Settling In

We are all settling in here in the Duma Apartment right near Red Square where we will be spending an entire week, trying to find a routine to life, trying to adjust to each other, coping with life in Russia, in a dilapidated apartment with 3 bedrooms, a kitchen with appliances, a bathroom and a restroom. Security is provided by a bible era key that fits the leather clad heavy steel prison-level security door to our apartment. It definitely feels like I'm suppose to be wearing a Roman Soldiers outfit when I open the door. To enter the apartment there is a plastic holder that holds what looks like a big watch battery that you touch to a round pad next to the door and it unlocks the main entrance to the apartment down on the street.
The flight to Moscow from Kemerovo City in Siberia was quite uneventful with the boys. Drew needed to be held busy for first hour and a half and then he turned himself sideways in his seat and slept for remainder of the four hour flight. The younger guy is a different story and since I don't spend as much time taking care of him as Jen and her mom the "babushka", I will only say that he needs "tough love".
Today we were at the clinic for the boys physical exam, nothing out of the ordinary and the incredible doctor sized off both boys perfectly in very short period of dealing with them. to get the boys to turn head to side so he could check their ear, he rapped on the wall next to the boys head and as soon as the boy looked that way, in quick fashion the doctor had looked in their ear with the instrument. This was MY TYPE of doctor!!!
Also, today we visited the American Embassy here in Moscow to apply for the boys travel Visas back to the USA. The embassy (great to know) is like being in the USA, so if you get in trouble here in Russia, you'd better head to the US Embassy where its like being in the home. That place was dead, nothing going on in there, and yet it was as difficult paying a simple fee and getting a receipt to show the proper department that they should now complete a form IS-600 as anywhere else in Russia, so the embassy despite being USA, has been Russianized already.
As for how we survive here in this early 1950s style run down apartment; we have a nice 24hrs open small grocery store a block down the street from our apartment. We had eggs, ham, toast and porridge for breakfast today, compliments of Mary Basel and Ben Vetters work with the various appliances that all have disability or malfunction/conditions that you have to work around otherwise they don't work. (This is as close to going to Nigeria as it will get for me).
Technology is somewhat advanced in this apartment; we have a filthy workstation computer that has internet but the computer is so old, slow that you can't do much on it. The desk chair if you lean to one side too far the seat comes off the center post and you fall off the chair. I tried watching the game highlights from the Vikings Packers game from Monday night and it was just stop and go so I gave up on it. The technician called me to say that I should use our laptop to connect to their wifi and it will work much better (I guess so, our laptop is probably 10yrs newer then the workstation) Lo and behold, the wifi works really well on our laptop but we never have time to blog (its watch the boys, feed the boys, clean the boys, dress the boys, put the boys to sleep, take the boys for a walk, go see where he wants to take you to show you some minor detail or mess he made.
We should also have FREE international calling but the phone doesn't work. (the technician amazingly enough spoke really good english but I suspect that the phone wont get fixed anytime soon despite his assurance that he will get someone to fix it for us.
Now that we have wifi, what we will do on our next post to the blog will be a photo collection of the places we've been too, our apartment, the boys etc. with captions under each picture, that is the easiest way of doing photos in a blog.
Everywhere we go, people tells us how cute the boys look, what they don't know or see is how much effort, time, energy has gone into them in the short little while we've had them.