Paperwork on Hold

It's not looking good for our paperwork the judge requested. I assumed it was in Anchorage on Monday and en route to Khabarovsk. NO! It took 3 days to arrive from Juneau our state capitol. WHAT! Couldn't make that route any faster?? What's up with FedEX?? Anyway by the time Olga got it on Tuesday, there was little time to fix the spelling error on the social worker's name. So she sent it to Khabarovsk with the spelling error. Now DHL is having issues, when I checked this morning the package has been sitting in Seoul for over 24 hours and says "shipment on hold" what does that mean?

I think it has until Feb 3rd to make it to the judge's desk. Remember they are 19 hours ahead of Alaska time, so it better pick up speed soon...

We are sitting at a 50/50 chance right now of February court. If the paperwork arrives in time, Olga is hopeful that the judge will accept/miss the spelling error (but we all know Russia; so she is going to have a new copy from the state by the end of the week).

FYI... The female judge is going on an unexpected vacation Feb 15th, so Olga said if we get court it will probably be with the male judge (yeah!!) He's a tad nicer ;)

Too many unknowns right now.. If we miss the Feb 3rd deadline, she'll throw our case out and we have to refile, court will move to March then definately...

PS A big congratulations to Jen and Larry who just accepted their new boy referral from Magadan. Safe travels guys, we'll miss you in Khabarovsk!

Waiting on Redoubt

The big news in Alaska is the fact that the Volcano Mt. Redoubt is at an elevated level of Orange. Earthquake activity has increased and they are saying an eruption of the volcano is eminent. Check the Alaska Volcano Observatory for more information....www.avo.alaska.edu/

The volcano is about 50 miles away from Anchorage, across the Cook Inlet. The danger right now is the falling Ash, as the weather pattern currently will send that ash over Anchorage and then onto the Mat-Su Valley where we live. Last time it went off in the early 1990s, the town was covered with falling gray ash and visibility was very poor.

Interesting place we live in, Alaska!

A little Contest-Guess the Court Date

The judge should hopefully have all our paperwork January 30th. So in order to mix things up this week, I'm doing a little contest. Submit your guess on when our court date will be. Now your guess is as good as mine, it's all up to the judge and her court calendar!

So leave a comment in this post with your court date guess. The winner (closest) will get a wonderful box of Russian and Alaskan goodies mailed to their house :) All guesses need to be posted by Feb 6th. No more than 1 guess per calendar date, so get your date picked quick...

Hey it's like a lottery just take a guess... I would recommend sometime in February or March... (HOPEFULLY!!)

Here's our timeline if anyone wants to have scientific research...

Trip 1: Nov 27-Dec 3
Filed to Court: Jan 11
Request for more paperwork: Jan 16
2nd Filing to Court: Jan 30 (close to this day, depends on DHL)
Russian Medicals expire: March 1st

Don't be shy!!

We have a letter!!

Whew! After 2 very long days (and a very long week!) we have a letter. It's not quite what Russia asked for, but that just wasn't possible. So hopefully this letter will satisfy the judge...

I did not know that we only had 10 days from the day the judge requested it to get this letter done! So Olga really worked some magic today to get things done, notarized and maybe even apositilized (not an easy task when that involves getting paperwork to Juneau). Anyway by Monday it will be on it's way to Khabarovsk and should be on the judge's desk by Friday or the following Monday... And then maybe she'll give us a court date....

Bureaucracy of Russia vs Bureaucracy of Alaska

We're still being held up by one piece of paper.... It's so frustrating!!!

On Friday, the Russian judge requested a paper from the Alaska Dept of Commerce saying that our social worker was licensed to do homestudies.

Here's the issue.. There is no license for homestudies. There is a license for a social worker!! Which she has...

We did have a letter from Office of Children's Services, a very nice letter listing all the social worker credentials and saying she has a lot of experience with home studies and adoption. Duh! She's been doing it for 20 years and did the boys' adoption. But the judge didn't like this letter...

So Dept of Commerce won't write the letter because it's not under their jurisdiction and OCS 's letter is unacceptable to the judge!!!

So what do we do now??????

I don't know. But Wednesday I'm driving to Anchorage, picking up Olga (head of our agency) and we are going to both try to tackle the issue at the state offices.

Wish us luck, because without this "approval" we will NOT get a court date to bring her home...

