep our day away and not have any time to explore Moscow. So, I wake Ryan up and tell him what time it is. He looks at his travel alarm clock and informs me that it is 5:15 AM! I tell him to look at his watch...oops, I had it upside down! I tried to go back to sleep, but was wide awake. I got up for an hour and a half and did some stuff on the computer. Luckily, our kitchen has a door, so I don't think I bothered Ryan. I decided to try to get some more sleep and luckily was able to.

After we were both up and showered, we took off down Novy Arbat street towards Red Square. It was about a 20 minute walk. The high today was suppose to be 39 degrees, so it was a nice day for a walk. Once we got there, we sat down to look at our map. We hear a bunch of dogs barking and all of a sudden we see this pack of dogs running towards us! I am really not a fan of strange dogs, so this concerned me a bit. Ryan promised to protect me and luckily they just ran on by. Throughout the day we saw several stray dogs just roaming around. They must get fed because they don't look skinny, but they look sad. :(

We were able to see something like our Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Lenin's tomb, Kremlin Wall, GUM shopping mall, Basil's Cathederal, and tons of neat looking buildings.

There are 2 of these guys at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. They stand compeletly still. One guy periodically marches over to them to make sure they are standing exactly right. They were standing so still we thought they were mannequins at first!

I believe this is the largest shopping mall in Russia, or was the first one built. It is huge. We didn't go in but walked all the way around it. It is very upscale.

St. Basil's was really impressive and neat to actually be at after seeing so many pictures of it on other adoptive families' blogs. I didn't realize until we were there that you could go inside for a small ticket price.

We at lunch at One Red Square, which is located in the basement of the History Museum. Here is a picture of the building.

It was a little nicer than we expected, but they menus in English. I decided to stick with something that sounded safe, pancakes with butter. Ryan ventured out a little and chose something called the Hunter's Salad. It has venison in it, so any hunter needed to try it. I think our waitress thought we should be ordering more. Ryan's was a salad and mine was under the snack section. Here is a picture of our meals.

They were both surprisingly good and held us off until dinner.

On our way back to our apartment, I saw a young man holding what appeared to be 2 kids. One on each hip. It turns out they were monkeys dressed up as children! It was the strangest thing to see, unfortunately, I didn't get a picture.

When we got back from sightseeing we got a call from M. She gave us the plan for tomorrow. They will pick us up tomorrow at 9:30 AM, we will go to make copies, then to our appointment at the MOE. Here is where they will tell us a little about our child, then we will get to go see her! She told us that our daughter has a cold, so we might be meeting her at the clinic. They seperate kids in the orphanage that are sick so that they don't get the rest of the kids sick. It just made her so much more real that we were told that she has a cold, if that makes any sense. It is one of the first things I know about her, I don't even know how old she is! Ryan wouldn't ask if she could tell us how old she is!

One of the highlights of our day was meeting with an adoptive couple that I have gotten to know. They were here for their court date, so they are offically parents of their little sweet girl. It was so fun to meet them in person and talk about our experiences. We met at TGIFs, so the food was pretty normal. Ryan's Fanta was served warm, while my Coca - Cola Light was served cold.

Well, I better get some sleep. I can't wait to meet our daughter!