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Monday, January 28, 2008

good news

No, it's not an invitation to travel! But we did have some good news today on other fronts:

1) We reserved an apartment today with Peace Travel. We will be staying in the White House on Novy Arbat. Even though we don't have firm travel dates, we decided to go ahead and reserve the apartment for the week of the 10th, because I was afraid there wouldn't be anything available if we waited until the last minute. Peace Travel has such excellent customer service! The reservation process was so easy. If we do have to change our reservation dates, the fee is only $50 (as long as we give them 7 days notice). We will be sharing the apartment with another family with our agency, Marty and Lisa. We are not experienced travelers, so we are excited that we will be sharing this experience with another family! It has helped a lot to ease our anxiety about being in a new city.

We found out today that Doug and Kathy will still be in Moscow while we're there, and we're looking forward to seeing them too!

2) Our other good news was not adoption related, believe it or not! There is a huge piece of property in our neighborhood that is currently just undeveloped green space. For a while now, there has been a fight going between those who want the property to be a park and those who want commercial development. Every time there has been a public meeting, we have attended, along with lots other people from our neighborhood. Tonight we went to the city council meeting, where they voted on the proposal for the property to be zoned "General Commercial". The request was denied! The property will remain zoned residential. We were so happy! We really hope there will be a city park there one day, and we continue to support the cause.

Since this was a public hearing, many people got up to speak. When they talked about the future of this community for our children, I thought about Baby F.

I am starting to feel less anxiety about traveling and more and more excitement about finally meeting Baby F and seeing the cute little baby face and baby smile! I'm ready to book plane tickets! Maybe tomorrow!

5 comments:

Tiger & Kar said...

That's great that you can share the apartment. How did you manage to coordinate that?

Rob said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Rob said...

That's a good location! You'll be across from a shopping strip that offers lots of little boutique stores and a couple of markets.

By the way, here's your apartment listed on another site that offers a much more detailed view of the rooms and a much more accurate map of the location:

White House on Apartment Reservation Network

(Peace Travel is definitely the company you want to use to book the apartment - I just like the images that this other company offers a little better...)

Beth said...

That is good news Ana - can't wait to hear about travel dates. We are doing well and madly in love at the moment!

Michael, Carrie, and S said...

That looks really nice! It is great to be able to call home and use the internet for free--we spent a good deal on these things, especially the internet. It sounds like you are getting very close! :)