Moscow, Medicals and Matryoshka

Hello friends from Moscow! So, we made it here last night after a short flight with Siberian S7 Air. No problems. Russian airlines are not as bad as you might think, well perhaps some. We had a great flight. Dmitry (the driver from the agency in Moscow) met us at the airport. You know when you arrive at airports and you see all the people with the signs and the last names of people, you might think, wow, they must be special. Well, we didn't feel that special last night. Our driver was over at the side, away from most of the sign holders, and he was playing a game on his phone. We thought we may have been stranded there. lol. But it all turned out good. The drive was about 1 hour from the airport to downtown Moscow where we are. We were so hungry, we begged him to stop at McDonalds (only thing open) and even made him order for us. LOL. He was a good sport and his english was very good.

Here is a photo of the view from our hotel. We have a normal room, and the cost is generally about 12,000 rubles per night. This is about $400. Our agency gets it at a discount rate for 7,000 / $230. This is one of the least expensive places for us in Moscow. We are in a great location. Moscow is absoutely beautiful. What a huge city. What is quite neat is that there is a ring road around the inner core, and another one on the outer core. Traffic here is 24/7. We were coming in around 12 am and it was packed. Population of Moscow is about 12 Million. So there you go.

This morning we walked only about 10 minutes to the medical clinic today. Now this is quite interesting. So our list of doctors to see (8) include the following: Neurologist - basically a few questions, check your reflexes, touch your baby finger to your nose with your eyes closed. I didn't really get his english and Elena our translator felt he was doing ok. He asked me to do it with the other fingers so I used the same hand and moved from my little finger to almost my index when he said, no other hand. LOL. Elena laughed. For each Dr. Chris and I go in seperately. Blood - they take a small vial of blood from your ring finger (what no needles)? But ouch, not like going to donate blood when they check your iron, they just keep squeezing, and squeezing. They check for like 20 different things. Oncologist - basically ask you questions. Cardiologist - now this was an interesting one. They do not have high tec equipment here either. They put about 10 little mini blue plungers around your chest (and you strip down let me tell you) LOL. It was funny. They run you on the system for 5 minutes, spray water on you so the plungers stick. Interesting experience let me tell you. Dermatologist - this doctor is actually the wife of the director of the clinic. Fancy lady with nice red shoes. Always pay compliments to a lady like this. Our translator made everything go very smooth as she has been doing all this for 5 years and knows the ins and the outs of the place (it is huge with millions of doors). Then was the big adventure to the other side of the city to a Narcologist (spelling?) = this was quite the experience. We should have only been there for 10 minutes but it ended up being more like 2 hours. As of Monday this week, they changed some staff and also removed the fee to have the exam done for us. Free. Great. Well, no, when it is free, then they even don't want to do it more. Plus the regular connection for our doctor was out, this added to Elena's frustrations. The Doctor didn't want to do our exam as we were not registered yet in Moscow. Our hotel had not registered us as you need to be in a place for 3 days min to be registered. Our paperwork still had Volograd. To make along story short - there were some bribes made - LOL - kidding. No way. Elena had to go speak to the Director, who spoke to our Agency, who spoke to someone else, who set up a meeting for next week to discuss the new protocol. And then, thanks to Elena's begging, the Director marched us down to the doctor and told her to do it. After all this fuss, she asked me to show her my arms, tongue, blink fast 5 times. Close my eyes, then open them really fast. And she signed the paper, put her official stamp on, and out I went. Chris had to take his shirt off for the entire exam. Guess the lady needed some excitement. LOL. Elena looked traumatized as in her 5 years, nothing like this ever happened. Tomorrow we see the regular physician to finalize everything and a TB specialist.

We wandered around Moscow this aft a bit. Bought some Matryoshka (the wooden hand painted Russian Dolls that stack inside. The picture way up is from the biggest shope in Moscow. They are just beautiful. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matryoshka_doll

So, no talk about little D today. We are still a bit sad but really ok. We are looking forward to getting home and then going to get our new little Pooper (Cooper).

Special thanks to Carol at http://www.ironridgelabradors.com/ for taking such good care of Cooper for the past 3weeks! Here is a pic of Coop. So we don't even have Little D home yet, but we already have a puppy for him. LOL - gee are we great parents or what. LOL.

Chat soon my friends. xxoo