[hockeyMom]

Has anyone adopted from here recently? We are looking at St. Petersburg for our fourth baby and have a few questions??

1. What is the length of trip #2? Ten day wait waived?
2. How is the city? Were you comfortable?
3. How fast did you receive your referral? Boy is our preference, actually 2 boys.

Thanks so much for your help!

[jimpol]

Here is the breakdown of our second trip:
Day one - flew in
Day two - visit our son at the orphanage
Day three - court
Day four - pick up son from orphanage
Day five - Flew to Moscow
Day six - went to embassy & turned in paper to consulate
Day seven - weekend - toured
Day eight - weekend - toured
Day nine - got paperwork back from Russian consulate
Day ten - got ready to leave
Day eleven - flew out at 5:00 AM

As you can see we got caught with a weekend and then we couldn't get a flight out on day 10 so we were there a few extra days. It was good bonding time in our hotel room with our new son.

Our son was adopted June 2003 from St. Petersburg and our ten days was waived, but you wouldn't think so from the length of our second trip. We got our referral right after we turned in our dossier (maybe 2 or 3 weeks).

St. Petersburg is a modern city with all of the modern conveniences and a lot of things to see. The Hermitage is absolutely wonderful so don't miss out. We didn't plan enough time there. I could go back and spend a few days there. It is second only to the Louvre in Paris.

[hockeyMom]

Thanks so much for your info! I can't wait to begin, but it will be a few months of gathering and completing before we start again. We just got our daughter home a month ago, so we want to spend some good quality time with her before turning her world upsidedown with 2 new brothers!