[NCFamily]

OUr son is from Taganrog, which is the Rostov-on-don administrative region. We had a wonderful experiene and would highly recommend the area.

Rostov is a couple of hour flight from Moscow. Taganrog was about an hour drive from Rostov.

The town of Rostov-on-don is fairly large and lent itself well to roaming and idling away the down time. Lots of restaurants, altough the language barrier is a bit of a pain. Most of the restaurants had the menu printed in Russian and English. The wait staff usually did not speak english but we got by just fine with pointing at the menu. The local McDonalds had cards with the menu in english and we used that as our "comfort food". But the local restaurants had great food. Lots of open air markets. The town folks were very nice and helpful in the shops. We walked along the Don river several times.

Overall thought we got a fairly decent feel for the country and people.

Our son was very well cared for, the orphanage was very clean and the staff was very nice.

We would highly recommend the area.