Leaving Moscow

We were typing out our blog update this morning when Anna arrived very early to pick us up, so we shut down the laptop and hopped in the car. We did run into some traffic at different points so it made for a stressless wait through the jams. So for now we'll do the BlackBerry update.

Yesterday's visit with Takhmina was a bit hectic as we had to fill out many official forms. While one of us could play, the other had to fill out the required information and sign. Three copies of one document, in both Russian and English, and two copies of another in both languages. Before we knew it our time was done and no pictures were taken. Next time we see Takhmina will be in about 8 weeks. The paperwork goes back to the Department of Education. From there it will go into the federal court system where they will assign to us a date to appear and plead our case to adopt.

One surprise of the visit is that we were asked what her name would be going forward. We thought we had time to decide that. Figured the US embassy would be the one to ask that question. We didn't want to change it too much but also wanted to make it a tad easier for the American weak tongues to handle. :) We settled on Tashmina (with an assumed nickname of Tasha) and a middle name of Katherine.

For our last dinner out we decided to walk up one of the main roads called Tverskaya which was supposedly filled with restaurants. We found night clubs, tech gadget stores, 24 hour shoe stores (for those that really need a new pair of boots at 4am), McDonalds, etc, but no nice quaint restaurants. Decided to turn into the side streets and found the perfect place to finish up. It was called Cafe Margarita. Very good food (the waitress said she had no recommendations because everything is "smachny", or delicious. She was correct, at least for what we ordered. They also had live music of two violinists and a pianist. They played a variety of fun songs and handed out shakers to the patrons to keep the beat with. I will post a video of that when we return home. Yes, I know, I owe a few videos now. :)