A room for a princess

We finished little V's butterfly room today. We needed to get photos taken so we could take them to the judge, whenever we get the court date... We're trying not to overstimulate her when she gets home, so it's a little sparse... I stenciled butterflies on the wall last summer, and Nana and Pappy worked together to make the curtains and board at the top.. This little rocker was Nana's when she was little. Nana refinished it and put it in her room.

She has lots of clothes already... We got some great handme downs from friends. And Target has run some very good sales on it's overstock. for 50 cents to 2.00 each we got a lot of clothes

to last her as she grows...
And her little bed. Pappy made the bed! It's a mattress on the frame, we'll get a boxspring as she grows, but for now it will keep her from falling too far...

And S. spent about an hour organizing her little book shelves. Mainly because he had to look through every book, as he hasn't seen the board books for a few years :)

Bike Riding in Alaska in January!

We had 3 weeks of -30 temps and record colds. This past week has brought very high winds and warm temperatures, we've hit 50 (record and very unusual highs)!! Today it was 45 degrees so we packed up the bikes and took the boys to the town bike path. The winds blow hard here, so it's been cleared of most snow and water. The kids had a ball! And they will be very tired tonight.

We actually had 2 snow days this week, because of all the ice the roads were just impassable. This is the first snow days I remember in at least the past 8 years. It's Alaska, we just always go. But it was very bad on the roads, just sheets of ice. So it's supposed to drop down again in the 20s this weekend and they are forecasting snow. More typical Alaska weather. but it was nice to experience a little bit of spring :)

Another Update from Russia

Our paperwork was filed to the judge on Jan 11th. On Jan 16th, she responded with a request for additional information on our social worker from the state of Alaska. I should note we've used this social worker before as have many others, but the judge is giving us the hoops to jump...

An Update from Russia

It's been 5 weeks since we left Russia. We received an e-mail this week that our dossier was filed to Khabarovsk court on Jan 11th. (2 week holiday delayed it)

We were advised that the judge has been requesting "surprise" documents. So we may get a request for more paperwork before she'll give us the court date.

Let's cross our fingers she likes us :)

Okay if you remember our first torture, um, court, experience with they boys you are laughing at that last statement!

We should have another update from Russia in a week or so...

PS the temperature in Alaska finally broke, it's now in the balmy 40s! School actually closed yesterday (first time in 6 years) because of very icy/impassable roads. I'm noticing a trend that when it's cold in Alaska, it's warmer in Khabarovsk and the opposite. Check out the weather links on the right hand column.

Trip 1: Part VIII: The End of Trip 1

Wednesday we woke up, sad to be leaving little V behind but ready to come home. We spent the morning with little V, we left all the toys with her groupa and gave the caregivers several boxes of chocolates to share.

We headed out to the airport, gave a small gift to Irina and Nicholai and then headed inside. I used all my rubles to pay for the hotel room, Russian law says you aren’t allowed to leave the country with rubles. I forgot that to leave Khabarovsk you have to pay an airport tax for international flights. Irina forgot too, so she loaned us the rubles until we get back for trip 2. Once we paid our tax, we went through the green line at customs with no problems, got our boarding passes just for the Seoul flight (they wouldn’t give us our LAX ones), went through security and sat in the big waiting area.

Then it’s a waiting game, you watch the doors and the security guards, when they all start moving towards the doors to unlock them, you join the mob, walk across the tarmac and board the plane. It was an uneventful flight to Seoul. We landed with about 50 minutes until our flight to the US.

So we tried to rush through the transfer security at Seoul, they moved very SLOW! We sprinted to the boarding gate, which was boarding. They said you need to go to the 4th floor to get boarding passes!! WHAT!! So we ran to the 4th floor (NOT nearby), got our boarding passes and ran back to the gate. Mark jumped in line and I stopped and bought a needed bottle of water. We gave our boarding passes to the lady and encountered another security check before boarding the plane. We moved through this line slowly. Did you know you can’t take water on flights into the US? What I just bought it at the gate! Dang, Lost my new bottle of water. We boarded the plane to discover to our delight that we had 3 seats all to ourselves! The return flight was a quick 10.5 hours across the Pacific ;)

We landed in LAX, went through passport control quickly and hit the immigration line… OMG! This is the ultimate, why do people use LAX airport? We stood in line for an hour!! Then we were able to exit the airport without standing in the rest of the line and having them x-raying our luggage, since we had so little of it! We left that terminal and went outside to enjoy the sun for a few minutes.

