August 14, 2008 - St Petersburg, Russia

Well - we arrived in St Pete safely yesterday evening (Wednesday 13.08.08), although we are pretty jet-lagged this trip. There were 3 screaming kids on the long flight to Frankfurt...hopefully not a sign of what's to come in our future! We were so very lucky to be blessed with a 5 hour layover in the Frankfurt airport before the flight to Peter (can you read the sarcasm?!), so that definitely added to our fatigue. We promptly headed to the бар (bar) for a few Russian beers with our friend Courtney, then hit the grocery story for some provisions. We went to the orphanage this morning (Thursday) to see Nicky & he didn't share our enthusiasm for spending time together! Typical 2 year old, I'm sure, but it was pretty difficult to experience! He cried and said "нет" (nyet = no) a lot...he wanted no part of us! Once we finally got him away from his group, we were able to get at least one smile out of him in the 2 hours we had...so not long enough! We then went for some souvenirs and headed back to our apartment for a nice, long, much needed nap! When we finally roused, we walked around the city center to see a few of the sites we missed on the first trip. The city itself is very beautiful and the buildings look more like what one would expect to see in Paris (Peter the Great who designed the city, was very taken with western architecture). The people watching here is fabulous as well - many a girl in super-spiky high heels and fish-net stockings in the middle of the day! And - mullets are all the rage...the fashion is all very '80s! We grabbed some dinner and came back to the apartment to get ready for the big court date in the morning. We finished writing our speech (Kris is the lucky one that gets to represent us in court...thank goodness!) and we're now studying our home study to make sure all our statements match those we gave in January!