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Our International Adoption

We are in the process of adopting an orphan from Khabarovsk, Russia.

We are using Cradle of Hope to do the adoption. They have been extremely helpful throughout the entire process. Our home study was done by Children's Home Society of NJ.

For our travel arrangements, we went through All Ways International - They were really helpful (sounds like they are actually from Russia by the accent). They arranged everything from someone to meet us at the plane to a driver, interpreter, coordinator for the entire length of our trip. They arranged our airfare from the US to Russia, From Moscow to Khabarovsk, hotels, etc.. They were extremely helpful. 

The first trip went well, see the trip log for details.

We heard all sorts of horror stories about the Sheremetyevo-2 airport. They were all wrong. It was no worse than any airport in the US. And bringing cell phones into the country is no problem either, contrary to what I have read on other web sites. Going through Customs, unless you have more than $10,000 in cash or goods, there is no problem and you do not have to declare anything. Same goes for leaving, just go through the green line and they probably will not even stop you to look at anything. We had heard of the "dingy basement" where you are taken for Customs. No, it is the lower level of the airport. Yes, it could be more modern, but there is nothing to fear. Passport control can take some time to clear but if you have nothing to declare for Customs, you walk right through the Green line and they probably will not even stop you. Once outside, expect to be approached by hordes of taxi drivers, this seems to be the norm in Russian airports. When you depart Russia, the departure side of the airport is much cleaner and pretty safe too, granted you don't want to leave anything unattended, but I had no fears while in the airport, it is not all that different than what you would be seeing in the US. There were duty free shops, restaurants, etc for you. These are all separated form the departure lounges by a level of security - metal detectors/X-ray machines. I would not think twice of arriving there again, Philadelphia International Airport is not much better by comparison, granted it is a bit more modern and larger.

The Domodedovo airport in Moscow on the other hand was just recently remodeled. It is newer, cleaner, and has a much better feel to it than many of the US airports that I have been in. It is a very nice and welcoming airport to fly in or out of. 

We flew both Aeroflot and Dalavia - both are excellent airlines, the service is excellent and most of the flight attendants speak at least some English, enough to communicate anyway. We would definitely fly them again. One thing though, the domestic flights tend to be a bit on the warm side, so I definitely recommend layers so you don't overheat.

We got the call for our second trip. Plans are in progress. See the weblog for day to day details. I will be posting to it when we are over there as well.

This page was last updated on: July 14, 2006 10:14 PM