We originally had a 6 hour layover, so we jumped in line at Alaska Airlines and were able to get on a flight standby right away to Seattle (no luggage is a good thing). When we got to Seattle, all the flights to Anchorage were packed, so we put our name on the standby list for each hourly flight. The 2nd flight we got lucky, the agent said the plane was full so everyone left. We were too smart (lazy?) to leave so we sat still, the agent said, I have 2 more seats do you want on this flight? You betcha!! So we were able to get home a few hours earlier..

Now it's a waiting game for the judge to tell us when to go back...

Trip 1: Part VII Tuesday

Monday night it snowed overnight just an inch or snow, and warmed up by 9 to turn everything into an icy mess. Tuesday morning we headed out to the orphanage and spent time with little V. She really warmed up to us and we had fun interacting and playing with her. I had brought a doggie blanket with us to leave with her to remember us by. So we played with that a lot. She would sit on the floor and pat the floor and say “come, come” and I would march the doggie over to her. We also played hide the doggie and she loved that game as well.

She is very strong-willed and bright, she’ll fit right in with the boys ;) We left the orphanage again at noon, to a hungry little V and a blown kiss. She is happy with her groupa and is loved by the caregivers. Irinia got her car working so we dropped it off and we got dropped off at the hotel. The sidewalks are very icy and there are special sections to walk on as the fancy stone is so slippery.

We had a few hours to ourselves Tuesday afternoon, so we ventured out in the wind and headed past Lenin Square. The temperature was not bad at all, but the winds made it very chilly. We found a pizza parlor and went in and had the Russian version of Pepperoni Pizza. It contained real spicy red peppers too which made it very HOT! After the pizza we headed back to the hotel to get ready for our venture out with Irina.

At 4 pm, Irina came back and we were going to walk to the notary. However, Irina said the winds were too much like a hurricane and she drove us instead. So we ventured to the notary and signed more paperwork. We had some good conversation with Irina while we were waiting for the notary about bringing the boys back with us on the 2nd trip. She was surprised that they boys had such good memories of the orphanage and wanted to return. She said it would be possible for the boys to come along on trip 2, they could visit little V at the orphanage, but would not be able to attend court. She would work with us to find someone to baby sit if we decide to bring them back.

We left the notary and walked to the court house, where Irina filed another couple huge packet of papers into the judge. Then we headed back to the hotel for our last night.

Trip 1: Part VI: Monday Medicals

We stop at the first clinic, push our way into line the Russian way. Irina tells me to stand in 1 line and has Mark stand in another and she runs back and forth to us to see who gets to the counter first. Once we pay for the 2 doctor’s here. We head to their offices. Each doctor has a small bathroom size office. They sit at their desk. The first doctor was a psychologist. She asked general questions, again a lot of questions about the boys and Alaska. She signs and stamps on her line of the 8 doctor medical. Then we head to the drug specialist, in the same clinic. She looks at our arms, asks us a few questions about drinking and more questions about the boys and Alaska. She signs and stamps on her line.

We are done with this clinic so we head back to the car. Irina says they won’t all be as easy and quick as the first two. Back out in traffic, driving a few blocks to another bigger medical clinic. We pay at one station to see 4 doctors. It’s a little longer for these doctors, they perform minor examinations, touch toes, nose, listen to heart, etc. I should mention Irina was a bulldog in getting us into see these doctors. There were lines and lots of Russian people. Irina would push her way through, push the paperwork on the doctor’s desk and say something that involved Americans in it. She also had our US physical forms that she waived in front of each doctor’s face too… When we walked out of this building we had all the lines on our 8 doctor medical complete.

Whew! It’s approaching 4 pm and we are done with the medicals, tired and hungry, we’re dropped off at the hotel. At least the scary medicals are done. Hopefully we won’t have to redo those before court. They are valid for 3 months…

Trip 1 Part V: Monday-A Long Day…Paperwork and Medicals

We meet up with Irina again @ 9 am Monday morning this time in the van with Nicholai driving. We head for the orphanage and get to spend 2 hours with little V. She still cries when she enters this miserable little room. We try to walk the halls, but it’s crowded and busy (some kind of meeting of orphanage caregivers) so we head back to our little room. Little V finds our notebook and leaves us pages and pages of 2 year old masterpieces. She’s much more social today, and talks up a storm to us. She has no fear of either of us today and grabs our hands and climbs in our laps. I pulled the magic bubbles out today and she was really fascinated with them. She’d cry out each time she saw them and wave her hands excitedly trying to catch them. Then my strong-willed princess took the wand herself and blew them. She thought she was Big stuff

Irina is in and out during these 2 hours, still trying to get her car started. We have time to get measurements of little V. During these 2 hours, Irina brings the social worker in. She shares with us little V’s background. We get to see a picture of her mother and baby pictures of little V, that they said they’ll give us after court. At this point, Irina asks us if we decided to adopt her. Which of course we did, who wouldn’t love this little girl? So we sign the official papers.

At that point, it’s approaching 12 and little V is hungry, so she is more than ready to head down to her room to eat her cabbage, carrots and onion soup (yuck). She blows us a kiss and takes off running.

We leave the orphanage. Irina’s car is still sitting there, it won’t start. We had to the Ministry of Education in Khabarovsk. We meet with an official, give her our petition to adopt, she asks us a few questions. (Mostly about the boys, why we came back for 1 more and Alaska questions). She says she will speak for us in court, wishes us well and we leave.

At this point it’s approaching 1 pm, we are starving, but there is no rest for the weary… We stop at 2 garages (note both are padlocked behind fences and you have to ring a bell to get in) to try and see about getting Irina’s car fixed. There is no luck at either so it’s off to start our medicals…

To Be Continued...

Trip 1: Part IV An adorable little girl

Irina comes back up the steps holding the hands of an adorable little girl, who was holding tight to a little board book. As soon as little V hits the room she starts to cry. Who could blame her? I didn’t like this little room either! I took her hand and she walked into the room, the tears stopped when she was the bag of finger food. She grabs the bag of food and climbs on the couch. I opened the bag for her and she started to eat, one piece at a time.

She’s still not quite sure who we are, so she just watches us from the couch. I pull a doll out of my bag and she grabs for it. Irina takes charge and opens the book about the doll and asks little V questions in Russian. Show me the dolls eyes, hair, button, etc. Little V is pretty smart and was answering all the questions. She’d touch the button on the doll, then point to the book, then find the button on her own dress too.

Finally she decided we must be safe, and she crawled off the couch and started to explore. (Irina takes off at this point so we have some time alone with little V)

Little V finds the bag of toys, she grabs the zipper and says “Oy”. It won’t open, she pushes it towards me. I show her how to open it a little and she manages to open it the rest. She unpacks each toy we brought puts them on the floor. Once it’s empty, she puts them back in and actually closes the zipper.

Irina comes back in with the orphanage doctor. She gives us little V’s background, we are able to ask any medical questions we like and then she leaves. There is obviously a good relationship with little V and the Doctor as she hugs her and little V lights up when she sees her.

At this point, little V is tired. She has a cold and an ear infection, so she crawls into my lap and we just rock and sing for a while. This must be how she’s put to sleep, as she closes her eyes each time I look at her. It’s time to say goodbye to her for today, so we take her back to her groupa.

She’s in the 2/3 year old groupa, it’s a bright and colorful room with some really great caregivers. She runs towards them smiling. She blows us a kiss and we head off.

We head to Irina’s car and it won’t start. (Something with the security system). So Irina calls a taxi to take us back to the hotel. She tells us to think it through, talk to our doctor and see if we want to sign to adopt on Monday.

Trip 1: Part III Welcome to Khabarovsk

We were the first ones out of the airport and pushed our way through the crowds of people standing at the door. Literally, you just have to shove because they don’t move… I think my suitcase rolled over a few toes. We were looking for our agency translator, Lena. She’s a tall, gorgeous lady, usually all decked out with 2 inch heels. We walked through the arrival area and couldn’t find her. It was so crowded, so we opted to go stand outside to wait. We dodged the Russian taxi drivers for about 15 minutes until the agency van pulled up. Yes, Jen, it’s the same one! Irina, the Khab head of our agency got out. She hasn’t changed a bit, still the same hair color and all! There was a new driver though, Nicholai, he looked to be about 20 but could navigate those streets very well.

They take us directly to the Amethyst, we check in and Irina tells us to get sleep. Well we did just overnight in Seoul, we aren’t tired but okay. The hotel room is fine once the window is open to cool it off.

Sunday afternoon arrives and we head out to Baby Orphanage #2. Irina picks us up in her car this time. We stop at the bank to exchange $ into rubles. Banks are open on Sunday… Then we drive about 45 more minutes to get to the orphanage.

This orphanage looks slighter better than the boys’ orphanage in Komsomolk. We stop just inside the door and put booties over our shoes. We stay with the security guard, while Irina goes and checks in. Then she marches us through the orphanage the whole way to this little room on the top floor. Just a couch and a piano with a window, very tiny. It looks like a tiny sitting room of an office. We stay, she goes. (Get the idea here, yet?)

to be continued...

Trip 1 Part II: In transit

I should mention that Mark is not the easiest traveler. He just doesn’t like to fly. So 13.5 hours in a plane with him is well…interesting. We should have kept the original tickets where our seats weren’t together.

Due to the winter weather over the ocean (or so my brother, the meteorologist says) the flight from LAX to Seoul is not directly west across the ocean. Matter of fact, it flew directly past Seattle, past Anchorage and the whole way up to Fairbanks before that plane turned west. That’s a little frustrating, especially since you just spent the last 12 hours flying south on that same flight pattern!

Even in coach, Asiana Airlines is better than any domestic US flight. You are fed 2-3 meals with real silverware and everything. Each meal has it’s choice of western or eastern. Meaning you can get an Asian meal or a US type meal. The food was average. There are several snacks as well and drinks too. Important to remember that all water is served warm. There is no ice. So if you are hot, which the planes were very warm, and you want to cool off you are better with a soda type drink. My favorite feature of Asiana is the warm towels. Before each meal they bring you a heated hand towel, nice !

We arrived in Seoul safe and sound Friday. We had to go through the transfer station security (hmm, just came off a plane but before you’ll let us into your airport to change flights, we have to go through security again!). We made our way up to the top floor of the airport to the Airport Transit Hotel. For about 80 dollars we had a pretty nice hotel room for 12 hours. On that same floor we enjoyed the free movie lounge, very nice chairs, if you have downtime. And there is free Internet on that floor as well.

We left Seoul for Khabarovsk on Asiana Airlines on Saturday. The plane was full, we were surprised! How many people are heading to Siberia in the winter time? On the plane we filled out our immigrant card for Russia, required. We did not fill out the customs form, as we opted to green line it. You land on the tarmac at the Khabarovsk airport. We laughed when we saw the plane was still met with the jeep with a gun on it and escorted to the terminal. We deplaned down the steps and walked across the snowy tarmac to the terminal.

Once inside you join the lines for passport control. No jokes, no smiles allowed here. They do pull parents travelling with young kids and put them in front of you. That’s nice! Once you make it through passport control, there is the baggage claim. The baggage in Khabarovsk is piled onto the back of a big dump truck so it takes forever to arrive. We didn’t have any baggage so we were able to head right for the green line of customs. Of course I take off walking and my husband just stops. I walk past 2 security people, tell them I have nothing to claim and hit the door. Just as I’m about to go through, I turn around expecting my husband to be behind me and he’s not there…. Five minutes later, he comes around when the security guard tells him I’m waiting. I asked him why he didn’t follow me? He said he thought I was going the wrong way… Well don’t you think we should stick together.

Didn’t we decide that at the beginning????

To Be continued

Trip 1: Part 1: The LAX Nightmare

We left Alaska on Thanksgiving morning very early and flew an uneventful flight to Seattle. The sun was rising as we flew into Seattle and there was the most gorgeous picture of Mt. Rainer I’ve ever seen, the sky was clear and the sunrise was beautiful. We had a short layover in Seattle and then flew to Los Angeles. I should mention that we’ve never been to LAX before, we flew via San Francisco and Seattle on our last 2 adoption trips.

LAX is not the most travel friendly airport. There are NO signs telling you where to go. After asking several travelers we learned we had to actually leave the terminal we were in to get to our connecting flight. Apparently each airline/terminal has it’s own security, so to catch your connecting flight you have to leave security and then stand in long lines to go through security again in the next terminal . The only positive I could find for this was that we got to absorb some of the California sunshine during the short walk to the next terminal.

We arrive at the International terminal and find the long, long lines. It seems at 12 pm in LAX there are many international flights. There were 2 heading to Seoul that took off within 10 minutes of each other. (Figure about 400 people per flight and you get the picture of the lines). We made our way past all the people to get to the no baggage checked line for Asiana Airlines. While we are waiting for our turn, we watched the baggage struggles. There was this one lady about 5 feet tall, who had 2 huge boxes. They had to call for help just to load them on the scale. Each box was 110 pounds. They kept trying to explain to the lady that she couldn’t take boxes this big onto the plane, but she didn’t understand the English or Korean they were trying to explain to her. They had to send off for a translator to try and communicate with her. We finally got checked in without issue, and we were even lucky enough to get seats together on the flight. (Since we had such short notice for trip 1, and the planes were full, our original tickets were not together).

Then we went down to the dungeons to go through security again. It really resembled a foreign country and not the USA. The security is literally in the basement with low ceilings and just crammed with people. Mark, in his wisdom sent me through 1 line and he took another. I want to point out that we said we weren’t going to separate, but I listened to him anyway. Why, I don’t know. So I go through security with no problems. Mark winds up with problems; they send his bag through 3 times. Finally they make him open the bag, then they literally pull everything out and check it all. It had to be all those boxes of Alaska chocolates we were taking as gifts. Again I mentioned to him don’t separate from me I look way more innocent!
It was a good thing we had 4 hours in LAX! We get through security and then walk about 2 miles to the gate. This terminal was under construction. There were no working escalators or moving walkways. Just long, narrow drywalled halls. We find the gate and had about 30 minutes to find food. Of course, it’s under construction, so we had to walk about a mile back to find the last food we saw to grab something to eat.

Then they announced boarding, so we had back towards the gate. Boarding on Asiana is by section A-D. Getting 400+ people on a plane takes a bit, you just join your line and shuffle along. Finally we’re on board, bags are packed and we’re in for the long 13.5 hours across the Pacific.

To be continued…

Birthday Celebrations

In the 4 weeks around Christmas, we have so many family celebrations. First we have S’s birthday, then my mom’s birthday, then Christmas, then our wedding anniversary, and then A’s birthday and then my birthday.

Due to budget restraints, (as in we’re very short on money at the moment), we only celebrated the events for those in the under 10 set. I got some great video of S’s 6th year old birthday; however, this was the best picture I got. Note: the jealous glare of his older brother as they are eating the big birthday dinner of sandwiches.
S’s favorite gift was from Peggy and Brycen in Pennsylvania… Yes that Batman Pop-up card. And the video said “I love this, I love this, I love this, I love this. I’m going to say thank you for giving me this pop-up card. I’ve always wanted one.” Thanks for making his day… Such an easy kid to gift for, he loves cards and books. I made him a homemade tornado book and it made his day.

For A’s birthday, he was upset that he wasn’t going to have a cake, because he never saw me make it! His smile was so bright when he finally saw me coming with the cake. And it was the football shape (okay it was the closest I could cut to a football). I put trick candles on it but those darn candles didn’t work. He was happy with the football shape. Here’s a shot of the boys @ A’s birthday party. A. loves to dress in ties and he looked very official. S. wants the ties but doesn’t want to button his shirt the whole way. Also he just wanted a picture showing off his first lost tooth.
Good thing our little girl has a summer birthday, it gives us a break from all the winter excitement.

It’s still very, very cold in Alaska, we can’t break out of this cold snap. It was -29 this morning in Wasilla. When it warms up I’ll take those promised pictures, I’m afraid to take my camera outside for fear the batter y will die forever from the cold.

Snapshots of Khabarovsk

For some reason, we didn't take pics of Khab this last trip over. But when we picked up the boys in May 2005, we had a lot of down time and so we walked all over the city. We also befriended on the playground a wonderful Russian couple and their son the same age as ours, who spoke English, and took us to places we never knew existed.

This is the Amethyst Hotel, typically the first trip hotel of choice. It's in a more residential area a few blocks from Lenin Square. Across the street from it is a children's mini-amusement park (it's closed in the winter).This is Lenin's Sqare. The big building in the left is the court building. Behind our backs in this picture is a huge outdoor TV. It plays all the time, it was even out and playing in December when we were there. In the wintertime there are ice sculptures in this park, they are lit and and prettty neat.The streets of Khab. It's a city of Ups and Downs... There are trolleys and busses though. We had a great couple, Julie and Jake that figured out the trolley system and taught us how to ride up from the Markuel to Downtown. The Markuel is at the bottom of the hill by the Amur River.The Markuel Apartments. Trip 2 stay usually. There is a small grocery store about a block away so it makes it a good location. However it is at the bottom of the hill so you have to go up to get to the rest of town.Here's the Amur River. On the other side you can see the mountains of China. The beachy area was full of sunbathers on very warm days. There is also a wondeful walkway all along the river.It seemed as though every Russian town has a blue church. Khab has a blue one and a gold one.The streets of downtown have very wide sidewalks and are usually full of people. There are many green spaces too, lots of parks and trees spread throughout.